A Dutch scientist did his PHD on nightmares and made an interesting discovery: you can change the plot of your dream by penetrating into it. Almost everybody knows what it’s like to have a nightmare. But one fifth of the people that have a severe traumatic experience develop a PTSS (post traumatic stress syndrome). 60 percent of them troubles with nightmares that keep coming back and ruin their daytime lives. Especially for these people, a therapy is being developed, which allows them to change the script of their nightmare in such a way that the nightmare gets a happy ending.
To get grip of the nightmare the patient is thought to dream lucide. So that he can be aware of the fact that he’s dreaming, but keep on sleeping and dreaming. Research has shown that a lucide dream can exist in three ways.
- Something unexpected can happen in the dream that makes the dreamer conscience, without waking up.
- A dreamer can sleap lightly and stay lucide.
- The dreamer gets himself conscience of the fact that he’s dreaming.
In every way the dreamer can change the ending of the dream himself. Is he for example dreaming of being followed by a scary man in a dead end alley, he can turn around and do something to eliminate the follower. An ideal solution to give the bad dream a happy ending.
How do you learn do sleep lucide?
Keep a dream diary en teach yourself to be more conscious of your dreams. And you can exercise in daytime what you have to do to get lucide when dreaming. One exercise is to critically observe the reality during the day. If you get used to that, you will start to critically observe the world in your dreams as well. If something strange happens, you will get lucide. One rule in dreaming lucide: don’t panic, stay calm. Otherwise you can lose grip of your dream. 
Common themes in nightmares
- Being followed
- Under water
- Falling down a cliff
- Taking a test
- Being naked in public
- Not being able to run
- Losing someone close to you
- Pent-up rage
- Losing control of the wheel
Tags: Nightmare