Control your dreams — and change your life!
Beat anxiety. Cure your phobias. And ease headaches. How to...
How many times have you woken up disturbed by a dream? How often have you then brushed aside your feelings, telling yourself it wasn’t real and that it meant nothing?
Maybe, as you’ve got older, you’ve found it harder to recall your dreams. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s time for a rethink.
I have spent most of my adult life studying dreams, which I like to compare to films. These films can be love stories, comedies, horrors or dramas, but the unique thing about them is that they were made just for you and shine a light on your inner life.
once you understand dreams they can give you an insight into your feelings, preoccupations and desires.
Less well known, however, is the fact they can improve health. I’ve seen how they can reduce stress, pain and anxiety — even combat phobias.
And if you find you no longer remember your dreams, I will show you how to recall them clearly, so you can use them to improve your wellbeing . . .
TIPS TO CONQUER ANXIETY
ALL dreams, no matter how odd, are an attempt to communicate something healing. To benefit from their messages and prompts, we need to understand their imagery.
For example, if we dream of shouting at someone then wake up and think, I’d never do that, it might be that we’ve not acknowledged how upset we are about a particular situation.
If we dream our partner is cheating on us, this could reflect that we’re feeling unloved or unsupported.
Don’t rush to conclusions because often the messages in our dreams are figurative rather than literal. If we can decode what they’re trying to tell us, we can pinpoint the source of our anxieties and work towards overcoming them.
EXERCISE: who are you in your dream — your younger self, an observer, an animal, or as you are today? How do you feel in it?
what was the strongest emotion? And does this resonate with a situation in your life, past or present? what is the most powerful image or scene and what do you think it relates to?
If the most negative or scary part of the dream has a message for you, what do you think it is?
Is there anything beautiful or arresting in the dream? Think about what it might convey.
If you could change the ending, what would you make it? Imagining a happier ending to a stressful dream reduces anxiety as we are rehearsing ways of supporting ourselves while also listening to our deepest feelings.
FIGHT FEARS IN BED
our dreams are our own versions of reality, highlighting fear or powerlessness. But they also offer solutions, and when we understand what the emotions and events in them relate to, this can help us free ourselves from what’s holding us back.
EXERCISE: There’s a simple way to increase the likelihood of having a dream that can help you conquer a phobia — you create a dream that reflects you overcoming your phobia.
So if you’re scared of flying, you may dream you’re on a plane feeling panicky and frightened. when you wake up, write down the details of the dream, but create a new, positive ending where you feel safe and calm.
Mentally rehearse this new ending every day to retrain your mind, until the happier outcome feels vivid and real. You’ll find your dreams start to change so that eventually they’re happy ones, rather than nightmares.
Crucially, you’ll find you feel safer when flying in real life.
THEY EVEN RELIEVE PAIN
A STuDY showed that patients who were taught to use mental imagery of their ailment reported a greater capacity for healing from health issues such as acute and chronic pain.
Dreams provide vivid mental imagery, and if we try to understand them and respond to their messages — as well as taking medical advice and following usual treatments — we boost our chances of alleviating pain and recovering more quickly.
one person I interviewed had endometriosis (a condition in which tissue that behaves like the lining of the womb is found in other parts of the body) and she dreamed she was dancing — something she never contemplated in her waking life. But she loved how it made her feel in her dream and was convinced it had eased her pain.
Though it terrified her, she tried dancing and now does it every day. Her dream changed the way she saw her body.
EXERCISE: Pain we’re experiencing can often emerge in dreams as unpleasant imagery. But changing that imagery while dreaming may help to relieve it.
A friend had a persistent headache, so she used my dream control techniques, in the box below left, to create a dream where she was wearing a tight metal band on her head that she was able to remove. when she awoke, the headache had gone.
You can use the ritual of writing down a preferable outcome to retrain your mind and influence your dreams. The more we work with dream images while we’re awake, the more we influence the content of our nightly journeys.