How To Stop PTSD Nightmares With Hypnosis Audios
Do you experience nightmares that are caused by PTSD? Would you love to know how to stop PTSD nightmares? In this article, I am going to highlight an unusual, yet effective way of calming sleep disorders and improving your sleep quality using hypnosis audios. The great thing about hypnosis audios is that there are no known side effects, unlike certain medications. We’ll discuss what causes ptsd nightmares, what triggers them, and most importantly, what you can do to help yourself to avoid chronic nightmares.
Why Do PTSD-Related Nightmares Happen?
Dreams are your mind’s way of resolving a situation before storing it in a way that never affects you. This is called memory consolidation. When you run a dream about a situation that happened at work today, for instance, if your mind finds that there was a good solution to whatever issue there was, now it can put the memory away and never think about it again. With repetitive nightmares experienced by PTSD patients, there is not a satisfactory resolution to the traumatic event, so your mind repeats the nightmare tomorrow to see if there will be a different outcome.
Some traumatic events are just so distressing that your mind just can’t make sense of this type of trauma. This happens regularly for military veterans who witnessed atrocities on a level that most non-military folks just can’t understand. This can also happen as a result of horrific car accidents, rape or sexual assault, and a variety of other traumatic events. When the human mind just can’t seem to process or make sense of what has happened, this can cause a range of mental health conditions.
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What Triggers PTSD Nightmares?
One of the contributory factors that can trigger PTSD nightmares is anxiety, worry, or panic about things that happen in your daily life. So, worrying or overthinking can cause the more frequent occurrence of nightmares! Here are some of the other things that can help to trigger night terrors:
- Unresolved Traumatic Memories: A sign that a memory is unresolved is when it causes you an emotional reaction like fear or distress. In mild cases, these may resolve themselves but in severe cases, you may need professional help from a professional therapist experienced in helping people with anxiety disorders.
- Environmental Cues: These could be sights, sounds, smells, etc that remind you of the original trauma.
- Stress And Anxiety: High stress levels cause an increase in the production of adrenaline and cortisol in the human body which may not have dissipated by bedtime. This can cause poor-quality sleep
- Chronic Lack Of Sleep: Your PTSD causes you to wake up as a result of a horrible nightmare. Over time, the cumulative effect of not sleeping enough can be a contributory factor in having even more nightmares.
- Alcohol / Drug Abuse: Many PTSD sufferers use alcohol or drugs to numb the distressing emotions caused by their PTSD. However, the longer-term effect of this is to make you even more prone to PTSD nightmares. They are just not a good solution!
- Avoidance: Trying to avoid reminders of your trauma during your normal day can actually lead to more severe nightmares.
- Bad Sleep Hygiene: Too much caffeine, bad sleep routines, watching movies or TV programs that over-stimulate you, etc. can all increase the likelihood of not getting enough sleep and potentially having nightmares.
- Hypervigilance: If the traumatic event that happened to you caused you to become over-alert, this was probably a good thing in that moment. However, long after the traumatic event has happened, the over-alertness is now interfering with your sleep quality and also with your quality of life. You need to learn how to stand down and become calm and secure again.
Why Do PTSD Nightmares Feel So Real?
The first reason that PTSD nightmares feel so real is because of their importance. Whatever the traumatic event was that kick-started your PTSD, your mind has marked this event (or series of events) as important. Even in ordinary everyday life, when something is important, we pay more attention to it, don’t we? For instance, I remember vividly those video images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yet, I cannot remember a piece of video footage that appeared on some news program just a week ago.
The second reason they feel so real is your need to resolve whatever happened. Your mind has this need to find a satisfactory solution to whatever happened. The problem arises when there is no satisfactory solution. For instance, if you are a war veteran who witnessed someone being blown to pieces during a conflict, how can your mind find a satisfactory solution to that? This inability to process the event is made more difficult when you have very rigid beliefs about right and wrong.
So, the takeaway here is that it is natural that the PTSD nightmares feel real. They’ll continue being very “real” until something changes, either about the level of importance you give them or your need to find a satisfactory solution in your mind.
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Do PTSD Nightmares Ever Go Away?
With the proper help and by learning the proper coping strategies, the answer is yes, PTSD nightmares can go away. For most people, that is experienced as a gradual improvement. You’ll find that either the strength or disturbing nature of the nightmares calms down gradually or else the frequency starts to become less and less, or maybe both. The time that it takes varies from person to person and depends on a number of factors such as whether you have an underlying predisposition to anxiety or worry, how strong your religious beliefs are, the level of support you have, etc.
How Do You Get Rid Of PTSD Nightmares?
PTSD nightmares can really disturb you. They mess with the quality of your sleep. Maybe you can’t get back to sleep after having distressingly vivid dreams. For PTSD sufferers, their frequent nightmares can affect their overall health and quality of life. In some extreme cases, their nightmare disorder can lead to a lack of energy, general disorientation, and even suicidal thoughts. So, how do you get rid of PTSD nightmares?
Effective treatment involves addressing both aspects of the problem – dealing with the traumatic experience that caused the PTSD symptoms and re-establishing good sleep patterns. Below, you’ll find some suggestions that will help both aspects:
- Security: Take reasonable measures to ensure that your home is going to be safe during the night (eg. set the burglar alarm, check that windows and doors are closed, etc)
- Set Routine: Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning. Remember that sleep is a pattern. You establish patterns by repetition.
- Wind-Down Routine: During the last hour before bed, get into a soothing routine that doesn’t overstimulate you. For instance, don’t watch a horror movie just before bedtime!
- The Darker The Better: The darker you can make your room, the more conducive it is to achieving a good depth of sleep.
- Self-Hypnosis Audios: Use a self-hypnosis audio just before bedtime. Depending on which is your main problem, you could listen to “Natural Deep Sleep” or “Overcome Anxiety“. There are some really good relaxation techniques on these recordings. We use image rehearsal therapy to train your mind to gradually reduce your recurrent nightmares so that sleep problems fade away quickly.
- No Caffeine Before Bedtime: If you are a coffee or tea drinker, avoid these before bedtime. Also, no energy drinks that contain caffeine.
- Talk To A Professional: If your symptoms of PTSD are severe and your traumatic memories just won’t go away by any other means, it may be time to get professional help. A good place to start would be with cognitive behavioral therapy. Talk therapy is a great way to help your mind resolve that traumatic event that happened to you. This, in turn, should calm your sleep disturbances and cause a significant reduction in this common symptom of PTSD. While cognitive-behavioral therapy has been proven to be very effective, there are other treatment options. Another very effective therapy is eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR). There are also medication options including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These are more commonly known as anti-depressants but they can also have a beneficial effect on PTSD. Talking to your healthcare provider is the best option as they will be able to assess your individual case and recommend what is appropriate for you.
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Does Hypnosis For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Help?
That’s a resounding yes! By learning how to go into a hypnotic state, you are learning how to relax both body and mind. In a relaxed state of mind, we are more susceptible to suggestions. When those suggestions are designed to achieve positive change, this can be a much quicker route to resolving your PTSD nightmares.
Two recordings that I believe will help you the most are “Natural Deep Sleep” and “Overcome Anxiety“. By clicking on those links, you can download those hypnosis audios immediately. By listening once a day for at least thirty days, you’ll become more relaxed and your quality of sleep will improve. In severe cases, you may need to seek professional help.
Author: Paul Hunter
Although thousands of people read his blog every month, Paul's path to success was not an easy one. Click here to read his amazing story "From Unwanted Baby And Adopted To A Respected Self Help Blogger". If you want to send Paul a quick message, then visit his contact page here
