What Do I Do About Triggering Dreams?!

today we are going to be talking about dreams and what to do about triggering dreams whether that's on the betrayal trauma side or on the recovery side from an addiction this question comes from jenny thank you for the question we appreciate your questions please bring them if you have more i'm happy to answer them today we're talking about dreams and how to treat dreams that are triggering and the question was what do i do when i have this nightmare this recurring nightmare of my husband cheating on me again i know it's not real but when i wake up the feeling feels so real and it lasts with me for several days afterwards that it makes it really difficult for me to manage my life emotionally a great question it's really normal something that's really common in recovery work and especially when there's been trauma is that dreams become one of almost the symptoms of ptsd and they also become something that's very common in the process of recovery whether that's a substance addiction or a sexual addiction a lot of times clients will have dreams that are so powerful that they wake up feeling as though something really happened i remember working in the drug courts of southeastern idaho several years ago and i remember a client coming into my office one day and he was like almost in tears and he said i made a huge mistake i relapsed i'm going to get sent back to prison i just told the probation officer that i relapsed and uh because he had gone and drug tested earlier that day and lo and behold his drug test came back negative and he hadn't actually used but his dream had felt so real and physiologically his body was responding as if he had relapsed that he just admitted to relapsing to the probation officer because he's working on being honest and he thought he had relapsed so it's very powerful now there's a number of different ways of looking at dreams a lot of different theories on what our dreams mean and how to process them one theory says it's just the broad the brain's way of trying to flush chemicals through the system and we happen to have different chemicals mixed and we have this thinking process while we're asleep and it just does something that way just a chemical flush another theory says that the brain is actually trying to put things in order that we're left not in order and so those dreams become one way that the brain is continuing to to make things come to order some some other theories will look at it from that trauma perspective and say this is the body's way of trying to actually work these things out and make some sense of it the body is keeping the score here i'm experiencing something extremely traumatic and the body is trying to figure out how to regulate itself whatever way you look at it it can be really disturbing it can be really difficult sometimes these feelings will last for days at a time as the question was mentioned so what do you do about it the first thing that i would suggest is that when you have a triggering dream like that try to meet that dream with curiosity first and then compassion for yourself so if i have a really bad triggering dream i feel like i just did something terrible and i wake up and i'm feeling all of those things my heart's pounding my body's moving if i can stop for a moment and get curious with what's going on in my body acknowledge that my body's responding to what my dream was saying maybe even ask if there's something that my dream is trying to tell me if there's anything that i need to pick up or learn from or assimilate into my life and then meet myself with complete compassion and say you know what everybody everybody has these kinds of dreams sometimes especially if i have some of the background that i do or there's been some trauma or where i've treated my brain in an addictive way where it's craving things constantly be compassionate with yourself if you need to find a safe place to speak what's going on inside of you which can feel very vulnerable but being able to move what's going on in your brain and your body to a verbal medium allows you to move it from one part of your brain to a different part of the brain and allows it to process differently it also helps to speak it to somebody and have somebody else hear it and show empathy to be able to let some of that emotion come down there's a principle that's just true that when we have a big emotion when that emotion becomes validated it begins to subside so if you're not speaking with anybody you might carry that on for a lot longer than if you were to find a place to speak it share it let yourself process it differently and then the body can start to let it move and subside again if you're having these dreams based off of trauma that you've experienced you might also consider some formal treatment like emdr or ifs which are both really good treatments for trauma to help with those symptoms of ptsd so really common really normal you're not crazy it's okay that you have those dreams it's okay that you feel the way that you do reach deep into that curiosity compassion grounding techniques and then speak it with somebody else and it'll help to be able to move those things along for you have a great one thank you so much for being here with me if you found this to be valuable for you please hit the like and subscribe button if you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into please submit a question i'd be happy to answer it for you [Music] you