How to Overcome Anxiety Dreams

In prior articles, I've addressed anxiety in its many different forms (see my articles: What is the Difference Between Fear and Anxiety?).  In this article, I'm discussing anxiety dreams and how to cope with them.

How to Overcome Anxiety Dreams

What Are Anxiety Dreams?
Anxiety dreams often involve issues around performance at school or at work, being unprepared for a big event, discovering that you're not wearing clothes in public, and other similar themes.

Anxiety dreams often occur when you're under stress or you've been avoiding a particular situation.  The dreams aren't necessarily about the exact situation that you're stressed out about.

Anxiety Dreams About a Situation You're Avoiding
For instance, if you've been avoiding doing your taxes, you might have a dream that you're back in high school, even though you've been out of high school for many years, and you discover that you're unprepared for a test.  Or, you're about to address an auditorium full of people and as you're standing at the podium, you realize that you forgot to put on your pants. You feel powerless.

How to Overcome Anxiety Dreams

The anxiety dream signals to you that there's something you need to take care of that you've been avoiding.  Your unconscious mind is sending you a message that you need to do something to handle the situation.

Anxiety Dreams About a Stressful Situation
You might also be under a lot of stress about a situation that your fear and the fear spills over into your dreams.

For instance, if you have a project at work where you're feeling in over your head, you might have a dream about waking up late for work and then having problems getting in.  When you get on the train to go to work, its going the wrong way or you get confused about which train to take.

Anxiety Dreams About Unresolved Emotional Problems
Unresolved emotional issues can result in anxiety dreams, especially if these issues continue to get triggered in the present.

For instance, if you have unresolved grief about the loss of your mother, you might have anxiety dreams where your mother shows up in your dream, but she remains far away from you.  No matter what you do to get her attention or to get closer to her, there's some obstacle that gets in your way, and you feel guilty that you're unable to reach her (see my article: Coping With the Loss of a Loved One: Common Reactions).

Another example of having anxiety dreams about unresolved emotional problems might involved unresolved trauma related to emotional abuse that you experienced when you were a child.  You might have a dream where you're trying to get help, but you suddenly can't speak no matter how hard you try.  The more you try to tell the other person that you're being abused, the more confusing it is because you have no voice.

Tips That Can Help You to Overcome Anxiety Dreams

• Have a Wind Down Routine Before Going to Sleep:  Instead of watching the news, reading the newspaper or reading a book that will be overstimulating, have a wind down routine that will be soothing to you.  This might involve taking a soothing bath, listening to soothing music, meditating, doing breathing exercises or doing whatever helps to relax you (see my articles: Wellness: Safe Place Meditation, Self Soothing Techniques to Use When You're Under Stress and Learning to Relax: Square Breathing).

• Get Curious About Your Dreams:  Rather than brushing off the dream when you wake up and realize that you were dreaming, get curious about the meaning of your dream.  Ask yourself how your dream might relate to problems in your life now or unresolved problems from the past (see my article: Dream Analysis: Are You Fascinated By Your Dreams? and Dreams and Embodied Imagination).

• Write Down Your Dreams:  Have a pad and pen close to the bed and write down your dreams as soon as you wake up.  Don't rely on your memory to remember the dream later because chances are good that you'll forget your dream.

• Notice Any Patterns in Your Dreams: When you're able to look at the dreams that you've written down, you can see if there are any patterns to your dreams.  Are you have recurring dreams?

• Rewrite Your Dreams With the Ending That You Want:  Rewriting your dreams with a different ending gives your unconscious mind the signal that you want to deal with the underlying issues. It also helps you to feel empowered (see my article: Transforming Nightmares Through Creative Dreamwork and Empowering Yourself When You Feel Disempowered).

• Take Action on Issues You're Avoiding or Stressed Out About: If you've been avoiding dealing with a particular problem and you're having anxiety dreams, your unconscious mind is probably sending you a signal in your dreams that you need to take action.  If you can begin taking positive steps to resolve the problem, you're probably going to feel less anxious and the anxiety dreams might stop.

Getting Help in Therapy
If the self help tips above don't help you, you would probably benefit from getting help in therapy to deal with unresolved issues that you're unable to resolve on your own (see The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

A skilled psychotherapist can help you to discover the underlying issues that cause you to have anxiety dreams and also help you to work through these unresolved problems (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Recurring anxiety dreams can be frustrating and frightening.  Many people who have recurring anxiety dreams develop sleep problems because they're afraid to go to sleep and experience another anxiety dream.

Rather than continuing to suffer on your own, get help from a licensed mental health professional so you can deal with your anxiety and have a more peaceful life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article:  The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I have helped many clients to overcome problems with anxiety, including anxiety dreams related to current stressors or unresolved trauma.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Trauma, Dreams and the Healing Power of Somatic Experiencing

Many people, who know about mind-body psychotherapy, know that Somatic Experiencing is one of the most effective and safest ways to work through traumatic memories. But not everyone knows that Somatic Experiencing is also a very effective form of therapy for doing dreamwork on traumatic dreams.

Trauma, Dreams and the Healing Power of Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing and Dream Work

Usually, when we tell our dreams, we give the narrative and we skim the surface of the emotional content of the dream. Even when I've worked psychoanalytically with dreams, which was my original training, dreams came alive and clients felt healed, but dreams tended to get reduced to various associations related to clients' histories. 

But using Somatic Experiencing to work through dreams related to trauma, we work the dreams using emotional resources that were not part of the original dream. Rather than reducing dreams to certain limited associations, we reenter the dream using the mind-body connection in a resourceful way and we expand the possibilities for reworking the dream to heal the trauma.

Somatic Experiencing as Gentle Therapeutic Treatment for Trauma 

Somatic Experiencing is a gentle therapeutic treatment modality developed by Peter Levine, Ph.D. 

Whether the therapist is working on a traumatic memory or a dream related to the trauma, Somatic Experiencing emphasizes the need for the client to work through the trauma with emotional resources that s/he probably didn't have during the trauma event or in the nightmare about the trauma. 

Rather than going directly to the worst part of the trauma memory or the nightmare (called T-0), Somatic Experiencing starts gently with a more benign part, working its way to T-0 with the emotional resources that were missing before.

What do I mean by this? 

Well, for example, even though we know what actually happened during the traumatic event or in the nightmare and we're not trying to pretend that anything different occurred, working the memory or dream slowly and feeling your emotions in the body in a tolerable way, we experience what it might have been like to have had the emotional resources we needed and didn't have. 

And we experience this in the here-and-now. For instance, what might it have been like to have a trusted loved one, mentor or pet there? Is there something different you would have liked to do in this memory or dream?

You might ask: What good is that going to do if that's not the way it happened? 

The answer is, surprisingly, that when you tell your dream or memory in the present tense, but this time experiencing the narrative with emotional resources you needed at the time, you create a new symbolic memory for yourself and this is healing. 

Of course, you still know what actually happened, but your mind and body experience the healing AS IF it happened the way the dream or memory occurred with these much-needed resources.

I have found Somatic Experiencing to be a gentle, effective and nuanced way of helping clients work through traumatic memories and nightmares.

To Find Out More About Somatic Experiencing
To find out more about Somatic Experiencing, you can read Peter Levine's latest book, In an Unspoken Voice, and his earlier book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist. 

I work with individual adults and couples.   

Somatic Experiencing, clinical hypnosis, and EMDR are among the treatment modalities that I use in working with individuals and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Embodied Imagination Dreamwork

In my prior blog post, Dream Incubation: Planting Seeds, I discussed Robert Bosnak's Embodied Imagination dream incubation technique. As I mentioned, Embodied Imagination dream incubations are performed by psychotherapists or dreamworkers who have been trained in this technique as a way of helping to "plant seeds" in the dreamer's unconscious mind to work on areas that are important to the dreamer.

Embodied Imagination Dreamwork

These areas might include: health issues, creative blocks, relationship issues, career decisions, or any other areas of a person's life that are meaningful to him or her. Dream incubations have also been used to help actors with their roles.

In the fictionalized account from the last blog post, Donna's therapist assisted her to come up with a composite of the images, physical sensations, and emotions associated with her desire to overcome her creative block and increase her motivation to do her artwork. This composite consisted of the various trigger points in her body, and her therapist used these trigger points to help incubate a dream for Donna to overcome her creative block.

The following scenario is a continuation of the fictionalized account about Donna's incubation:

Donna spent a few minutes focusing on the trigger points related to her dream incubation every night, as her therapist suggested. Although Donna was aware that everyone has, on average, 4-6 dreams every night, during the first three days, Donna couldn't remember any dreams.

Embodied Imagination Dreamwork

But on the fourth day, she had a dream that she wrote down immediately upon waking up so she wouldn't forget it. She remembered that her therapist told her that it was very important to write the dream in the present tense. When she saw her therapist again, she recounted the following dream:

I'm in a coffee shop seated by myself. I notice an old friend, Nina, that I haven't seen in at least 10 years. I walk over to where she is. She's delighed to see me. We chat and get caught up with each other. The scene changes: Later on, I'm standing in the corridor of an apartment building. Somehow, I can see through the wall into Nina's apartment. I see her getting ready to go out to see an old boyfriend. Somehow, I know that she wants to get him back again. She's sitting in front of her dresser mirror and putting on makeup. I can only see her in the dresser mirror because she has her back to me. I notice how determined she looks. Her eyes are very intense. She is very focused on looking "just so" because she wants her date to go well.

According to the Embodied Imagination technique, Donna's therapist listened carefully to the dream and tuned into what resonated for her in the dream. Then, she asked Donna to tell the dream a second time in the present tense. Then, the therapist asked Donna for any associations to the dream. Donna responded by saying that she has always admired Nina for being someone who is very determined to get what she wants. Donna said that, in reality, Nina isn't as manipulative or as calculating as she came across in the dream. The dream presented Nina's determination in an exaggerated way.

Donna's therapist helped Donna to get into a waking hypnogagic state so that she could reenter the dream state. As previously mentioned in prior blog posts, Embodied Imagination is not about dream interpretation or dream analysis. The therapist started by helping Donna to feel the physical environment in the coffee shop. Once Donna resonated with the physical environment, she told her therapist what she noticed in the dream when she saw Nina, what emotions she felt, and where she felt them in the body. All the while, Donna was able to maintain a dual awareness of the here-and-now as well as the dream state.

Then, the therapist helped Donna to "transit" into the Nina character from the dream. She did this by, at first, having Donna descrbe how she felt about Nina and what she noticed in detail. As Donna got closer and closer to Nina's experience, at a certain point, the therapist asked Donna to allow herself to be "embodied" by the Nina character. She asked her to look through Nina's eyes, while, at the same time, maintaining an awareness of herself in the dream.

Donna was amazed at how much she was able to get from taking on the dream character, Nina's perspective. She felt Nina's determination through the energy in the eyes and the torso. She experienced it as an energy that started from just below her navel and came up through her body and out through the top of her head. She even felt the warmth of the energy as it circulated through her body.

Towards the end of the dreamwork, the therapist helped Donna to feel a composite of all the trigger points from her own dream character as well as Nina's trigger points. Donna had a strong felt sense of the images, physical sensations, and emotions from the dream. Her therapist helped her to blend together all of these trigger points to give Donna an integrated experience of the dream.

After they worked the dream, the therapist suggested that Donna use the composite, including the energy and determination of the Nina dream character, to overcome her creative block. She encouraged Donna to spend at least a few minutes every day practicing experiencing the composite of the trigger points in her body.

Over the next few weeks, Donna practiced experiencing the trigger points in her body.

Embodied Imagination Dreamwork

Whereas before, she had problems motivating herself to do her artwork, when she immersed herself in the trigger points from the dream, she felt renewed energy and vitality. Soon, she was able to return to her artwork with the passion that she had felt before.

Embodied Imagination dreamwork is not magic. It works best if you're working on something that is really meaningful to you.

To find out more about Embodied Imagination, visit their website: http://www.cyberdreamwork.com.

I am a New York City licensed psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR therapist, and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I also enjoy using Embodied Imagination incubations and dreamwork.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.