Guiding Your Sleep While You're Awake

Author: Sarah Kershaw

Publication Name: The New York Times

Date of Publication: July 26, 2010

Summary: In the article, “Guiding Your Sleep While You’re Awake,” the author writes about nightmares. Normally, when a person has an extremely vivid nightmare from a traumatic experience, over time, the nightmares lessen and the person is naturally able to overcome these nightmares. However, in some cases, people are not able to naturally overcome the nightmares and are then helped by therapists who have invented behavioral techniques to lessen these nightmares.

Some example techniques to help people overcome their nightmares are the following: lucid dreaming, where a patient is taught to know that they are in a dream while in a nightmare; vivo desensitization, in which the patient is faced with their nightmare while awake to overcome it before they sleep; and a more recent technique known as dream incubation, which was first studied during the 1990s by a psychologist at Harvard Medical School.

According to the link that corresponds to this article about dream incubation, “Approximately half of the subjects recalled a dream which they felt was related to the problem. Seventy percent of these believed their dream contained a solution to the problem” (Barrett). The results show that many people, after continuing to practice the methods, could guide themselves as they dream. Not only that, these conclusions had similar results as earlier researchers have had (Wile, 1934; Wollmering, 1978).

The article continues on about the different therapy that is available for those suffering incessant nightmares. These therapies give a new light to those that are suffering from nightmares due to an experience they wish to forget, or something that scares them in general.

Links to Study: Dream Incubation

Article: Guiding Your Sleep While You're Awake

Submitted by Julia Wong