DREAMS

several nights a week Joseph woke up screaming from the same terrible dream. Joseph could never recall his whole dream, though. He only remembered that someone was running after him. Joseph was trying to get away, but in his dream he could not move. He continued having this nightmare for months. He was so tired in the morning that it was hard for him to go to work. Joseph, you see, is not a frightened child, but a grown man.

Milton Kramer is a psychiatrist and dream researcher in Cincinnati, Ohio. He believes that it's very important that people don't ignore their dreams, because they are messages from our sleeping minds. When Kramer studied dreams and dreamers, he found that people wake up feeling very discouraged after they have a bad dream. He also found that after having a good dream, people feel more optimistic. Clearly, dreams can have harmful or beneficial effects. As a result, Kramer believes that we need to learn how to change our bad dreams. When we understand what happened in our dreams, we can change negative, hurtful dreams to positive, helpful ones.

Before we can begin to change a nightmare, however, we first have to remember that happened in our dream. Researchers say there are many ways to do this. We can keep a journal or diary of what we do when we are awake. Then, before going to sleep, we can review our day. This practice helps us connect our dreams with daily life. As we begin to fall asleep, we should remind ourselves that we want to remember our dreams. This reminder helps us to stay in charge. When we wake up, we should lie still while we try to remember our dream. Dream researchers say that by staying in the same sleeping position, we are more likely to recall (remember) the dream. We should also try to remember an important word or picture from the dream. This image makes the rest of the dream easier to remember. Finally, if we have trouble remembering dreams, we can try sleeping later. The longer we sleep, the longer and more complex our dreams will be.

Dr. Rosalind Cartwright is a dream researcher, too. She has developed another dream therapy for changing dreams. According to Dr. Cartwright, dream therapy involves four simple steps you can learn on your own. The first step is to recognize when you are having a bad dream that will make you feel helpless or upset the next morning. The second step is to identify what it is about the dream that makes you feel bad - for example, weak instead of strong, or out of control instead of in control. Next, stop any bad dream. You don't have to continue your bad dream, because you are in charge. The last step is to change the negative part of the dream. Sometimes you may have to wake yourself up and change the dream before you return to sleep. Other times it's possible to change the dream while you are still asleep. By using dream therapy, Joseph was able to change his nightmares. Gradually, his bad dreams stopped altogether. He began having more positive dreams and woke up feeling refreshed and cheerful. A night of good dreaming can leave us all in a better mood in the morning. We feel well rested and more optimistic. Stopping a nightmare and changing it to a positive dream experience can be physically and psychologically beneficial to us all.