Posted by Elizabeth on February 25, 1999, at 17:02:20
In reply to Re: A dream journal technique that worked for me, posted by Victoria on February 20, 1999, at 17:30:29
> I rarely remember dreams, on or off medication. I recently tried a journalling technique that was amazingly effective, to my surprise, in generating vivid and useful dreams. The idea is to start up a dialogue with your dreams by choosing one problem or issue and asking your dreams to "comment" on it. You do this by, just before you go to sleep, writing a brief (1-2 sentence) statement of the problem or issue and then writing a one-sentence question about the issue to your dreams. It sounded a bit hoky to me, but I gave it a try. Nothing happened the first night, but the second night I had a very powerful dream (which unfortunately woke me in the middle of the night: not good for my insomnia). The dream has been very useful in therapy, but was so powerful and painful that I haven't repeated the technique since (and I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a supportive situation in which to deal with what dreams may come). But I've remembered a couple of other useful dreams since (without the technique or waking at night). There's no way of telling if it will work for anyone else, but that was my experience.
I like this idea...I'll try it.
I did have an interesting experience with Xanax: a sort of rebound at the end of the night allowed me to remember a dream with some clarity. Unfortunately, Xanax only worked very well (middle/terminal insomnia) for that one night!
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:2935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990201/msgs/3235.html