It was late, and Sonia was alone in an unfamiliar town, trying to find her way home. The map showed a route through a dark forest lit by an occasional lantern. She viewed it with foreboding but, seeing other people also using this passage, took it. Walking fast, she neared a couple ahead of her—a man and a woman—who suddenly stopped, turned and grabbed her. The man covered her face with a cloth. She found herself on a stage with a ceiling spanned by a mirror. A crowd of men armed with guns and knives encircled her; she was about to be tortured and killed. Sonia picked up a stone and threw it at the ceiling, which shattered. Pieces of glass rained down, piercing her shoulder and foot. She fled into the forest, pursued by the couple, who could read each other’s minds. The woman saw where Sonia was running and informed the man—Sonia knew she would be hunted down.
This nightmare and similar ones disturbed Sonia’s sleep about twice a week for months. (Her real name has been withheld for privacy.) Those awful nights left her sleepy, irritable and emotionally spent—symptoms of nightmare disorder. The condition can occur by itself or alongside deeper issues such as post-traumatic stress or anxiety disorders. Sleep specialists at the Geneva University Hospitals prescribed “imagery rehearsal” therapy. Sonia was to create a positive ending for a bad dream and practice it daily. A fresh take on a dream tends to carry over into sleep, reducing the frequency of nightmares.
But the trick doesn’t always work, so Sonia joined a study to test an embellished version of it. The trial leveraged sleep’s power to fortify memories—in this instance, the new dream narrative. For five minutes each evening over two weeks, Sonia relaxed in a quiet space at home and imagined that the route through the forest led to a door that opened onto a bright, colorful field that felt safe. While she and 17 other people with nightmare disorder rehearsed their new storylines, they listened…
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