How to get rid of nightmares - there is a scientific method

Every person has bad dreams from time to time.dreams. If they happen only from time to time, then this is quite normal. But sometimes people are literally haunted by nightmares that occur almost every night. The reasons for this can be very different, for example, poor-quality sleep associated with emotional experiences or even health problems. Also, nightmares often haunt people after severe psychological trauma. Since science still doesn't know why or how our brains create dreams, treating chronic nightmares remains quite a challenge. However, according to the latest research, you can get rid of this problem in a non-invasive way, that is, without drugs or any other interventions in the body. Only one piano chord can help.

Scientists have found an effective way to get rid of nightmares

Terrible dreams can be “rewritten”

It has long been known that there is a relationship between typesemotions that a person experiences in a dream, and his emotional well-being. Given this, Swiss scientists decided to influence the emotions in dreams by changing the emotional state in reality.

In fact, it has long beennon-invasive method based on this principle, which allows you to get rid of nightmares. It's called imagery rehearsal therapy. The essence of the method lies in the fact that patients write down their most frequent and painful nightmares on paper, but at the same time they themselves come up with a happy ending for them. They retell the rewritten history to themselves, that is, they “rehearse” in order to get rid of the nightmare.

To get rid of a nightmare, you need to rewrite the ending of the dream, making it positive

One study showed that this methodcan actually reduce the frequency and severity of nightmares. However, it does not help all patients. Therefore, scientists decided to find a way that would help get rid of bad dreams more effectively.

How to get rid of bad dreams with sounds

Back in 2010, scientists conducted an interestingexperiment - people were trained to associate sounds with a certain stimulus in a dream. This made it possible to improve the memory of this stimulus. In the new study, the researchers set out to increase the effectiveness of image rehearsal therapy by targeting memory reactivation, i.e., sounds that people would associate with a good ending to their sleep.

For their study, the authors of a recent workattracted 36 people who suffered from nightmares. For two weeks, they all wrote down their worst nightmare in a diary, and then came up with a happy ending for it. They retold the rewritten story to themselves, suggesting that the dream was actually positive.

The sound of a musical instrument can be associated with positive emotions in a dream.

Then the group of volunteers was divided into two parts,and one of them was given a session to associate the ending with a specific sound, namely, a C major chord on the piano to evoke a positive story. Both groups of people wore earphones at night, which played a C major chord every 10 seconds during the fast phase. Note that it is during the fast phase that people most often have nightmares.

The results of the experiment were evaluated after two weeks of non-invasive therapy, and then after three months. All this time, the participants of the experiment were not subjected to any additional treatment.

It may seem strange, but from nightmares there is not only harm to humans, but also benefits.

In the control group, who inspired themselvesa good ending to sleep without musical accompaniment, at the very beginning of the study, the number of nightmares was an average of 2.58 per week. People from the second group had nightmares on average 2.94 times a week. At the end of the study, the control group had nightmares 1.02 times per week, while the second group, which associated the good ending with the piano chord, had nightmares 0.19 times per week.

Participants in the experiment from the second group alsoreported that they had an increased number of positive dreams. Three months after the experiment, the number of nightmares increased in people from each group, but in the control group this figure was 1.48 nightmares per week, and in the second group - 0.33 nightmares per week. The researchers report this in the journal Current Biology.

After "sound therapy" people rarely began to visit nightmares

The effectiveness of the new method turned out to be sohigh that scientists themselves did not expect such a result. It has shown promise both for understanding how the brain forms emotions in sleep and for developing effective therapies. However, as we said above, nightmares in a dream can be associated with health problems. Therefore, sometimes it is important to eliminate not only bad dreams, but also the reason why they torment a person.

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Finally, we recall that music can not onlyeliminate nightmares, but also improve protection against dementia in old age, as we talked about earlier. True, we are talking about thoughtful listening to compositions.