Nightmares arise from a failure in the dream works. Our primitive driving forces and anxieties are not handled effectively by the dream works, and these express themselves as horrible feelings in our dreams. When we wake up, we are anxious and fearful about the dream we have just had. Nightmares are called ‘dream anxiety attacks’. Recurrent nightmares are recurring bad dreams.

If you wake up from a nightmare, the best thing to do is to say to yourself, ‘Thank God, it is only a dream’, relax, and fall back into sleep. Nightmares, like any other dreams, will be forgotten in the morning. Recurring nightmares happen because you believe that there is some bad message in the dream and, because you keep thinking about it, you remember it. Once it is recalled and repeated in your memory again and again, it will certainly appear in your dream night after night Next time, if you wake up from any nightmare, do not go over it If you cannot stop thinking about it, get out of bed immediately and get back to the real world; do something relaxing like watching the television or reading .the newspaper. Your nightmare will then vanish and will not reoccur. Incidentally, some modern medicines for blood pressure can cause nightmares. It may be wise to check with your doctor if the nightmares persist and if you are taking these medications.

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We often let our minds slip back, as it were, and let them work at a simpler stage of developement—at a more primitive level. This is regression. It happens quite normally in our moments of reverie and when we are in the transition between wakefulness and sleep. It also occurs as a result of fatigue or mental illness or drugs or even alcohol. Essential features of regression are that we are less alert and that the critical faculties of our mind are less active. Regression to this kind of more primitive functioning of the mind is an important part of our relaxing mental exercises.

Let us for a moment consider anxiety from the evolutionary point of view. We have already learned enough about it to realize that it is a very complex state. Fear, on the other hand, is a much simpler emotion. We can see animals expressing fear, but it is hard to imagine that animals experience anxiety as we know it. The emotion with its attendant apprehension is too complex for their state of development. In other words, anxiety is a relatively recently acquired function of the mind—something that our prehuman primitive ancestors did not experience. In regression the mind goes back to a simple, primitive way of functioning in which there is an absence of anxiety. This is seen in our everyday experience. In moments of reverie and complete mental relaxation our mind fills with calm, and there is an absence of any feeling of anxiety.

We have discussed the way in which we learn various patterns of response during our life. Now, if we want to learn a new and better response to a certain situation, it is necessary that we first unlearn the old pattern of response. We cannot simply add some new response to the old pattern, or we should develop some quite incongruous reaction. We cannot learn a new habit without first dropping the old one. In other words, before learning a new pattern of response we must first regress, and go back in our mind to the state before the development of the bad pattern of response. In our relaxing mental exercises we do this. We regress to a state of mind free from anxiety, and we are then free to learn the new pattern of calm and ease of mind.

This is the basic reason why explanation and persuasion are generally quite ineffective in helping those with tension. These are logical measures and work at an intellectual level; and they do not allow for the regression which is so necessary. As a result the patient can see the logic of what is explained to him, and he would like to do what we try to persuade him; but he cannot. He just remains as tense and anxious as ever because the all-important regression has been omitted.

In other relaxing techniques which are successful and in which the idea of regression is not actually mentioned, we can safely assume that regression occurs spontaneously without the patient’s knowledge.

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