Being eaten by a shark, being suffocated with no way out… These nightmares, when they return regularly with violent or near-death scenes, can become problematic.
6% of the French adults are touched by the maladie des cauchemars, c’est-à-dire qu’ils voient ces mauvais rêves devenir récurrents et ils “altèrent la qualité de vie”, précise sur BFMTV Agnès Brion, médecin psychiatre et spécialiste des sleep disorders. They can cause anxiety, insomnia and even depression.
A technique used since November 13
To overcome this, therapy by replaying mental images has been proposed by physicians for several years. This technique, implemented in the United States in the 1990s, began to be practiced in France, at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, after the attacks on November 13, 2015.
“What we propose is to make a mental imagery of these nightmares,” explains Marc Rey, president of the Sleep and Vigilance Institute.
A patient is made to write down his nightmare in the morning or when he wakes up in the middle of the night, then “re-read the nightmare at night and change a number of aspects to create another story.”
This technique is based on the principle that “we incorporate the events of our life into our dreams […] and learn what we do”, continues Agnès Brion. The repetition of mental images allows “learning beautiful dreams” and then repeating them appealing to “all sensory aspects”.
According to Agnès Brion, the positive consequences can be perceived “in a few weeks”. But the therapy, “like all therapies,” doesn’t work for everyone, the psychiatrist warns. “It’s considered to be more effective than drugs that target nightmares,” she adds.
While they can become problematic when repeated, nightmares generally help “digest” negative emotional memories.
Source: BFM TV
