What If Your Nightmares Are Trying to Help You?

Your Trauma Therapist by Lauren Auer, LCPC is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For more content follow me on Instagram.

If you’ve ever woken up from a nightmare drenched in sweat, heart pounding, absolutely certain you were back in the worst moment of your life, you know how disorienting it is. And if you’ve been dealing with this for months or years, you’ve probably tried everything you can think of to make it stop. Staying busy. Not thinking about it. Keeping yourself so exhausted by the end of the day that maybe, just maybe, you’ll sleep without dreaming.

I want to talk about why that strategy tends to backfire, because it’s not about willpower or weakness. It’s about how the brain handles experiences it hasn’t been able to file away yet.

What trauma does to memory

Most memories get processed and stored over time. Something happens, you think about it, it integrates into your understanding of your life, and eventually it settles. You can recall it without being swallowed by it.