5 tips for restless sleep: This is how you can identify your nightmares

“Alcohol triggers nightmares,” says Albrecht Vorster (38), sleep researcher at Inselspital Bern. He recommends that people who wake up frequently at night due to unpleasant dreams should avoid alcohol for three weeks. “In many cases this can lead to improvement of the condition.” Alcohol disrupts our natural sleep rhythm. It causes the muscles in our airways to relax, which means we snore more. If there are short pauses in breathing, we continue to alternate between deep and light sleep. This causes more restless sleep.

“If we have rituals before we go to sleep, it gives us safety and security,” Vorster says. “We feel like everything is going as planned” Even simple habits like brushing your teeth, ventilating or reading a book help you relax and unwind in the evening. This also reduces the likelihood of having nightmares at night.

Nightmares are frequently recurring. These aren’t always the same, Vorster says. “But the same motifs appear again and again.” He recommends writing down in detail the nightmare you keep having. In the second step, you rewrite it and give it a happy ending. You read and repeat this new version of the nightmare over and over while awake, until after a few weeks you internalize it. Vorster: “You can reinterpret dreams this way.” In sleep research, this method is called “Visual Rehearsal Therapy” (IRT). «The results are generally very good. At some point we can’t stop ourselves from imagining the nightmare in the new version. Only then will it no longer be a nightmare.”

According to Vorster, the fourth factor for deep and uninterrupted sleep is adequate sleep pressure. This means you need to be awake long enough (about twelve hours, according to Vorster) before going to bed. A siesta like in Spain, where many people take a long afternoon nap, is not an obstacle for those who do not have sleep problems, on the contrary: “I recommend that people who often have nightmares avoid naps or afternoon naps.”

We all have nightmares. However, thanks to them, we only become aware of it when we wake up. This happens more slowly when we sleep at regular hours, Vorster says. If you are having nightmares, you should first analyze your sleeping habits. A logbook in which affected people write down what time they went to bed in the evening and woke up in the morning every day for two weeks may be useful. Then it’s about changing your habits. “In two-thirds of cases, nightmares can be reduced by regular bedtimes.”