Quote:"The out come is always the same" I have these, in my case it doesn't matter how they start they always trigger a trigger within. In other words they always open memory to what memory thinks is the answer to the trigger. In my case since they can vary so much how they start and since they are going to trigger the same conclusion it is the conclusion I have to change only. Mine are always exaggerated claustrophobia. Things from my past but pieced together in such a way that they are worse than they were. One is being under a truck and I can't get out. It is pieced together from two incidents. One is from when a jack slipped and I got hit by a fender changing a tire. I was wedged under the fender for a couple of seconds is all. Now add to it being under a truck with lots of room welding on it, and just use the worst parts. Being under a truck and being wedged under it. The end is always that I am stuck. Second trigger. The first is always being tangled in blankets or crowded by a cat. So the first trigger is that I can't move and the second is possible reasons why I can't since I'm dreaming and don't know it is only the blankets. There may well be another trigger that triggers these. It might be a harmless recollection even of something pleasant. But that pleasant recollection may have a remote connection to something that is not. This is where for me "that could never happen" or "I would never do that" breaks the cycle. It doesn't stop the shaking but it allows me time to add the visualization so I think about something more acceptable and leave the bad dream behind. Over time I have got so I can usually skip right to the visualization right after the first trigger. If it doesn't work because of medication induced panic or as happens sometimes it is food related I will add more than one possibility visualization. This would only be necessary with a very bad panic attack from the dream and I might get two of them a year if at all. This gives me more than one option in memory and will in time block the usual bad outcome thought. After all if you always have the same outcome and it is only one them having more than one possible good outcome will push the bad one aside. You have to concentrate on good outcomes rather than the fear that you will have the bad one or you will. Fear is rather like calling it, asking it to be there. There is no magic here, it is repetition and conditioning. But that is changing thought patterns. This is CBT in that you are changing both the behavioural (tendency to fear) and cognitive.  (thought, vision) It is a dream and not real so there is nothing to fear but fear.

This works for me and is just information in the form of experience.

Davit.

Davit

Sorry to hear about the nightmare. That sounds like a scary dream!