A child’s innocent mind can be easily convinced their nightmares are utterly real and that they are helpless against these bad dreams. Recurring nightmares, which is defined by Psychology Today as a “series of nightmares with a recurring theme,” can be very distressing, especially for children. The nightmares may sow seeds of extreme fear into their fertile mind, making them feel helpless, scared, and screaming and/or running in the middle of the night to escape what’s chasing them.

How can you help your child overcome their fear for recurring nightmares? How can you make them realize that the “dream monster” is not for real, so that there’s no reason to fear it?

The Dreadful Fear Response

When children have bad dreams and feel fear, their bodies go into the fear mode, which is akin to “fight and flight” response. The adrenaline rush will cause the typical fear response, such as elevated heart rate, cold sweat, and stiffening of the muscles; these make them unable to move or shout.

The experience can be very unpleasant. For a child, the fear response can be worse than the nightmare itself. The fear can be so intense they will be extremely wary of nighttime and fearful of sleeping. This will likely cause your child to lose sleep, which is critical to their proper development. You wouldn’t want your child’s physical and psychological health to suffer – this is why you must empower your child to face and be nor afraid of recurring dreams.

Helping Them Understand Their Bad Dreams

Being fairly transparent, understanding your child’s recurrent nightmares could be easy for you, especially with a little help from a child therapist or counselor. Making your child understand the role that their emotions (anger, anxiety, distress, disappointment, etc.) play to have bad dreams, however, may not be easy, especially for young ones.

To empower your child, they need to grasp that they are the ones who create their bad dreams. This is where a child therapist can help. The therapist can help empower them with certain techniques to help see their dreams with a different eye, or at least realize them as “unreal.”

The Empowering Therapist

You can stop your child screaming and running into your room night after night by empowering them. If you are a young parent without much experience about children with recurrent nightmares, know that you can find an empowering therapist in Carolina Counseling Services – Fuquay-Varina, NC. A therapist independently contracted by Carolina Counseling Services can help your child understand how they can change their dream, which they are “authoring” themselves.

With the help of the therapist, you and your empowered child may discover how to connect their unpleasant dreams with the events and their feelings from the previous day. With that, they can sleep and dream, and know that it is just that – a dream.

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• Pediatric Insomnia: What You Need to Know About it
• Pediatric Insomnia: Reading This Sign of Emotional Issues
• Recurring Nightmare – Empowering You Child and Yourself
• A Second Look at Insomnia in Children: Because Child Sleep Matters
• Children’s Nightmares: What Can You Do to Help Your Child?