Researchers Rewrite Nightmares of PTSD Patients

It's not just rewriting their dreams, they need to rewrite their memories. If they only hold onto the moments of terror, they don't see it all, remember what they were feeling before it happened and above all, what was their intention when they had to kill.

Most of the time when veterans contact me, they are focused on the image of the death of someone. While PTSD can strike without involving killing someone, it is the deepest cut of all. A young National Guardsman came back with such horrible memories that dealing with physical wounds was too much for him to begin to deal with. He lost his wife, custody of his two young children, disconnected from his family, lost his home and was couch homeless staying with friends and tried to commit suicide twice by the time I was contacted by his Mom.

His Mom didn't know what PTSD was or why he acted the way he did. It turned out that he didn't either. After building up the level of trust over a series of phone calls, he told me about the worst haunting event he had. While in Iraq, he was part of a convoy. A car was coming too close. He knew that many other cars had done the same thing to others but ended up blowing them up. He thru rocks at the car. He shouted. He fired warning shots in the air all the time praying they would stop, back off, anything to avoid having to do what he eventually had to do. He began to fire at the car. It was a family inside. The rest of what happened was edited by his memory. He was only remembering the bodies in the car and the fact he shot them.

He didn't remember what he tried to do before it in order to prevent it. He didn't remember that his prayers were begging God to get the driver to stop. He didn't remember the rocks or the warning shots in the air when he was haunted by what happened. That was not until the whole movie was allowed to play in his mind. Then he was able to make peace with that part of his story. No longer haunted by it, he began to heal. He just needed to remember that the history of events such as what he went through did not turn out to be innocent people in a car, but terrorists trying to blow up soldiers.

That's the problem with doing this kind of healing. This kind of healing does not get funded because it doesn't need medication after the chemicals in the brain are leveled off again. It doesn't take years and years of therapy session as long as it's done close, or as close as possible to the events. It doesn't cost millions of dollars. It just takes understanding what all humans do to themselves.

This even works on chronic PTSD veterans. The longer PTSD goes on un-addressed, the less PTSD can be reversed. Even with Vietnam veterans, after 40 years of being haunted, some of it can still be reversed but medications are usually still necessary and so is therapy to keep them stabilized.

With what we know about PTSD, had this been available when Vietnam veterans came home, most would have been healed. Marriages would have been saved and so many homeless veterans walking the streets wouldn't have happened if families knew how to help them. Suicides wouldn't have claimed so many lives and no veteran would ever reach the point of such despair they would need to call the suicide prevention hot line. The problem is, the DOD won't listen, the VA won't listen and congress won't fund something like this. Foundations and charities won't fund it. People won't donate to fund it. The best way to heal PTSD is to get them to the point where they can find peace within themselves. Peace with what happened so they can forgive themselves and peace with God so they know He understood what happened and why it happened.

If you want to see what a flashback looks like, here's one of my videos from a couple of years ago. If we really want to help them then we need to stop doing what has not worked and start to do what has.

'Inception' in Real Life? Researchers Rewrite Nightmares of PTSD Patients
Dreamers Can Incubate Their Own Narratives to End the Terror, Say Sleep Experts

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
Aug. 2, 2010


Post Traumatic Stress Patients Rescript Their Dreams

While they are awake, patients take a few minutes to create a new dream script. He asks one of his patients to change a demonic black racing car with giant eyeballs to a white Cadillac with bubbles, gently tooling along.

His studies show that this new cognitive therapy can help reduce the frequency and intensity of nightmares and perhaps even end them altogether.

Krakow's PTSD research has implications on all people with sleep disorders. In studies of more than 1,000 patients with post-traumatic stress symptoms, he found 5 to 10 other sleep problems may be involved, including high rates of sleep apnea.

"There's a connection a lot of people are missing in the complexity of PTSD sleep disturbance," said Krakow. "Everybody thinks these kinds of people have psychological issues. What we learned is there is a tremendous physiological component."

"What is being missed by many people is breathing disorders or sleep movement disorders all run together," he said. "It's not one thing."

Sleep disorders are serious business, according to Krakow. Those with nightmares can "actually act out their dreams and move around and hurt somebody."

Such is the case with Gotcher, who said her brain "feels like it's in a war, even in a conscious state."
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Researchers Rewrite Nightmares of PTSD Patients

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