|
|
|
Changing the ending
|
|
You are allowed to write a different ending while you are awake. Sleep clinics have people do exactly that, on paper, in daylight, and then picture the new version for a few minutes a day, and the old dream comes less often.
|
|
It sounds far too simple to work, which is what I thought, though it is the first thing the guidelines recommend and it has held up across trials in people whose nightmares came from something that happened and people whose did not.
|
|
The rule people are given is to change the dream well before the frightening part, because rewriting the worst moment means going back into it, while changing an earlier turn takes the dream somewhere else entirely.
|
|
|
You are not arguing with the dream, then, only giving it another road to take, and the new version does not have to be good, it only has to be yours.
|
|
|
|
When to hand it on
|
|
If they come most nights, or if they began after something happened to you, please take this to a doctor rather than to a newsletter, because what they will teach you is the same method with somebody sitting beside you while you do it.
|
|
That is not me passing you along, since I would rather you had the good version of this than my version, and the good version exists and is not hard to ask for.
|
|
If you are dreading bed tonight and have nobody to say so to, write to me, and I will point you at something better than a symbol.
|
|
|
✦ WRITE BACK
|
|
Two things make a bad dream stay with you, the story and the hour it wakes you, and I would like to know which is worse in yours.
|
|
TELL ME WHICH ONE
|
|
|
|
I have written back to her with all of this, and she has agreed to try it for a fortnight, and I will tell you how she gets on if she lets me.
|
| Sleep well, |
| Dream Signs |
|
|
|
P.S. She said one thing at the end that I keep thinking about, which is that in the dream she never once shouts, and that awake she is the loudest person in her family. Tell me how yours ends. She is going to try shouting.
|
|
