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Dreams in Therapy: A Gateway to Emotional and Mental Healing

Cooper Dubuque CMHC • November 5, 2024

A powerful tool with many benefits for treatment

Dream analysis is often misunderstood or overlooked in therapy, but research shows it can be a powerful tool with many benefits for treatment. It can help clients gain self-awareness, engage more deeply in therapy, and address and explore core issues. It also can help foster a safe, trusting environment, helping therapists understand their clients better. Using dream analysis can provide a degree of separation that has even been used to support terminal cancer patients, helping them discuss difficult topics like health and mortality.

Dream analysis can also be particularly helpful for working with trauma and shares similarities to processes used in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Neuroscientists have found similarities between what happens during REM sleep and EMDR. During REM sleep, our brains process and consolidate memories, which is why we often feel better after a good night's sleep. In EMDR, eye movements replicate those in REM sleep, calming the brain and helping process traumatic memories. This makes these memories more accessible and connects emotional and episodic memories, helping them integrate better into our overall memory.

Using a symbolic approach in therapy, such as working with dreams and metaphors, can also create new neural pathways more effectively than literal communication. Exploring the symbolism and metaphors we encounter in dreams can reveal hidden parts of ourselves behind defense mechanisms and compensations for current conscious attitudes to help us better understand and process our deeper emotions and thoughts. This makes dream analysis a valuable tool in therapy; not only helpful in processing difficult emotions and memories but a way to strengthen a positive sense of self that enriches the therapeutic experience."

References:
Dream: Goelitz, A. Nurturing Life with Dreams: Therapeutic Dream Work with Cancer Patients. Clinical Social Work Journal 29, 375–385 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012219314370


Pesant, N., & Zadra, A. (2004). Working with dreams in therapy: what do we know and what should we do?. Clinical psychology review, 24(5), 489–512. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.05.002


Pagani M, Amann BL, Landin-Romero R and Carletto S (2017) Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Slow Wave Sleep: A Putative Mechanism of Action. Front. Psychol. 8:1935. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01935


Pagani, M., Di Lorenzo, G., Verardo, A. R., Nicolais, G., Monaco, L., Lauretti, G., et al. (2012). Neurobiological correlates of EMDR monitoring – An EEG study. PLOS ONE 7:e45753. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045753


By: Cooper Dubuque, CMHC, Pre-Licensed Psychotherapist 
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