Customer Reviews

Nightmare Help

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This book helps a child learn to defend and empower herself. Instead of being the victim of the dream, she can use her day mind to negotiate with the fears of the night mind. Instead of changing the subject or creating a fantasy solution,this book helps children confront their fears and envision workable resolutions, to better understand the position the dream has put them in, and the message to be gained from the dream. I have not seen any other book that really helps as well as this book does. Just reading the dreams in the book will show your child that he or she is not the only one that has such frightening dreams. I invited this author to my child's preschool to do a workshop with the children, some of whom were having trouble with nightmares and they really responded to the methods outlined in this book. Also, you don't have to be a therapist to understand how to help your child!

Overall, the book borders on genius for its simplicity.
It includes two of the most thoughtfully profound and literarily expressed sentences I've come across in years; ". . . our projections are the limitation of our understanding. ... [W]e each have our own answers, it is just a question of how to get at them." and they're back-to-back.
But the book unequivocally clarifies that interpreting a nightmare's meaning is not necessary to getting relief.
Instead, relief can often, in the writer's observational experience, be obtained through a describe-and-share process whereby the analysand visual re-creates his dream and the "guide" helps him describe and elucidate it.

My nine year old has been experienceing night terrors (they differ from nighmares in that he will get out of bed, move around the house, and even talk to you all while still locked in the dream)since he was four. We have tried a number of behavioral techniques to eliminate them or at least soften their effect, including talking through the dreams, with little or no sucess. We read this book together and he found the solution modeling VERY helpful. I'm convinced that the act of drawing a solution or a happier outcome for his dreams helps him carry them into his dreamtime. We originally obtained the book at our local library and look forward to having our own copy so that he can use the blank pages in the back to document some of his own sucesses.