What I'm going to teach you over the next five minutes is a simple and practical technique to help solve the problem of nightmares and night terrors which can include lashing out, shouting and other sleep disturbances. Any of which can lead to an intense fear of going to sleep. It's a technique that helps promote peaceful sleep, doesn't involve dredging up the past. And best of all is something that you can start doing yourself tonight. Since 2013 I've been using this tool to help people from all walks of life, including military veterans with PTSD. And I've seen many times how fixing the nightmares first unlocks a natural healing process that helps to resolve the impact of trauma from the inside out. Here's how it works. Even though we don't always remember our dreams, they happen every night. Under normal circumstances, dreaming acts like overnight therapy. As wacky and weird as they can be, they offer us the chance to work through difficult emotions and process our traumatic experiences from the safety of our beds. So that in the morning we can start again fresh. Nightmares happen when that natural healing process gets interrupted. Either because the brain runs out of new ideas and doesn't know how to move on, or because the dream becomes so intense it wakes us up. If this is happening to you, then I can tell you that you're not alone. Nightmares don't discriminate. They don't care how tough you are, smart you are, or what you do for a living. Around one in 20 people get them, and if you've experienced trauma, it's more like nine out of ten, with the nightmare often feeling like a replay of the original trauma. The first thing I want you to remember is that you have power over your dreams and the kind of sleep you experience. Even if your nightmare is about something from real life, however awful that event is in the past. What's happening in your sleep is just a dream. Most importantly, it's your dream, you're in charge. So it's okay for you to decide to change what happens, and there is nothing to fear in your dream. I want you to think about your most recent nightmare or your last bad sleep experience. You don't have to analyse what it means or relive the whole thing. Just think about the point when you woke up, and what you'd want to have happen next in the dream that feels good. Take some time on this. What we are looking for is a new direction for the dream to take, something brief and simple and just as powerful as the nightmare. Something to kickstart the dream, to remind your mind that it's okay to stay asleep through any dream. Or, if you don't remember your nightmares, something you could be doing that would help get rid of the unpleasant feeling or sensation you wake up with so that all important healing process can complete its work. Here is the second thing I want you to remember. Whilst they may feel very real to you, dreams don't follow the same rules as real life. So, your imagined solution doesn't need to be moral or peaceful or something that could happen in reality. Perhaps your solution might be a way to gain complete power and control within the context of the dream or it can be something that seems totally unrelated. It can violate the laws of physics, be surreal or feature fictional characters. It can be violent, it can be pure fantasy, or even a little bit silly. You don't have to defend it or explain it to anyone, and if you find that it doesn't work for you right away, don't give up. Because you can replace it the next night with something that will. Whatever new idea you decide to put on your dream shelf, it should ring true to you at a gut level, or something positive, something that is at least as strong as the worst part of your nightmare. Like a powerful memory from your past, the stronger the feeling, the more it will propel your idea into the dream. Write down your solution, and just before you go to sleep, read it, imagine it, and think. This is what I want to happen in my dream. It sounds simple, but there is a lot of evidence to show that it works, and that by starting tonight you can see immediate improvements, or even have the best night sleep you've had in a long, long time. You