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Dr. Monson CPT does improve people's sleep as well as nightmares,
and the thought is that once you can actually help someone process the trauma and put it back in perspective,
create a story that makes more sense and more balance, then it's not going to come up in your sleep,
and you're going to be able to be less generally stressed and anxious as a result of the treatment.
Dr. Yoder PE really helps with sleep and nightmare problems,
one of the most common symptoms that my patients tell me about is difficulty sleeping at night, and having nightmares.
What happens then is that a person will actually do a lot of avoidance behaviors at night that actually make the sleep problems worse.
For example, every little noise is labeled as dangerous sometimes at night, so people get up and check.
Well, when you get up and check, you're moving around, you're getting yourself going, and it makes it hard to fall back asleep.
So there's a lot of avoidance behaviors that happen at night that make sleep a lot harder.
As we treat avoidance using PE, those sleep problems get better.
Mr. Beasley I have other Veterans who've done Prolonged Exposure who are still having nightmares several times a week.
I think the difference that's important is that those Veterans, or those clients,
are also telling me they're not as bothered by them because now they understand what it's about.
And so yes, they used to have a nightmare but it would wake them up and they would be up the rest of the night.
Now they have a nightmare, it bugs them, but they go back to bed within 15-20 minutes.
Dr. Rogers We see a lot of change in the content of dreams after EMDR sessions,
so they may have had the same dream over and over again for years and years,
now they're getting something new, and sometimes people report that the nightmares are stopping completely.