PTSDreams: Transform Your Nightmares from Trauma through Healing Dreamwork

by Linda Yael Schiller

Nightmares, especially those caused by trauma, not only disrupt your sleep but can leave you exhausted and on edge, haunting your daylight hours. With in-depth information on the nature of nightmares, international speaker, author, and psychotherapist Linda Yael Schiller shows you how to turn anxiety-filled or heart-pounding dreams into resources for spiritual growth. Her four decades of experience in both dreamwork and trauma treatment provide the reader with guidelines for turning PTSDreams into Post Trauma Spiritual Growth. Therapists, counselors, medical professionals, and healers of all stripes, as well as the general public, are often woefully unprepared to deal with their own or their clients' nightmares. Dreamwork and connecting the dots between dreams, nightmares, and a trauma history simply isn't taught in most professional graduate schools. We do ourselves and clients a disservice if we don't have the tools and methods to bring relief from this suffering. PTSDreams offers these tools, informed by Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) methods, to provide safe, non-triggering work and a Jungian active imagination approach that allows us to re-enter these dreams safely. This way, we can rework the dreams, resource the dreamer, and bring healing to both the nightmare and the root cause of the trauma. When unaddressed, these dark dreams can follow us around in other forms, sneaking in through the cracks and fissures of our consciousness until they are finally faced, comforted, and healed. As Jungian analyst Dr. Yorum Kaufman taught, an inability to find a place for these memories keeps us shackled to a constrained, Sisyphean world whereby our movement into the future is thwarted by these "forgotten" memories that keep pushing us back down the hill. While retrieving these memories is a psychological issue, learning to live with what we remember is a spiritual process. Who can benefit from addressing their nightmares? Victims of violence, refugees, veterans, childhood abuse survivors, victims of bullying and gender or racial violence, anyone with shattered or disrupted lives. Trauma can be personal, familial, ancestral, global, and environmental. Both current and historical trauma and stress can benefit from this healing work. Linda's technique is also being used internationally to help war trauma survivors. Armed with effective techniques and Linda's warm compassionate voice, you can learn to safely heal post-traumatic nightmares and their root causes. She teaches the Guided Active Imagination Approach (GAIA), a method she developed based on best-practice trauma treatment and Jungian active imagination principles. Through compelling case descriptions and thoughtful exercises, you will learn how to apply a multiplicity of integrated and embodied dreamwork techniques. Linda also provides somatic, narrative, and psycho-spiritual approaches. Combining neuroscience, healing, mysticism, and creativity, PTSDreams helps you transform nightmares into a new one of hope, healing, and life-affirming images.

312 pages, Paperback

Published September 8, 2022

About the author

LICSW

Reviews

[Caoilo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., Llewellyn Publications for an e-ARC of this book for an honest review.

PTSDreams is a book that delves into the the meaning behind both dreams and nightmares. It breaks down this subject, from the difference between dreams and nightmares to how to heal nightmares. It gives us case studies to show us particular instances of PTSD dreams and also gives us exercises to put the tips into practice.

I was really drawn to this book for two reasons. First the cover and the fact that I am currently suffering from PTSD. As someone who has trouble sleeping and with night terrors I hoped that this book would help. I found the book a little too technical and did not enjoy the footnote layout.
There was also a part that praised Mother Teresa as a good positive influence yet a lot of shocking things have been reviled about her conduct and hospital;.

Uniformly I had to DNF the book. I think I'm not in the right place, I'm too open to suggestion. Every time I tried to read some of the book I would only get a few pages before I would want a nap.

I hope to try to read it again in the future.

[JadersCorner · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC NetGalley review

Great book, I enjoying learning about our dream even if not having pts, but the concept of what makes a dream vs a nightmare which this book talks about, so great. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone and all my friends that I know that are struggling with dream and are not even sure it’s pts, the author has tools for anyone could benefit from. But mostly those with pts.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

For people who practice Dreamwork and already have some understanding of it, this is an essential guide on nightmares that even advanced Dreamworkers can learn from. Great safety and boundary setting tips!

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome. I needed this.

[Jess Mayhall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mild PTSD and struggle with night terrors and flashbacks. I was really intrigued to read this and see what lessons i could learn. Some great factual information, great understanding of PTSD and its manifestations and also some really useful tips for sleep as insomnia is such a struggle for those with PTSD!