Psychedelic Medicine and Dreams: A conversation with Katherine Lawson
The use of psychedelic substances as therapeutic agents is a trend with great promise, and a work in progress. There is an exciting but nascent body of research on efficacy and best practices, and there remains many legal and ethical obstacles. In the meantime, the use of plant medicines is growing like a weed –
Become An Exquisite Listening Partner with Focusing
Are you interested in deepening your ability to listen in a way that enables another person to touch into their body’s wisdom? Whether you are a mental health professional, partner, coach, parent, friend (or all of these!), focusing is a gift you can bring to every relationship – including your connection with your own self.
Are Nightmares Bad for Your Heart?
John’s nightmares visit often, and when they wake him up, he can feel his heart racing and his palms sweating. He has been putting off therapy to address the trauma he knows is fueling his nightmares because it’s just so hard face it. What he doesn’t realize is that this avoidance not only disrupts his
The Alarming Nightmare-Suicide Link: Review just published
In my continuing bid to get the word out about the alarming link between frequent nightmares and increased suicide risk, I wrote a review paper that was just published. In it, I cover the growing body of research documenting evidence of this strong connection. I also explore the potential mechanisms at work that make nightmare
Dreams and Psychedelics: Similarities and potential therapeutic benefits
Research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelic (serotonergic) substances is experiencing a resurgence after lying dormant in North America for more than 50 years. Early research suggests these once-vilified substances show great promise in treating depression, anxiety, alcohol addiction, and potentially many other challenging conditions. This emerging area is ripe for the use of dreamwork
With AI flooding the world with all kinds of applications, of course there are now several AI apps on the market for recording and interpreting dreams – my current favorites are Elsewhere and Temenos. Some of the questions that immediately arise: Does AI do a good job with helping us explore our dreams? What are
REM Rebound: Dream Intensification in Early Recovery in NOT a Bad Sign
The road to recovery from addiction has many challenges, but the intensification of dreams does not have to be one of them. The return of one’s dreams is normal, a good sign, and can be an ally in processing the upwelling of emotion that occurs during the recovery process. Those who vow abstain from using
Dream to remember, dream to forget, dream to feel better…
Dreaming after an emotional experience might help us feel better in the morning Although dreaming has been implicated in the consolidation of memories, it seems we also dream to forget. In a similar way that sleep has been shown to clean our brains of clutter, a recent study supports the notion that dreaming helps us
Trauma-Related Nightmare Type Linked to Higher Suicide Risk
Adding to the robust literature linking nightmares to suicide risk, a new study offers an important distinction for clinicians: of the 3 nightmare types identified by researchers, only trauma-related nightmares are linked to a greater risk of suicide (Youngren et al., 2024). Idiopathic and complex nightmares (comorbid with sleep and breathing problems) do not lead