Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing

Biography

Biography: Beverly Ann Dexter

Abstract

Planned Dream Intervention (PDI) is a highly effective, rapidly learned skill that teaches the dreaming brain how to sleep through nightmares.  Developed by Dr. Beverly Dexter in 2001 and taught to thousands of clients (including in an active combat zone),  health care providers and educators around the world. PDI is dramatically different from previous therapies that require multiple sessions, an established therapy relationship, continued follow up if more disturbing events occur, and is much more acceptable to the large percentage of nightmare sufferers who would never pursue traditional therapy or who might not have in-person access to therapy.  Briefly, the successful PDI is: 1) an intuitive emotion-gut creation; 2) may not necessarily be the first thing the individual thinks of; 3) the ‘emotional volume’ of the effective PDI matches that of the dream at the point where the dreamer woke up; 4) the successful PDI is not re-writing the dream—it kick-starts the person back into the dream with a sense of mastery; 5) if the dream is about a real life event, the PDI that will work may not necessarily appear to be related to what the dreamer would like to have happen in real life;  and 6) effective dream interventions can be created from physical sensations or emotions, even when the individual does not remember actual dream content.  PDI training creates a mastery experience allowing the dreamer to sleep through any dream without waking or acting out dream content, now and in the future.