Tammy, I completely agree with you and I believe you only highlight the point of this thread, being the way in which to remove nightmares is to treat the trauma! I understand what you saying now though, in that all your saying is that treating the trauma is still the resolve, all your doing though is having to go and analyze a nightmare first in order to discover that the nightmare itself is not the problem, in fact it is the trauma being the problem which causes the nightmare. Your saying exactly what Evie said, instead you just had to discover this fact the hard way by doing extra work.

What you state is absolutely correct, in that the cause is still trauma, your just doing it the long way to discover it.

Whilst correct and doing it the long and hard way is what worked for you, the intent of the forum though is not to guide people the long way, but instead help others from our experiences off having to do things the long way and cut down the recovery time. This is why what you say whilst valid, is the long hard way to achieve the aim, being to treat the trauma.

I work with people who say exactly what you are saying, then when told to cut the shit out and stop doing things the hard way, they learn that they are only slowing their recovery time by learning the same thing except in a longer and more painful manner to themselves, being they now have to learn dream interpretation to understand that the cause is the trauma and nothing more. I agree that what you saying is a way to discover the same fact, but its a long way, which is what this forum aims to reduce from many.

If I added this to people I help here, then instead of them having no nightmares in 6 months time, they would still be having them in 12 months time, achieving the same thing except enduring more pain to get the same result. It worked for you and that is great, but wouldn't you have liked to know first that what you where doing was only increasing the time you had to endure nightmares? If it was me, I would have like to know the faster way....

The method still comes down to choice though, and if someone doesn't want to work on their trauma to begin with, then that is their choice and nothing anyone else says will change that choice. This is why I only help people who are absolutely ready to face their past, to face their fear, otherwise I waste my time with people who truly do not want to get better just yet, instead they want to stuff about and suffer a bit more because they are still scared to face their past fears. That is also fine, and it is fact that you cannot help someone who isn't ready to be helped.

Long way vs. short way? Short way is optimal to get a person recovering fast. Your method whilst valid and worked for you, is certainly not something I would tell anyone to go do unless I absolutely knew they where not ready to face their trauma and their nightmares where out of control. Though even then, if they are often not ready to face their fears, the majority of the time they also won't learn dream interpretation either, considering it is quite a lengthy education process by itself. Not something you can just read a book or two on and become an expert. The mind is far more powerful than that.