Nightmares are some of the most interesting, exciting, and satisfying dreams we can have. After all, there’s not many other ways to experience something horrific without being in real danger!
But alas, they just don’t seem to come. Your dreams may be strange and quirky, but not nearly as scary as you want.
Whether you’re after the thrill, the relief when waking up, or the glimpse into your psyche, this guide will help you induce nightmares anytime you want.
1) Watch a scary movie before going to bed
One of the most obvious ways to induce nightmares is to do something scary before going to bed.
It can be anything as long as it brings up a feeling of fear:
- Watch a horror movie
- Play a video game
- Read ghost stories
- Look at images depicting your fears
This will activate your amygdala, the part of your brain that controls the fear response. If you activate it right before sleep, it can continue to work and influence the kind of dreams you have.
But a word of caution: try not to go overboard. The idea is to get yourself a little bit anxious or scared. If you make yourself terrified out of your mind, you’ll make it very hard for yourself to fall asleep at all.
2) Try thinking about it before falling asleep
Aside from real-life experiences like the ones listed above, another way to induce nightmares is to try imagining a scenario before falling asleep.
You’ll need to first come up with an idea for your dream. Then visualize it as vividly as you can. Engage all your senses to do this:
- What does it look like?
- What sounds do you hear?
- What do you smell around you?
- What sensations do you feel on your skin and body?
- What tastes are found in this world?
If you feel a creative block, try drawing on your experiences instead. Is there any memory or image that gives you great fear or anxiety? Use the same questions to recall or imagine it as vividly as possible.
You may not induce nightmares right away. But if you keep at it, then over time you will have a good chance of your thoughts blending into a dream.
This method also has a great advantage: you can try using nightmares to process trauma or solve a problem. You can relive it without being in any real danger, while your brain can continue to work on solving the problem.
3) Get help from a gifted advisor
Inducing nightmares can be tricky. We can hardly control our thoughts when awake — and while asleep it only gets harder!
But there is a way to tap into your subconscious mind — with the help of a gifted advisor.
They can help identify spiritual blocks that are keeping you from succeeding and give you tailored tips to overcome them. Once you clear the path to your subconscious, inducing nightmares becomes a breeze.
The only problem is finding someone you can trust.
That’s why I recommend Psychic Source. When I signed up for a reading, they provided me with a unique insight into where my life was going, including how I can use my dreams to become a better person.
Having tried several online advisors, I think they’re the most caring, compassionate and helpful network of gifted advisors out there.
Click here to get your own personalized reading.
Not only will a genuine advisor help you induce nightmares, but they can guide you along your life path.
4) Prime your sleep environment
You’ve probably had dreams where stimuli from the real world entered them.
Maybe it was a conversation by other passengers on the train, really needing to pee, or your hand being in a weird position.
Well, you can use this to your advantage to induce nightmares!
When you go to sleep, prime your environment. An easy way to do this is with sounds:
- Leave the window open so you can hear sounds from outside
- Put on a recording of howling, bats, or other creepy sounds
- Let a scary movie play softly in the background as you fall asleep
However, you can also try through the other senses. Create complete darkness or creepy shadows in your room to help play tricks on your mind before you fall asleep.
5) Sleep on your left side or face down
What position do you normally sleep in?
As it turns out, this has an impact on the kind of dreams you have.
Research shows that sleeping on your left side increases your chances of having a nightmare by more than 50%.
Another alternative is to try sleeping face down. This increases the probability of both nightmares and erotic dreams.
6) Practice lucid dreaming
If only we could control the content of our dreams while in them. Inducing nightmares would be a piece of cake!
But actually, many people are able to do just that through lucid dreams.
This is a phenomenon when you become aware of the fact that you’re dreaming. As a result, you can change the environment around you and cause certain things to happen.
For example, you can turn your environment into a dark, cold forest or an abandoned house. You can make a certain person appear in your dream, like someone who’s out to kill you.
You can learn how to lucid dream with practice. It takes most people quite a bit of time to master it, so don’t feel discouraged if you don’t get there right away.
But if you Accelerate your progress with a gifted advisor at Psychic Source.
I mentioned them earlier. They have helped me out in the past and I’ve always found them honest and compassionate in their readings.
So instead of trying to tap into your subconscious on your own, speak to an advisor who’ll give you the answers you’re looking for.
Click here to get your own personalized reading.
7) Interrupt your sleep
Another tactic for inducing nightmares is interrupting your sleep.
You might have experienced this already if you have annoying pets, restless children, or loud neighbors.
But even if you live in the calmest area ever, an alarm clock will do the trick. Set an alarm to go off every 90 minutes or so.
This will put your mind in an optimal state of stress as your environment seems to have lots of danger around it. (Before alarm clocks, the only loud noises that could wake you up were predators, conflicts, or natural disasters. Your mind is still primed in this way.)
8) Sleep long enough
Wait, didn’t we just say interrupting sleep is a good way to induce nightmares?
Indeed it is — but it is important not to go overboard. Being sleep deprived day after day not only lowers your quality of life. It also really reduces the number of dreams you can have at all.
REM sleep happens when you fall into a deep sleep. And that’s when the longest dreams happen.
For this reason, getting enough quality sleep is imperative in order to have any sort of dreams, including nightmares.
You can try alternative this tactic with the previous one, but make sure you use them both in moderation.
9) Eat certain foods
Food has a huge effect on our wellbeing, so it’s no surprise it’s another way to induce nightmares.
There are mixed findings on the effects of food on nightmares. Some studies point to one thing, while others say the opposite.
However, there are plenty of people who swear by a certain food to induce nightmares. Your best bet is to try out a variety and pay attention to your body’s response.
Pretty soon, you’ll find the best recipe for disaster in dreamland.
Here are the most commonly quoted types of foods for nightmares:
- Spicy foods
- Salty foods
- Fatty foods
- Cheesy foods
10) Consume coffee, alcohol, or nicotine (in moderation)
Not hungry? No problem — have a drink instead.
Certain substances can disrupt your sleep cycle, making it more likely for bad dreams to occur. Here are the three most popular options:
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
- Nicotine
But a word of caution: taking too much of any of these substances can disrupt your sleep too much. For example, it’s pretty hard to have dreams of any sort after drinking 3 cups of coffee!
While you try this, keep an eye on your body’s response. Reduce your intake if you have difficulty falling asleep, if you wake up too often, or feel too tired after waking up. These are all signs you’re not getting enough quality sleep, which will reduce the amount of dreams you have.
It’s also not recommended to start taking these substances only to induce nightmares, as the effect may be too strong.
11) Free your mind
Have you tried many methods for inducing nightmares, but nothing seems to work?
You might need to work on freeing your mind.
You see, dreams are deeply psychological and spiritual. They play out entirely in our minds — so if you’re having trouble inducing nightmares, it must be because of a mental block.
And sadly, many of us have them. Because we’ve been sold toxic spirituality.
I myself discovered I had this problem from shaman Rudá Iandé.
In this incredible free video, Rudá explains how his initial approach to spirituality did more harm than good. Now, with over 30 years in the field of spirituality, he hopes his experience can help others avoid the same mistakes.
So what makes Rudá trustworthy? How do you know you won’t get more of the same toxic crap?
Well, Rudá isn’t going to tell you how to practice your spirituality. Instead, he’s going to give you the tools to find empowerment from within.
Every exercise in the video will put you back in touch with your core self, step by step.
So if you’re ready to take that step, click here to watch the free video.
12) Try taking Vitamin B6
The B vitamins are essential for many aspects of health, from preventing infections to boosting cell health. But did you know it can help induce nightmares too?
In particular, vitamin B6 is the one you want.
The effect has not been studied in depth, but many people insist that this vitamin makes their dreams much more vivid. One study suggests it could have a direct effect on the type of dreams, or it could simply help you remember your dreams more easily.
You can find supplements for vitamin B6, or look for a vitamin B complex that includes it.
Important: Please consult a medical professional before beginning to take supplements, and follow the recommendations for daily intake to avoid creating health problems.
13) Take melatonin
You may have heard experts talking about taking melatonin to improve sleep quality. And for good reason – it plays a huge role in your sleep-wake cycle!
Research shows taking melatonin supplements can help to treat sleep disorders or get over jet lag.
But many people report having bizarre or vivid dreams as a result. It may not necessarily be nightmares, but you’ll at least be likely to have new dream experiences.
A study supports this idea, showing that dreams involving transformations are much more probable to happen when taking melatonin.
Important: Please consult a medical professional before beginning to take any supplements, and follow the recommendations for daily intake to avoid creating health problems.
14) Hold off on water
Water makes up most of our bodies — so you can imagine how dehydration has a pretty drastic effect.
Normally the best advice is to stay hydrated for optimal health. But if your goal is to induce nightmares, you might want to hold off on drinking before bedtime.
When your body doesn’t get enough water, it produces more stress hormones. This can disrupt sleep patterns and create feverish dreams.
This is the method that works the best for me. Some of my favorite guilty pleasures are salty foods, like burgers and fries or pepperoni pizza. And whenever I ate them shortly before bedtime, I always woke up in the middle of a nightmare, desperate for a glass of water.
15) Keep a dream journal
Lastly, if you’re hoping to induce nightmares, try keeping a dream journal.
Though this isn’t a tactic that will directly help you to have bad dreams, it is a great way to train your brain to remember them.
After all, what is the point of having nightmares if you’re not even aware of it? You might even be having them right now, and just don’t know it!
Keep a notebook and pen right next to your bed. As soon as you wake up, write down everything you can remember about your dreams to help them stick in your memory.
Make sure you write down all your dreams, not just nightmares. This habit will help you remember any nightmares you could have in the future.
How to stop having nightmares
With a bit of luck, the tips in these articles will let you have all the nightmares you want.
But there may come a point when it becomes too much. When that happens, you’ll feel much better if you’re prepared with knowledge on how to make the nightmares stop.
It’s actually pretty simple.
All you have to do is avoid or reverse all the things this article tells you to do!
Beyond that, you can work on your ability to lucid dream. This will let you control the contents of your dream while in it. If you don’t like where a dream is heading, you can literally change it at will.
But if you have difficulty controlling your dreams in general, that’s a big sign that there’s something more at play.
It could be something you’re aware of, like anxiety or trauma from the past. You’re able to push it down when you’re awake, but ultimately these feelings need to be expressed. So they bubble up the only time they can — when your consciousness is asleep.
Another possibility is a mental block that you’re not yet aware of. I mentioned above how toxic spirituality is exhausting or even harming many people like you and me.
Thankfully, shaman Rudá Iandé shows us that it’s quite easy to fix this. With over 30 years of experience in the field, he’s seen and experienced it all.
From exhausting positivity to downright harmful spiritual practices, this free video he created tackles a range of toxic spirituality habits.
Best of all? He’s different from the rest, because he promotes spiritual empowerment from within.
Watch this incredible free video to find out how.
Click here to watch the free video and bust the spiritual myths you’ve bought for the truth.
Wrapping up
Now you’re armed with 15 easy and actionable ways to induce nightmares.
But if you still don’t have any luck, it might be time to speak to a genuine advisor. You’ll get a completely personalized explanation of what’s blocking you, and how to unlock access into your subconscious.
And there’s one company that I always end up recommending, Psychic Source. Not only did they blow me away with their accurate reading, but they were also kind and understanding of my situation.
So if you want to finally succeed in inducing nightmares, don’t let any more time go to waste and get in touch with them today.
Click here to get your own professional reading.
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