You might be surprised to know that Aaron T. Beck, one of the founders of Cognitive Therapy was a dream researcher. His studies of dream content and depression led him to approach dreams as reflections of the maladaptive patterns and cognitive biases of his clients.
Assuming a direct continuity between waking and dream life, dreams show how a person thinks, acts and reacts in relationship with their environment. Think of a dream as a window into a person’s view of themselves, the world and the future, acted out on a dramatic imaginal stage.
CBT Dreamwork: CBT helps clients become aware of their cognitive distortions, scripts and schemas and discover creative alternative behaviors and attitudes. Approaching a dream as if it is a valid (if exaggerated) reflection of how a person is in their life, provides valuable insights and learning for both therapist and client.
As with any behavior, you can apply an ABC (antecedent, behaviour, consequence) analysis to any sequence of actions in a dream. That gives an indication of the experienced self-efficacy of the dreamer. In general, it is useful to help the person make connections and parallels between their dream experiences and their waking life. Here are a few suggestions:
• How active are you in the dream? How is that similar to how you are in your life?
• What were you feeling/thinking in the dream; is that familiar in your life?
• Notice what you did in the dream. How might you have reacted differently?
• Think of three different ways in which the dream might have a more positive ending.
Working with dreams using a CBT model has a number of therapeutic benefits: it facilitates the therapeutic process, provides self-knowledge for the client, highlights clinically relevant information and indicates significant therapeutic change. It is a wonderful rich addition to working with dreams.