Re: defeating the nightmare
@22
School counselors are not usually super qualified and often not even medical professionals. There are something like 5 or 6 different qualifications here and school counselor is usually the lowest rung on that latter (I think it goes something like therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist in order of qualification/required knowledge/power to actually prescribe treatment, but I might have the order wrong. And schools go cheap, not good). There is also an entire separate branch of medicine called sleep medicine that doctors specialize in as a career all it's own. But my point is that school counselor isn't really indicative of the profession, especially since (at least from my interactions with such) that's not really the safest environment and they have almost no power to be anything but someone you can talk to. But therapy isn't for everyone, for me it turned out to be lamictal 250 mg once daily (standard bipolar II treatment), and I went from being tired and anxious all the time to fine and on top of the world in a week or so.
We struggle at treating depression because no one understands it really, and so the algorithm there is you have to try a bunch of SSRIs and stuff until we find one that works. But ADHD, anxiety, Bipolar, honestly a very long list of psychiatric conditions, are actually easily treated the first time round. Whether that be therapy, medication, lifestyle changes, or some combination thereof just depends. Usually you try therapy and lifestyle changes first, then slowly start going down the list of medications from least side effects to most side effects if that doesn't work.
Meditation has good scientific evidence for some things.
Magic mushrooms also have good scientific evidence, except that the legality of it makes getting it to the point of being a treatment you can get at the local pharmacy really hard. LSD is also seeing a lot of interest these days as well, though the FDA may have screwed that one up by approving a version that's different from all the ones in the studies; and I've seen people talking about ketamine too. Interestingly, many of these seem to be interventions that you do once, and they work for a while, possibly forever. But the jury is still out and they're dangerous enough that you shouldn't do them on your own.
Whether/how well lucid dreaming works is kind of unknown because not everyone can learn it and if you can learn it it takes a long, long time. There's also no placebo. So in terms of studies we don't have good ones to my knowledge. But it's still a potentially useful skill and there's no harm in it (plus, it's probably cool in itself--I tried to learn it once upon a time, and can't. I've had a few in my life, though. But in general I don't remember my dreams anyway).
I'll just close by saying that a psychiatrist won't commit you to a mental hospital for anything less than you making them believe that you are going to harm yourself. I imagine at least one person seeing me on this thread has that worry (and I did, once, when I was young. So I understand why you might). Even walking in and saying "I have suicidal feelings but I'm not going to kill myself right now and I want to get better, that's why I'm here" probably isn't enough for involuntary commitment with most of them. Anxiety and nightmares, things like that, that's like a 1 or 2 on their serious conditions scale at worst. "I'm so depressed I can't even make myself eat", that's maybe a 5 and still isn't a guarantee of involuntary commitment.
I always like to link people to Things that sometimes work if you have anxiety and Things that sometimes help if you have depression. The author of that blog is a psychiatrist by trade, and unlike other resources those don't treat you like an idiot. How good are the non-seeing-a-doctor interventions, I don't know. But most if not all of it is safe and he also goes into what an actual doctor might try with you as well. I wish he had done newer ones, though.
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