Everyone Has Had a Nightmare
Being chased relentlessly, falling into a bottomless abyss, seeing something rather monstrous in a mirror, witnessing someone we love die or disappear, are a few examples. There are as many different variations on the nightmare as there are people but our reaction to them is the same. We awaken sweating, sometimes screaming out loud, heart beating fast and feeling so enormously relieved to realize it was a nightmare!
Why Have Nightmares?
There are several universal reasons for nightmares. One is trauma. We may not be allowing ourselves to ponder traumatic experiences enough because the effects are still raw and potentially debilitating. Our psyche, however must integrate and file these experiences into our mental makeup. We must give them context to hopefully reach a place of peace and acceptance.
Fear of failure, poor health, or victimization are also nightmare triggers. Being bullied generates more than its share of nightmares in a victim of any age. Faced with a difficult choice, behaving in a manner unfamiliar to our self-concept, abandonment, loneliness, lack of safety can also be grist for the nightmare mill.
They do mean that we need to pay closer attention to something happening in our everyday lives. We are either guilty of ignoring the threat entirely or minimizing its impact. During WWI for example, military psychiatrists noticed that when men on the front lines began dreaming of the horrors of war they needed to be removed from the battle. Somehow the horror had breached a psychic barrier which often presaged the onslaught of a crippling mental illness. So nightmares let us know that a fear of something has breached our normal defences and we ignore its message at our peril.
Consider nightmares to be rather like a psychic scream. Our spirit has been murmuring warnings to us that we’ve failed to give credence, giving our psyches no other option but to amplify the volume. We’re just in need of a good loud alarm to snap us to attention!
Nightmares May Signal Encroaching Mental Illness
Keeping in mind however, that dreams amplify our waking life experiences tenfold, a nightmare may be highlighting a growing neurosis – fear of something not founded in reality but rather a phobia or unfounded worry. People who describe themselves as worry warts tend be plagued more frequently with nightmares. Regardless, a nightmare in this case still needs attention. A growing phobia may be blocking us from living an abundant and healthy life. If a nightmare is alerting us to a creeping neurosis, we certainly want to get on that as soon as possible!
As children we’re plagued by nightmares often. Children experience fear daily yet must prevail in the face of it. The world they find themselves inhabiting is vast and those around them so much larger and stronger. Loving adults can help in offering moments of safety and respite but there are by necessity times when they cannot offer the assurance of safety so craved. Encouraging children to talk through their nightmares and offering them suggestions about how to imaginatively deal with the monsters can help a child to feel empowered and less threatened in their waking lives.
Nightmares as Creative Inspiration
Ignoring or discounting nightmares as only dreams won’t help in dealing with them for like most forgotten dreams, they will simply return and in many cases even worse than before. The best way to deal with nightmares is to consider them. Do what you can to interpret the meaning of the symbols, characters, feeling and action. Imagine what the nightmare is asking of you. You might consider a couple of different endings to the dream. Often a nightmare is interrupted by our increased heart rate and breath. Use your imagination envision what the ending might have been and a more desirable one as well.
Use the nightmare as a source of creative inspiration. Draw, paint or collage the images. Title your nightmare. The stories of Jekyl and Hyde, Frankenstein, and Dracula were all inspired by nightmares. When you describe a nightmare to someone, it is likely they will immediately identify and empathize with your experience. There is nothing quite like a sharing a nightmare to bring an uncommon level of intimacy into your social intercourse.
Don’t shy away from your nightmares. They are important messages from your unconscious mind. If you don’t wish them to revisit (and they will!), then give them creative expression. Write a story, paint a picture of the images. Ponder their messages and see what you might learn about how to remedy a troubling waking situation. At the very least you will find yourself awed at the majesty, grace and the condensed form it has presented of a waking life situation that really does need more attending to than you have been previously granting it.
