Nightmares: Part 2

It is quite distressing that often when we have a nightmare, it doesn’t occur in isolation, but recurrs with a frightening persistence.  As if having one nightmare wasn’t bad enough, but to have them frequently!  It just doesn’t seem fair!  But it makes more sense when you realise why you are having these bad dreams.  When something is not quite right in our life, or in our mind, there is some level of us that wants to put things right.  This is our subconscious.  While consciously we may not want to admit that something is not right, because that would mean facing up to it, and that might mean getting hurt, humiliated, risking shame or a sense of failure, our subconscious refuses to let us forget, and will keep trying to send  a message to our conscious mind to do something about it.  It will keep shouting and shouting until it is heard.  One of the strongest ways for our subconscious to make us pay attention to it is by giving us nightmares.  These images are so intense and so startling that we can’t ignore them.

 

The sad thing for us Westerners is that we live in a society that does not in general place a great deal of value on dreaming, so we are not encouraged to value them, to discuss them, or to learn how to work with them.  When this means we miss out on the opportunities for growth and delight dreams can give us, this is a shame, but when it means we can’t manage our own nightmares, it is a far more serious affair.  As we grow into adults our dreams should mature with us.  As we become more skillful, balanced and wise with years, so too should we dream in a more balanced and rewarding manner.  But studies show that in Western society the dreams of anxious adults do not differ much from those of children.  We still feel anxious and afraid, we are still pursued – maybe not by a big hairy monster as child would be, but perhaps by a vicious knife wielding bandit, and we all still dream of being attacked by wild animals.  As adults we differ hardly at all from children in our response to these threats as well – we flee, we run, we get stuck, we are eaten, hurt, trapped.  In short, we remain victims.

To stop having adult nightmares or bad dreams, we need to face up to what we are afraid of, we need to honestly admit to ourselves what is not working in our lives, we need to really grow up.  It is hard.  Our society does not encourage talking about our fears, it judges perceptions of failure, and we don’t teach our children the skills they need to work on their own inner selves so they can mature into self-aware adults.  So the only thing we can do is start learning now.

We can learn how to overcome our fears, even in our dreams

Facing a scary threat in a dream can be a very difficult thing to initiate.  This is especially so if we aren’t practised and confident with working with our dreams!  That is why confronting the thing in waking life is often an easier way to start.  Try imagining your dream when you are awake.  Sit somewhere comfortable where you won’t be disturbed, and play the dream through your mind like a movie.  Remember, you are the director of your dream, so tell yourself you don’t like the ending, and imagine a new one for yourself.

Another useful method you can adopt while awake that may have a carry over effect to helping deal with nightmares, is to actually do in waking life what you can’t do, or what you need to do, in your bad dreams.  This often means learning a new skill, which can be confronting, difficult, frustrating or embarrassing at first, but the commensurate feelings of ease, satisfaction, confidence and pride that you should feel upon mastery will make it well worth the effort.  Nightmares of sharks?  Try swimming with them in a safe tank.  Have a nightmare you are lost and can’t read a map?  Try learning orienteering, how to read a map and use a compass.  Have a nightmare someone is hurt and bleeding, and you can’t help?  Go on a First Aid course and learn how to treat wounds.  It may sound simple, and even silly, but actions such as these send a clear message back to our subconscious – it lets our deeper self know we have heard the message, we are listening and we care enough to do something about it.  That is a very strong message indeed.  It can even be enough to stop our subconscious from shouting so insistently at us, and go back to a normal tone, breaking the repetitive cycle of bad dreams.  At the very least, actions such as these give our mind an alternative to work with.  Instead of thinking of sharks as something that always eat us, when you have been with them safely your mind now has a clear, conscious (and no doubt very emotion charged!) image of you being with sharks and them not eating you.  In fact the more emotion charged these images are, the deeper they are likely to penetrate our mind, and the stronger and more effective they can be in helping us imagine a new and happier outcome.  The greater the fear, the greater our exultation can be on overcoming it.

Tomorrow, looking at a special kind of nightmare…

Nightmares: Part 1

The first step in making nightmares go away is to face up to our fears

Firstly, let me apologise to my regular readers for my absence!  I have been travelling and have not had regular access to the Internet, but I am back now so stay tuned for many more interesting installments on dreams and how we can work with them!  If there is a particular kind of dream, dream symbol, or process for working with dreams you would like to know more about, please leave a comment and I will do my best to address them.

So now I think it is about time we started looking at some of the more disturbing aspects of dreaming.  Until we are able to understand and work with nightmares, there will always be a major obstacle for us to access the real value and opportunities that dreaming can provide.  Fear of dreaming can paralyse us in our internal explorations, but it is these very nightmares we must learn to deal with to move onto the next stage in our dreaming life, and indeed our personal development.

The main thing to remember about nightmares is the same as most other dreams.  All the things you are afraid of in your dreams are really only parts of your self.  If you are being chased by a monster or wild animal, it is only are part of yourself you are running from.  If something or someone is attacking you, it is only a part of you attacking yourself.

Knowing this does not necesarilly make the nightmares go away, but it does give us clues as to how we can make that happen.  The simple answer is, we must learn to face our what we are afraid of.  We must confront our demons.  As you get ready to go to sleep, prepare yourself mentally to face your attacker.  Remember it can’t really hurt you, the fear comes from not wanting to recognise what is really going on.  In the first nights it may be hard to do, but persist.  With time you should be able to stand up to what it is that scares you.  In the early days you may also find that even though you face up to whatever it is that scares you, when you do it still catches you, or eats you, or whatever.  That is okay.  This is still progress.  The important thing is not to stop now – you have just proved that you can change something in your dream by facing up to the scary thing instead of running.  This is a major achievement.

We are often afraid of our own shadows - the parts of ourselves we don't want to see

As you keep exerting your conscious control to make your dreams change for the better, eventually you will find yourself winning in these situations.  You may kill the creature, you may transform it into something harmless or laughable, you may put it to sleep or feed it so much food it can’t move.  All these things are sure signs the nightmare is turning.  Ultimately, you should be able transform your enemy into your friend.  The creature may change shape or age, it will go from something threatening to a kind and helpful guide.  This is a sure sign you are integrating the different aspects of yourself into a more unified, less conflicted person.

The outcome of this will not be simply less nightmares and a better night’s sleep, but a new sense of confidence and creativity and wholeness in your waking life.  Address the deeper conflict that causes your nightmares, and chances are your whole life will feel brighter.  I will write more about how to prepare for nightmare conforntations tomorrow.

A Word on Recurring Dreams

Chances are at some stage in your life you have had a recurring dream.  This may have been a period where you dreamed of the same thing night after night, or it may be a very dominant symbol that seems to come back through-out your life at important times.

Recurring dreams are often trying to give us a wake-up call.  The message they have is so important that they insist on you paying attention, and will come back night after night until you:

• either understand them and act upon them
• inadvertently change your life which will also change the dream
• or manage to suppress them so deeply that you might even stop remembering your dreams at all. 

I would suggest the final option is really not the best way to go!  Sooner or later the things you choose not to address in your life have a way of popping back up, maybe in the form of a nightmare, maybe with an illness or accident, maybe with some form of self destructive behaviour.

What repeating patterns are in your life?

So how do you deal with a recurring dream then?  The first thing to realise is whether this is a normal dream to help you through a life transition, or whether it is the direct result of some trauma.  In the case of trauma, and repeating dreams related to this event, I would suggest that you please don’t go it alone.  Find someone who can help you and support you through this time.  Your dreams are a reflection of your subconscious mind trying to deal with what has happened.  Eventually, with time and help, you will heal, and your dreams will start to show you signs of resolution.  Your dreams can help in this process, but especially early on they can seem to be as bad as the event itself, so that it is always a good idea to have someone wise and caring there to support you as you go through the difficult period.

Many recurring dreams though, are not related to a specific trauma at all, and are simply the mind’s way of helping you make some important life change.  This can be at a transitional phase of your life, such as finishing school or university and preparing to become independent, at the start or end of a relationship or marriage, taking on a new job or new responsibilities.  Or it could be something much more internal, such as finally overcoming a long held fear, giving up a harmful habit or starting a new good one. 

If your recurring dream has come back after many years of being absent, ask your self how this period of your life is similar to when you had these dreams before.  Does the end of your relationship make you feel abandoned as you did when your parents divorced?  Does the stress of taking on a new job remind you of the nervousness you felt in going to a new school?  These kind of recurring dreams remind us how we coped with this situation last time, and give us hints as to whether we should use those skills again, or maybe try something new.  They do remind us that we survived last time, so we will be alright again this time.  But maybe we can do it even better than last time, learn from our old mistakes and have a second chance to get it right this time.

If you are having recurring dreams and not doing anything to change your life, look for ways you can.  If you keep dreaming of running from something, you might have to learn to face who or what is chasing you before this dream changes.  If you keep dreaming of crashing a car, you might need to learn how to gain better control of your life before this dream goes away.   These are just some examples, but the important thing to recognise, is that recurring dreams are urging us to do something, to wake up to ourselves and change the repeating patterns in our own life that aren’t getting us anywhere.

When you start to dream about the same thing that always appeared in your recurring dreams, but the ending of the dream changes, you are on your way to breaking the cycle.  As you grow and develop, so too will your dreams evolve to reflect the new changes in you.