NIGHTMARES

Nightmares

A lot has been written about nightmares and a simple search on the World Wide Web will pull up a wealth of information. They are perhaps the most widely researched type of dreaming, probably because they are so hard to ignore.

It may be helpful if we first define what constitutes a nightmare, so that we can distinguish these from anxiety dreams. A nightmare is a frightening dream that usually wakes us up. Often, on waking, our heart is beating faster, we may be sweating and may hear ourselves screaming or crying out as we approach consciousness. More often than not we are left with a feeling of intense fear, or a certainty that something bad has just happened, or is about to. There may be an unexplainable terror that something has psychically attacked us whilst we slept.

I always describe nightmares as a slap in the face from the subconscious. Nightmares suggest that there is a problem, which is either not being faced up to or that we are having difficulty facing up to. This can be the result of a long-standing problem, or a sudden event that has shocked or traumatised us. Sometimes we are unaware that there is a problem anyway; we may be so busy living inside our defensive ego that we are totally oblivious to how things are really affecting us. At other times the problem is easy to identify but we may feel that there's nothing we can do about it, or maybe we don't want to do anything about it. People who are very good at pushing emotional problems away and pretending they don't exist may be more prone to having nightmares. It is true that some problems, given time, will go away by themselves. It may take twenty years or more, but what the heck? Anything's better than facing up to an unpleasant issue. Right? Wrong. You can be sure that the sort of problems that give rise to nightmares, are affecting your life, your behaviour and your relationships. Why spend twenty years being directed by unconscious tendencies when, with a bit of courage and a will to explore your life honestly, you can take steps to put things right and have your life the way it ought to be. If you do this, your life will be enhanced and the nightmares will stop.

Please note, however, that nightmares that are the result of Post Traumatic Stress usually need professional help to be resolved and are not dealt with here. So please, if you are having recurrent nightmares that are re-playing a past trauma, go and see your Doctor who will be able to recommend professional therapy.

Nightmare themes are as varied as mankind's fears but probably the most common theme is that of being pursued by something that is unseen or alien, always hostile and downright terrifying. You literally feel that your life is at stake and that if your pursuer catches you, you are unlikely to survive. Often, we feel we are unable to run away. It's common for instance to feel we cannot move our legs or that we are stuck in thick, deep mud. These sensations are probably due to the fact that the nightmare is occurring during REM sleep and the muscle paralysis, that is a completely normal physiological event, is preventing us from moving our limbs in reality. Whatever your nightmare, the fact that you wake up terrified usually means that you were trying, unsuccessfully, to escape the danger. It is usually the emotion of fear that instigates these dream experiences. This is the reason that nightmares are more common in children. When you're small, the world is a very big place and there's a lot to be frightened of because there's a lot you don't understand. Sneaking out to the tuck shop at playtime may not seem like a big deal, but do you really know what will happen to you if you get found out? It would be interesting to undertake a study of the prevalence of children's nightmares, to see if they are less common since corporal punishment was abolished in schools.

For the adult, the fear is usually well grounded and easy to understand. Often occurring during periods of acute stress. For instance, the fear of being alone due to a marriage break up, the fear of losing one's job or a fear that a loved one is about to be taken away, (either through illness, separation or simply children growing up and flying the nest). Even pregnancy has been known to cause nightmares. Again this can be understood if one recognises that the parents are approaching a new situation of which they may have no knowledge, not only in terms of being responsible for a new life but also because of the changes they must make; their lives will never be the same again and this in itself can be quite scary.

Those people who experience nightmares that seem unrelated to their waking concerns, need to pay special attention. Often, the things that pursue us in our dreams are those things that we have not acknowledged or will not face up to in our waking life. That is why they pursue us, to try and gain recognition and acceptance. They can be anything from an unused or under-utilised talent to an aspect of our character that sabotages everything we try to achieve. Studies do not support the belief that a shocking film, such as a horror film, will "give me nightmares" as many people like to claim. If you do have a nightmare following such a film, it's likely that your subconscious is simply using an appropriate, remembered image to tell it's own story.

So, it's important that you take your nightmares seriously and undertake to investigate them further. Once you bring them into consciousness in this way and begin to deal with the life issue that is causing them, you will find that they will start to change (if they had been recurrent) or that they will stop all together. It's a matter of record that once we acknowledge our fears and resolve to do something about them, they cease to be issues in our life. The positive side of all this, is that by addressing and integrating our fears, we grow as a person and that brings in its wake a whole load of private and professional opportunities that we may never have thought possible. Fear traps us, it keeps us prisoner, shackled to the dark recesses of our mind. A life of fear is no life at all. Once you recognise these fears for what they are, and embrace them into your waking life, they have the power to transform you. Fears that are ignored make you weak, fears that are integrated and acknowledged can be an enormous source of strength.

"A man (or woman) who has not passed through the inferno of his (her) passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his (her) own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force."

Carl G. Jung. "Memories Dreams Reflections" (Chapter: India)

The Scream

Edvard Munch
1893