On Nightmares and Their Healing Wisdom
Nightmares exist for a purpose: to help you acknowledge and explore your internal fear-based narrative so that you can be empowered to change it. Our nightmares are often dismissed as an unfortunate experience and from a young age many people are told to just shake them off or get over them but in reality, the downplaying of our nightmare’s significance is what is truly unfortunate. In this post we’ll explore the ins and outs of nightmares, their purpose, and how to understand and apply their healing wisdom.
[For more on nightmares check out my new book, How to Heal Your Nightmares, a memoir and guide for facing your nighttime monsters and using their wisdom to heal your life.]
The Purpose Of Nightmares
Nightmares are a subset of dreams categorized by the feeling of fear and, like dreams, nightmares are an expression of our internal conversation.
They show us exactly what we’re experiencing, feeling, and thinking—even if we try to consciously deny the difficult things occurring in our lives. Have you ever told yourself that something really wasn’t as bad as you were making it out to be and that you should just get over it or let it go? As human beings, we sometimes downplay our difficult or dissonant experiences in an effort to avoid pain and the hassle of necessary change but all we end up doing is prolonging the inevitable. This is where nightmares come in handy.
Nightmares can be great indicators for your current psychological or emotional state and can point out the things we tend to suppress. They can help us identify where a need is not being met, unsupportive or disruptive situations, dissonance in relationships, our worries about the future, where we’re feeling stressed, and a myriad of other things. All of this information can be used to move you out of state of suffering or prolonged discomfort, onto the pathway of actionable change, and into a more peaceful or authentic existence.
When you shift your perspective to see nightmares (fear-based dreams) as messages about yourself and for yourself, you can begin to use their information and wisdom to better your life.
Acknowledgement
First and foremost, our nightmares help us to acknowledge exactly where we’re at. They’re like an internal SOS calling for us to give attention to something important.
When I wake up in the morning from a nightmare the first thing I ask is, “What am I dismissing or burying that actually needs to be seen?” If nothing pops up right away I’ll jot the nightmare down in a journal or type it to myself in an app on my phone and begin the observation and interpretation process for more clarity. Often I’ll discover one of three things:
A situation, experience, or relationship that has been bothering me under the surface.
Something that recently triggered a fear-based or difficult memory.
A warning that I fear something in the future or am feeling anxious about something.
In each of these cases, simple acknowledgement may be exactly what we need to help us move through our waking lives with more ease but if we take it a step further we can find resolution and release the pressure of fear and/or difficulty. Let’s break these down further.
Present Focus
If a situation, experience or relationship is bothering me under the surface I might dig into the nightmare a bit more and identify any resolutive suggestions that I can take action on in waking life. For example, let’s say that I wake from a nightmare where I get into a fight with my friend and they become violent and injure me. I seek out help from another, mutual friend in the nightmare to patch me up.
Upon waking I identify that this friend would never hurt me in real life but that they did recently cause me emotional pain through a small argument. In waking life, I had shrugged the argument off but now I can see that it’s still causing me some distress. I decide to bring it up with that friend in conversation, express how the initial argument made me feel, and try to work through it with them. However, I also decide to inform our mutual friend of the argument and my desire to work through it—the nightmare showed me that I trust this mutual friend and that they may be able to help both of us through it.
Past Focus
If I wake from a nightmare and instinctively feel drawn to a particular memory, odds are that I’m still mentally working through a part of that past experience. Always trust your gut when it comes to nightmares and don’t overthink it. Sometimes simplicity is the key.
In this case, I would acknowledge that the memory is sitting in the foreground of my mind and walk myself back to see what triggered that memory. This knowledge can help me understand what caused it so that I address and work with the trigger, limiting it’s potential to affect me moving forward.
Future Focus
If the nightmare presents me with the feeling of something I fear in the future or something that I’m anxious or worried about I’ll openly acknowledge my worry and take action to ground down. The most important thing I would do in this case is identify what I can realistically prepare for versus what is out of my control. Learning to accept what we can and cannot change can be an empowering feeling on it’s own.
Working with nightmares is about acknowledging our internal narrative so that we can best show up for ourselves and take conscious action to better our own lives. For more on dream and nightmare interpretation check out my article on the topic here.
Nightmares When Life Is Perfect
It is also possible to have nightmares even when everything in your life is seemingly perfect.
I once interpreted a recurring nightmare for someone in which they lived through a totally destructive tornado (in the nightmare). They told me that their life was perfect and they didn’t know why they were experiencing such destructive and terrifying dreams about tornados.
After clarifying that they had never before been in a tornado (so it’s not based on reliving an experience or memory) we talked about how this person’s life had only been perfect for the last 2 years. Prior to a couple of years ago, they had been living in a state of constant alertness. Their whole life so far had been living with individuals who unpredictably exploded with rage. “Everything was fine until it wasn’t.”
This helped us identify that the nightmare was exploring the emotion of fear tied to “what-ifs.” What if the perfect life suddenly exploded like it had all those years prior? What if this new foundation turned out to be just as difficult as the last? Their nightmare was showing them that they still didn’t trust their current situation and that their previous experiences had been impactful in this way.
After identifying this nightmare’s message, we were able to talk about implementing supportive practices and beginning to move on. We discussed learning how to trust again and growing their personal confidence in the foundation they had created for themselves that was no longer subject to the explosions of others.
Your nightmares are showing you a truth about your reality and how you actually feel under the surface. By identifying what your true emotions are and agreeing to acknowledge them, you can then begin the process of moving through the current situation and into a more supportive existence.
Common Nightmares
Below you’ll find several common nightmares and the wisdom they offer us. The wisdom of nightmares comes from the questions we ask ourselves.
Chasing or Being Chased
When we’re being chased in a nightmare we’re asking ourselves to acknowledge what we’re afraid will catch up to us or why we’re running away from something. These nightmares are asking us to stop running, embrace our inner bravery and courage, and turn to meet the thing that we’ve been avoiding.
Cheating
Cheating nightmares are very common though they rarely indicate that your partner is actually cheating on you. Most often, these nightmares explore a waking-life scenario where you feel like you have been cheated or betrayed. The people in our dreamspaces usually represent the concepts we associate with them, not necessarily our relationships with them in waking life.
Cheating nightmares often use the imagery of a partner or significant other to convey how deeply the feeling of being cheated or betrayed is rooted. These nightmares ask us to identify where we feel like we have been wronged so that we can communicate that feeling and find resolution.
Drowning
These nightmares often indicate the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. The element of water is almost always associated with emotion in the dreamspace. Drowning nightmares ask us to acknowledge where we feel overwhelmed in our waking lives. Once we acknowledge the area that feels overwhelming we can take action to alleviate some of the stress, ask for help in coming to the surface, or find another avenue to move through the situation.
Falling
Falling nightmares explore the feeling of uncertainty, where we feel like our lives are “falling” out of control, or where we’re coming face to face with a reality we’ve been avoiding. These nightmares are an opportunity to stop clinging to control and to embrace the unknown. If we’ve been avoiding something in our waking lives, it’s time to acknowledge it and allow ourselves to step through it so that we may emerge once more on the other side.
Naked or Nakedness
Nightmares in which we’re naked explore the concept of vulnerability. These nightmares are incredibly beneficial! It takes a lot of inner strength and bravery to openly show or display our vulnerabilities. These nightmares are an opportunity to acknowledge our humanity, show our authenticity, and build trust amongst others and within ourselves. Wherever there is vulnerability there is often either an old wound or a memory of watching another be wounded in relation to that vulnerability. It’s time to heal that wound or belief we formed around the vulnerability.
Violence
Nightmares with physical violence show us where we feel hurt, how we may be hurting ourselves, or if we feel like we’re causing others pain. These nightmares are common, and most people will have at least one at some point in their lives. Most often, they show us how we feel about pain or where we feel hurt. The specifics of the violence can further help us identify where we’re feeling that pain. Once we acknowledge where pain exists, we can being to heal it.
Nightmares for Change
Our nightmares show us the roots of dissonant or difficult things in our waking lives. They can be situations, relationships, habits, thought forms and anything in between. When we choose to observe our nightmares and acknowledge the roots of our problems, we shift the entire foundation of those issues and can be empowered to make lasting, beneficial changes to our lives.
Only you have the power to shift your perception, to make changes within your environment, and to set yourself up for success. You are your own greatest catalyst for change.
I encourage you to shift your perspective on nightmares, open yourself to their messages, acknowledge what you’ve buried and then identify changes in your life that could lead to a more authentic and wonderful existence!
