There is not one thing with which each man is so scared as getting to recognise how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Murder, monsters, beasts, rapists, predators, clawing fear, mutilation, decapitation–nightmares sink their teeth into our night world, plunging us into a black sea of fear and terror. What could be the intention or intention of such heart-pounding dream dramas?
The majority of nightmares intend to shock us in order to get our attention–shock therapy from what I like to think of as the “Authentic Self,” our necessary nature, the real you. For instance, I once had a dream of a tiger stalking me, aim on killing and eating me, which wholly terrified me in the dream. For me, that dream represented a wild cat, something instinctive, natural, powerful, and wholly authentic that wanted to get me. A nightmare in this category measuredly drags us into it is dark den in order to wake us up. Such dreams invent valuable terror, shock and panic the Authentic Self ofttimes uses as a last resort, attempting to save our authenti life, to liberate us from self-destructive patterns or behaviors.
When we are hypercritical and judgmental of ourselves, we are likely to have recurring nightmares of running for our life, being chased by somebody or something, quintessentially wielding a weapon or knife. That tongue-like, razor-sharp knife blade or the bullet in the brain ofttimes symbolizes the galore ways we kill ourselves and our originative potential with negative self-criticisms.
Here’s another example: A stockbroker in his mid forties told me regarding a very disturbing recurring nightmare. In each dream he would see his own face, but he was always shocked at how old he was, “ninety-something, hardly competent to move,” he described. He would wake up in a panic, affrighted he had a good deal of terrible aging disease. I asked him to imagine being that old man in his dream and to tell me what his life (as the old man) was like. “My life is over. There’s not one thing left for me to do,” he explained. I then asked him to think with regards to his waking life right now and tell me what comes up when he thinks of that statement by that old man. “My God–I’m always getting all these originative ideas but I constantly tell myself that I’m too old to begin something new,” he replied. His “nightmare” intended to wake him up, to stop him from living his life as even though he were almost dead, as if he were too old and too feeble to do anything anymore. This dream dramatically changed his life and started out the routine of freeing the transformative power of his originative spirit. Of course, that nightmare stopped recurring, as is ofttimes the case when we in the long run “get” a recurring dream’s message.
Although not as common, another category of nightmares are the direct result of severe trauma in our waking life. These dreams are ordinarily rather literal and detailed, replicating an actual event we have experienced. For example, I not long back met a young woman who was in an apartment building two blocks away from the World Trade Center buildings when terrorists attacked on September 11th. She watched in horror from her apartment window as the buildings collapsed. She saw persons jumping from windows, others hurled out from the explosions and fire. She begun having recurring nightmares of being trapped in the wreckage of one of the planes that had smashed into the towers.
Her dream was showing her that she was caught in the “trauma,” the aroused “wreckage” of the event. Her “normal” life had crashed; the event had in truth wrecked her emotionally. She was an “emotional wreck.” It is therapeutic to interpret all nightmares no matter of their origin. In some cases, just understanding the nightmare takes the sting out of it; it loses a heap of of it is intensity. In numerous cases, our dreams are showing us that we are not totally appreciating the depth of how much something has injure us.
In circumstances of severe trauma: accidents, witnessing death and war, earthquakes, natural disasters, it is suitable and oftentimes necessary to intervene, peculiarly for recurring nightmares. One method that has proven to be effective is what one researcher calls “Imagery Rehearsal Therapy.” Dr. Barry Krakow, medical conductor of the Sleep and Human Health Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has produced a technique to change the images in nightmares. “Our dreams,” he explains, “start out as replays of traumas after a traumatic event.” But, according to Krakow, when nightmares carry on over a long amount of time of time, they become destructive. “The nightmares in some way take on a life of their own. They become a broken record, a habit, a learned behavior,” says Krakow. Over time the nightmares in truth retraumatize individuals.
Krakow’s method involves rewriting the nightmare and replacing disturbing images with comforting images. The re-scripted dream is then rehearsed over and over all around the day and before sleep. Research suggests that regarding 90 percent of the time Imagery Rehearsal will either end the nightmare or change it dramatically.
Burr Eichelman has invented a similar method of treating trauma-induced nightmares that he calls “dream substitution.” He gives this example:
Mr. B dreamt of being shot by a Viet Cong sniper. He would listen the shot and see the bullet coming to kill him, awakening just before the bullet was going to strike his head. He had dreamt this closely nightly for 12 years. In the alteration of the dream, it was permitted to carry on in hypnotic trance until the bullet became visible in regards to 50 yards away. At this point the bullet was transformed into a whipped cream pie, much in the manner of the old-time silent movies. The pie was then slowed and returned to the Viet Cong sniper. It struck the sniper in the face, so startling him that he fell from the tree. The event was so improbable that the Viet Cong and Mr. B broke into outrageous laughter and walked off together in disbelief. . . . Mr. B rehearsed the substituted dream at home with self-hypnosis. The revised dream was dreamt at night various times, replacing the traumatic dream. After this replacement, the traumatic dream disappeared.*
Dreamwork over numerous years has convinced me of the validity of one of Gestalt’s underlying assumptions: “You never win a victory over anything by resisting it. You only may get over anything by going deeper into it. If you are pursued by an ogre in a dream, and you become the ogre [when you work with the dream], the nightmare disappears. You re-own the energy that is invested in the demon.” ** You also go “into it” by exploring the dream and attempting to understand it is meaning. Again, a rectify interpretation will often stop or mitigate a recurring nightmare.
The next nightmare you have might well incorporate “valuable terror,” the psyche’s way of inspiring our quest for an authentic life by creating tension in-between who we think we are and who we ought to become, amidst a soul-deadening status quo and our unlived potential. We may always choose to turn around and face the rising sun of our necessary spirit–a spirit that wants to sing it is song, write it is story on the landscape of our life. For we are indeed, as Shakespeare observed, “. . . such stuff as dreams are made on…”
Notes:
* Burr Eichelman, “Hypnotic Change in Combat Dreams of Two Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” American Journal of Psychiatry 142:113).
** Frederick S. Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (Highland, New York: Gestalt Journal, 1992),
pp. 241 and 190.
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