Dreams, in general, are a communication window between conscious and subconscious. Nightmares leave you agitated, unable to rest, tired, exhausted and impair your ability to function properly the next day. It’s normal since a nightmare is a dream about a threat to your wellbeing. As if the bad dream wasn’t enough, it can be accompanied by bruxism (crushing your teeth), twitching, even sleep paralysis.
Alright, so we know they’re bad. What’s the good thing? Let’s break them down first and see what’s inside the nightmares.
How nightmares work
Nightmares depict a fear. Let’s face it, if they wouldn’t be scary, we would just call them weird dreams. As pointed out in this article, one of the essential functions of sleep is to enable you to recall memories accurately. So, when you sleep, your brain is organizing the events of the day for storage. Ok, try to remember this for a minute.
Anxiety is an unconscious fear. Unrealistic usually, often guided by catastrophic thinking. Stress, explained in detail here, is caused also by something you worry about – therefore fear. Fear is the main fuel of nightmares. A secondary fuel can be some frustration in your life.
PTSD causes recurring nightmares, but I would leave that as a separate category. However, in essence, PTSD nightmares also communicate about an interior fear.
Therefore nightmares reflect our current fears or older fears (in case of trauma), while archiving memories. Physical factors such as high temperature in the room, lack of oxygen, certain medications or eating within the last two hours before sleep make you prone to experiencing nightmares.
Some examples
You can understand now, why when you’re stressed about your day to day activity and your brain is storing the information, you might dream bad about it. You had to do a report or you’re about to miss a sale target and you’ve taught about it all day. Then you go to sleep and keep dreaming about it. It makes sense. But what about nightmares involving evil creatures or accidents?
Sometimes the things we fear don’t have a physical shape per se: fear of being alone, fear of being betrayed, fear of embarrassment. As a result, our brain is putting together a “screenplay” (the nightmare) that will reflect your fear. When you dream of a supernatural being attacking you, it could be that you’re fearing something you don’t think you can fight back in any way. You feel powerless. So the message isn’t that you’re afraid of vampires or werewolves. The message is that you are experiencing an overwhelming fear about something you feel you have no means to fight back, although you know it can be “killed”.
People say that if you watch a scary movie before going to bed you’ll dream about it. Well, yes and no. If whatever is in the movie was scary enough to reflect the intensity of something you fear right now, your brain might use that image since it’s at hand. Remember, the brain is a bit lazy by nature, it picks whatever saves it the trouble of thinking.
Got it, now what do I do with this info?
You treat your fear. What is that nightmare trying to communicate? Usually the image brought up reflects the intensity of your fear. Let’s say you have a fear of unknown because you’re changing jobs. If it’s a minor fear, you might just dream of a shaky suspended bridge, fearing in your dream that you might fall. If you’re scared s***less, you might dream that you’re moving through a field of zombies. The brain is trying to bring up or put together an image that reflects the intensity of your fear.
So, first, identify the (possibly recurring) theme of your nightmare. Is it hidden danger, lack of means to survive, betrayal, one person in particular? What stays in every bad dream? What feeling is the dream trying to communicate? Hopelessness, shame, lack of control in your life?
The interpretation of a dream is specific to you alone. Two people can dream the same thing and have complete different meaning to them. And just to be clear, when I say interpreting dreams we’re not talking about foreseeing the future or other esoteric interpretation.
Also try to observe if there is a timeline or physical pattern when you experience nightmares. For example: every Tuesday or only during the weekend, only when sleeping in a certain room/ house or after taking some meds, after drinking alcohol. Make some notes to make it easier to see the pattern.
What’s the solution?
Therapy. That’s the easy and meaningful way to solve them. It works for both day to day stress and unhealed trauma. As you start healing, the evolution of recurring nightmares is interesting. First, the cadence changes. Then you might actually fight back whatever scares you. Until you stop dreaming that bad stuff.
Other helpful things you can do: open the window for some fresh air, don’t eat at least 2 hours before going to bed, leave aside any technology prior to sleep, try some meditation or other relaxing technique (like progressive muscle relaxation).
Conclusion
Scary as they may be, nightmares are just a message from your subconscious. It’s trying to tell you that it fears something. It can be a rational fear, if you’re in a war zone or dangerous place or fully irrational. You just have to take action and do something about it. Inaction is the worst type of action.
If you have enjoyed reading this or know someone who needs to hear all this, please go ahead and share it with your friends. Thank you!
