Nightmares!

A nightmare is a dream that occurs during sleep that brings out strong feelings of fear, terror, distress, or anxiety. Nightmares usually happen in the second part of the night and wake up the sleeper, who is able to remember the content of the dream.

We have many kinds of dreams during the night.

There are dreams that replay the day and we sort of "work" in our sleep. I seem to recall these ones a lot when I wake up. I feel like I spent a lot of the night working my job--jeez!

Then, we have venting dreams in which we work out anxieties, i.e, falling, being chased, hiding....

Often we have dreams in which we integrate parts of ourselves. We observe someone else's behavior and judge it to be bad, good, scary, or whatever. Interestingly, these are often a reflection of us not owning a part of ourselves, some aspect of our personality. I once got upset because I had lesbian dream and then found out that it made sense at the time. I was owning my female aspect and appreciating my female-ness as I contemplating dating after the divorce. I was in touch with my womanly body and attractiveness. (and, no, fellas--I did not record the dream for viewing!)

We have dreams in which we are also faced with some great calamity and these sometimes signify a need for change in our life. It represents the uncertainty of life and accepting change.

Repetition dreams? Well, those boogers are trying to give us a message to help us evolve, but until we figure it out, we will continue to be plagued by the recurrent nightmare. I had one of a tornado chasing me for years. It drove me nuts. It would find me no matter where I hid. I realized eventually it was reflecting my feelings towards my spouse. I was constantly feeling like a child hiding from the school principal and no matter where I hid, he would stalk me. I stood up to the tornado in one dream and chased it instead. I never had the dream again.

Precognition dreams are not unusual either. I happen to suffer from these, most often airplane crashes and natural disasters. I know they're pre-cog because I seem to be invisible to all people involved in the dream. I stand there and witness it. In one such dream recently. I stood on the highway between Phoenix and Tucson and watched trucks plow into each other and a car go tumbling and I didn't even flinch or move out of the road. I was there as a sort of holographic witness. The next day, on the news they reported a dust storm caused a truck and car pile up. They showed it on the news and it was exactly like the dream, even the very distinct car I saw!

Prophetic dreams occur too. These bring you someone you love who has passed or someone like Jesus who is symbolic to you. There is a message. Try and write it down. I had one with my father recently and I will be writing about it soon. I also had one with that damn alien from my regression session. He showed up in my room again in a dream the other night with a few friends. They were all strangely different--looked like greys, but one of them was decorative and strangely lit. They seemed to be having a conference about me but wanted no contact with me. Just wanted to have a talk with no speech.

Wish fulfillment is the dream I most wish for, well, and sex dreams, but to me those are one and the same! These are good. They work sort of like inner positive talk. I had one the other day where I was at my goal weight and I remembered what it was like to be model thin. I looked at myself in the mirror and looked down at my body in pretty clothing and I felt magically perfect. I woke up and proceeded to work out hard!

So, you can see by all the types of dreams, that sometimes a nightmare is a way to help us work out issues, build up our life skills and be able to handle the demons that come at us the next day. Sometimes, if we're stuck in cycles of nightmares they can be medication-induced (naproxen sodium does it for me, i.e. Aleve), but they can also mean that we aren't feeling confident in our skills to handle things in our daytime life. We practice over and over again and again until we feel we have the skills to survive our greatest fears.

Dream Work: Repeat Dreams

It's another in my series about dreams.

Repeat dreams are fairly common. Most often, these are thematic, such as; naked in a public place, teeth falling out, running but staying in place, post-apocalypse, tornadoes chasing you, forgetting a locker number or being late for class on a test day.

A lot of these are universally common. Some are very specific and unusual. The thing they have in common is the issue one is wrestling with. Let's look at the naked in a public place one. Should I have one where I'm naked in a public place and people recognize I'm naked and point and such, then I feel like everyone sees all my shortcomings and I'm under scrutiny. If, however, I know I'm naked but they don't, then I feel there's something others are missing about my character that if exposed would be shaming. In other words, I'm snowing them, but I'm inches away from being found out. This one is likely to happen if I feel I'm in over my head on a task and I fear that others will see the insecurities within me.

I actually do have the teeth falling out one, but only when I lose a loved one. Then, in the grieving process, I dream of my teeth falling out and I know I'm in trouble because the teeth are not deciduous and once lost, cannot be placed back. That represents the knowledge that I have had a permanent loss in my life, someone who is irreplaceable.

These themes tell us much about how feel about where we are in our lives. We choose the same theme to play out the same issue again and again. In fact, early influences can pop up. You might have a sister you don't get along with come up in a dream when you're not getting along with a coworker. Your sister now represents in your dreams anyone who does not get along with you. For me, I bring up Erica Kane, a character from "All My Children" to represent my assertive ambitious side. When I was a little kid, I looked at her character as the strongest most single-minded woman I knew.

Sometimes, we have repeat dreams until we handle them. I had the chased by intelligent tornadoes dreams for years until one dream, I got lucid and decided I wasn't going to run and hide yet again! I looked at the ground, saw a manhole cover, opened it up and climbed down. I outsmarted it and it never showed up again.

Do you have repeat dreams? I'd love to hear which ones crop up for y'all.

Dream Work: Dreams That Come True?

What do you do when a dream comes true--literally? Well, I have some very strange examples to share. Welcome to my dream world. It's not always problem solving or assimilation of new realities like deaths in the family or divorce. No, I also have these dreams that, well, involve actualities.

The first premonition dream I remember having I just after my son was born, a little over a week after. It was an Aloha Airlines flight with a hole blow in the fuselage and a flight attendant sucked out of it. The thing that stood out for me was the perspective. I was on the co-pilot's side of the plane, flying without a plane slightly behind the airplane when the hole blew out and the flight attendant went hurling. I thought it was just a strange dream, but while I nursed my newborn, I watched the news and they showed the exact scenario. It disturbed me, but I put it away and ignored it. I was a new mom and had better things to do.

However, over the ensuing decades, I continued to have earthquake, helicopter and airplane disaster dreams. The disturbing thing about the plane ones was that I was a passenger and I saw everything, the people, the conversations, how it looked when it happened, what everyone done. Flight 800, I went all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Each time I know it's a premonition because I can't be seen or heard by anyone and I know I'm there as a witness. The most interesting one was a hostage situation in Africa that crashed into the water. I was on the pilot side of the plane near the front. In fact, for some reason I could see the pilot and out the windshield as if the cockpit door was open. I looked out and watched as we rushed to the water. The perspective was amazing. These always happen within 48 hours of the event, usually within 12-24 hours. I have no idea why I have them, why I'm tied to plane especially. There is much to learn about this phenomena. But, having sat through dozens of plane wrecks, needless to say I'm not keen about flying because I know what it feels like to go down.

I also started having in recent years dreams where I visit people far away in other countries. I wake up feeling exhausted like I traveled all night. One time, I decided to figure out if I actually did meet this one blogger in her country. I contacted her and asked if anything strange happened recently. She got back to me after looking at my profile pic and said "it was you?" She described the scene that I had experienced in the dream, even explaining why in the dream she was speaking so slowly, she feared I wouldn't understand her accent. She was a psychic, which explains why she recalls my visit to her home, but later I had another one of a British blogger. She had no memory of the visit, but the marketplace and her mother and their relationship and argument were all accurate as was the part where in the dream I asked for a specific mall and she said it existed and was not far from where she lived.

The other night, I had one that will stick with me for life. I was for some reason in an airport greeting my sister and her kids and I looked over and saw my father who has been dead for 31 years. This may not be exceptional except, as you may remember I have facial amnesia. In dreams, I don't see the faces of people I know, I simply know it's them somehow psychically, but I never see their heads or faces. But, I stared directly at my father, saw every line on his face, the color of his skin, his height, his expression, the dent in his chin, the scar from being attacked by a dog as a child and I drank in every detail, going back and forth, studying him. It was the first face I have ever clearly seen in my mind EVER. I went and hugged him and somehow I remembered what his hug felt like, but I knew what it felt like as my full height now which I was not when he died. It was so amazingly real that I feel that I had an authentic encounter.

So, have you ever had a dream that cam true?

Dream Work: How Are You Coping?

"Dream Work" is a new series because I want to address dreams, but I don't want to do it in one breathy long post. It's too important and there's too much to say.

People ask me about dreams a lot. Things show up in dreams that are disturbing, out of place, and just plain weird. No matter what the plots and who the characters are, none of it really is relevant except for an exercise in skills. Look at it this way, you're riding to jury duty and your mind is thinking ahead about what might happen if you get picked and how you'll have to sit in the boring courtroom and maybe do it or days on end and you wonder if the people you're sitting there with are interesting or total morons you have to fight with. You just daydreamed a scenario to prepare yourself for what's ahead. We do the same thing in sleep. Our dream state tells us just how well we're coping or not coping in our awake world.

Suppose you have the dream about someone stalking you in a forest. There's a lot of ways this scenario could turn out, but what's critical is how you're handling what happens in the woodlands. If you run, scream and hide, you're showing similar coping skills in your wake state. If you face the beast and fight it, you're feeling competent and ready for a confrontation.

Ever have that dreaded naked in a public place dream? If people see you naked and point and laugh, then you are feeling that everyone sees what a fool you are. But, if you're naked and ashamed, but no one seems to notice, then you are feeling foolish but also believe others don't see what a fool you are. Only you seem to know how vulnerable you are.

I've had the teeth falling out dream. It happens every time I lose someone I love. Adult teeth are irreplaceable. There's a feeling of permanence and inability to do a damn thing.

I often have end of the world dreams and they are always the same: I'm the designated leader, having to tell people who are crying and helpless what to do and make them do their jobs. I'm calm as can be, but annoyed as hell. This pretty much says how I feel about where I am in my life now, a bit overly responsible and practical about what needs to get done.

So, next time you have a dream, just stop and look at it; now the situation, but how you handled the situation. It reveals exactly how you feel inside about your abilities right now with what you're facing in the waking state.

Apocalyptic Nightmares: Disturbed Sleep

People often bring up the subject of nightmares with me. Perhaps it’s the psychic side of me or the fact that I’ve counseled folks with anxiety issues for over 20 years, but somehow folks feel comfortable bringing up their inner fears.

On my own time, in the past few years I’ve noticed repeated post-apocalypse nightmares in my dream-state themes. They weren’t something I ever dreamed up before, but something born in the post 9-11 time period with Bush’s color-coded terror alerts and duct tape and plastic, anthrax and airport shut downs when people sneak past security.

Many people have expressed to me having similar themed dreams. I’m guessing during WWII there were similar nightmares of bombs dropping, invasions, et cetera.

The content of the dreams can reflect people you ran into that day, movies you watched before bedtime, and running background anxieties. The sleep state offers you time to work out things, problem solve and release fears and gain mastery. The theme of the apocalypse is an ideal gauntlet.

Here’s how my dream usually goes:

Everything is dusty and tan-colored. There is no other color in the scene. I am trudging along, tired, feet sore, hot, exhausted. There are people around me. Not a large group, perhaps a dozen. We are climbing over rocks and small sandstone cliffs. I stop and ask everyone to rest and conserve their energy. The group gathers around and looks at me as if I have something important to say. They look as weary as I feel but they also seem quite lost.

I point to one person and say “you find us shelter. Go with that person and that person.” I point to others. I turn. “You,” I point, “go with him and her and her and find water.” I go down the line telling people what to do. They nervously wander off. We find a shelter, we find water and food, we cower inside a cave.

The others are contented to continue on this way, but I know we can do better if we get to more resources. I tell them we must conserve our resources so we can take them with us.

Then, off we go to walk again, longer, harder, hotter, more uncomfortable until we get a glimmer of something green and wet in the distance and everyone cheers. I have brought them to the promise land. I asked them to believe me and I provided.

In the dream, I never arrive to the oasis, but I wake up feeling both exhausted from the long saga and kind of down because it was a miserable world I just spent my sleep time in.

Do these dreams mean end of times is coming? No. It simply means that we are all using themes that we relate to in order to work out problems of every day life.

In the case of your dreams, it doesn’t matter so much what is happening in them, so much as how you are handling the themes. If you run and cower, you do not feel ready to handle what’s happening in your life. If you take control, you are feeling very competent. Perhaps you freak out and then stop and take control, that is reflective of your daily life.

So, don’t worry so much about the end of the world dream prophecies, worry how you handle them.