"Nightmares" and Dreams

I suppose that virtually every human life at some point has nighttime experiences that result in intense images, feelings, and awakenings with unease and intensity.  We tend to call these experiences “nightmares.”

I do not like using the term nightmare. (I just looked up the etymology of nightmare.  It stems from the word “Mare” in Old English meaning an evil, suffocating demon.)  If we refer to our intense, memorable, often-times disturbing dreams as nightmares, we are using our conscious mind to powerfully push the material of the dream back into the unconscious. 

Have you noticed how we tend to talk about our dreams when we make a bit of an effort to speak of them consciously?  Almost without exception these kinds of words are used: “weird” “crazy” “bizarre.” These kinds of ways of relating to our dreams indicate an almost innate wish to banish the material back to unconsciousness.

Instead, we could speak of our dreams with words like: “fascinating” “meaningful” “creative” “mysterious” … all words that can draw us towards our dreams and what they might mean for us, rather than push the dream material away. 

It is not uncommon for people to say they “suffer from nightmares.” I can certainly understand and trust you the reader can as well.  It is suffering to be awakened by powerful, disturbing images.  I propose that a potent way to suffer less is to be respectful of the dreams.  Stop calling them “nightmares” or demons, and instead open up to the possibility that intense, memorable, and yes, sometimes painful-feeling dreams are potent moments when our dreams grab our attention.  Perhaps we can increase our faith in ourselves and explore how these attention-grabbing dreams have a purpose. This change of mindset would, at a minimum, have us suffer less because we wouldn’t be wondering what is wrong with us that our dreams are vivid and disturbing (because, after all, this is common to being human).  And more, we may find that in listening to our dreams in a respectful way, we discover a meaningful connection to something deep within ourselves.