Typical images in nightmares are snakes or spiders attacking, or some kind of monster chasing you. They can also be about riding in an out-of-control vehicle, getting lost, finding yourself in a dark and scary place, or any situation that you find scary in real life. This type of dream feels so real that the dreamer may lie in bed for several minutes after waking up, body shaking, heart pounding, breathless. Some nightmares are so terrifying that they are remembered for days, weeks, months, or even years. Some dreams become recurring nightmares and occur over and over again.
Why do people have nightmares?
Would it surprise you if I told you that these worst types of dreams are of great value? Would you believe me if I told you that there are positive reasons for them? Despite its strange and terrifying images, despite breaking your night’s sleep and waking you up in a panic, the nightmare offers a gift.
If you’ve been prone to nightmares, you’re probably shaking your head right now and thinking, “How could such a terrifying dream be such a gift?”
A nightmare is the messenger
A nightmare is perhaps the most misunderstood type of dream. Often it is a deep subconscious scream to get your attention. The positive intention of a nightmare is to bring you an important message for your benefit and insists on being felt, heard and seen!
The main reasons for nightmares are fears about something that has happened or is happening in waking life. Because most people don’t know how to release stress, they internalize it.
Some people tend to be stoic and suppress or deny their fears. These fearful emotions get buried (suppressed/repressed) within the subconscious, where they can fester and get much worse.
You could be in a current situation that you think you are handling well enough and not realize that you are subconsciously afraid about it. When fears, anxieties and worries get stuck, a scary dream actually shows how intense your fears are.
Children don’t usually talk about what scares them. They tend to keep their fears inside. Children’s nightmares can be caused by fighting parents, a bad teacher, school bullies, scary movies, etc. A sensitive child can become fearful of something that would never occur to an adult. For example, some children may feel left out and fear they won’t be wanted because of all the attention the new baby is getting.
The recurring nightmare usually begins in childhood. To put an end to a recurring dream, the parent needs to find out what fear or intense trauma the child has suffered.
In adults, nightmares can be caused by fears about stressful situations in one’s life. Worries about work or money, a serious illness, deep insecurity, the possible loss of home – any of these factors can trigger nightmares or nightmares. The problem with understanding that your dream is addressing a fear of the day, is that the ‘revision’ night version is loaded with terrifying ‘substitution’ symbolism. If you are afraid of snakes and you dream that a snake bites you, the dream is NOT warning you that a snake may attack you in your real life. The phenomenon of ‘dream substitution’ has come into play. most of you No Make the connection between the terrifying snake that attacks you at night and the troubling physical illness you suffer from during the day. You may not realize that the dream monster that haunts you actually represents your fears of being out of a job and not having enough money to pay your bills.
Other reasons for nightmares
A nightmare can bring up buried fears about a distressing or traumatic situation that happened a long time ago. People with PTSD may have terrifying nightmares in which they relive the traumatic event. Fears trapped in the psyche that surface in a dream are a plea from the subconscious to resolve and leave the past behind.
There is an interesting reason for some nightmares. For those who enjoy terrifying rides or horror movies, your nightmares can serve the dual purpose of making you feel your inner fears and also helping you release them.
The questions that one can intuitively ask after waking up from a nightmare are:
What internal feelings, stress, worries or fears should I pay attention to?
What situation in my waking life feels as scary as this dream made me feel?
If there’s no answer to these questions, try this one: What event from my past might still be haunting me?
Ponder each question, pause, and wait for an answer that intuitively “pops” into your mind.
A true dream monster gift.
Anger, resentment, stress, or fearful emotions that are buried deep within oneself may have a tendency to cause damage or disease in the body. Another very positive reason for nightmares is to show you what your emotions look and feel like. In your scary dreams, you can actually see your fears. They adopt symbolic images proportioned to the intensity of the emotion. In other words, your fears become the monsters of your dreams.
A terrifying dream monster is called a “thought form”, that is, a symbolic mirror image of the fear within you. If you had the presence of mind to face the fear monster in the dream and ask it what it wants to tell you, it might say something like this: “I’m your fear. I’m buried inside you. I can’t get out, so I live in your body. I can make your body break. You could get sick. Or, this is the reason you’re sick. You need to see and feel how intense I am, recognize me as your fear and find a way to release it.”
Using EFT to tap to release the fear that is showing up in a dream
EFT or Meridian Tapping is a wonderful tool to release stress, worries and fears. You can tap on and eliminate the ‘hangover’ fear you feel when you first wake up from the dream. You can then tap on the fears you feel within the dream.
Even if you don’t understand the meaning of your nightmare, you can still tap using the phrases, “Even though I don’t know what specific fear this dream is about, I am open to receiving the message in other ways and choose to safely release this fear.”
Use Dream Decipher to interpret your dreams
Most people do not understand the meaning of their dreams because they are symbolic, and many times they substitute one fear for another. You don’t need to pay someone to interpret your dreams for you. You can learn to do it yourself. The Dream Decipher process, an intuition-based dream interpretation tool, works quickly to help you get the real message from any dream.
