Nightmares: Why We Have Them and What to Do with Them
What do you do with dreams that leave you shaken? Hint: Your nightmares may have hidden wisdom.
You’re being chased by someone—or something. There’s been a horrifying display of violence. Or, you’re hopelessly late. You’re completely lost. You’re suddenly aware of being (accidentally) naked in public.
The list of our most common nightmare scenarios is very long. Tens of thousands of people query search engines and AI bots each month in search of a hint about what these disturbing dreams might mean.
How about you? What—if anything—do you do with those dreams that leave you shaken upon waking?
Students in the Haden Institute’s dream work certification program all read Jeremy Taylor’s book, The Wisdom of Your Dreams, to begin their studies. One of Taylor’s foundational beliefs was that all dreams come to us in the service of our health and wholeness. Even the stressy ones. The disturbingly sexualized ones. The utterly grotesque ones. The gory ones. The ones that frighten us way down deep. Maybe, those are especially here to help us.
In general, we learn to work with nightmares and the dream figures or symbols they contain as dramas from our unconscious selves working overtime to get our conscious selves to pay attention. Something is off. Something needs healing. Something is wrecking our lives or best intentions and it’s happening outside of our conscious awareness. Wake up to this part of your life that you’re not seeing—or not seeing clearly. That’s what nightmares most often have to offer us.
We say “in general” because there is an important distinction to make between a more-or-less normal nightmare and some recurrent nightmares or night terrors where the same scenario is played out over and over.
Bob Hoss has perhaps done more than anyone to gather and synthesize research in brain science and dream material. Hoss has been a regular, long-time lecturer in our training programs. In his book Dream Language (which you can download for free on his website), he helps make distinctions between a “normal” nightmare and recurrent trauma-related nightmares that are common for “… veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorders, and those who have had life threatening encounters such as natural disasters, all forms of accidents, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, terrorism, political persecution, loss, or exposure to other significant stressors.”
Even in the case of the recurrent trauma nightmare, there’s evidence to suggest that these dreams come in the service of the healing of our conscious selves. Subtle changes in the details of these dreams and their outcomes may present over time, suggesting that the unconscious is working hard to help us find a workable way to accept or metabolize these real-life horrors and to continue flourishing in spite of them.
We don’t want to make it seem easy to wrestle with nightmares or disturbing dreams. They may prove to be one of the most valuable offerings from our unconscious, but that doesn’t make this work pleasant or simple. Even those of us who have been at this for many years are just as susceptible to waking up in a cold sweat, and to all the big emotional and psychic reactions that nightmares constellate.
That’s no fun, but we do believe it’s a good thing. Over time, in the Haden community, we’ve come—with many others—to embrace the jagged, sometimes bloody gifts that nightmares hold for our inner work and individuation journeys.
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by Corey Keyes
