J.M. DeBord How to Approach Nightmares
If dreams are inherently beneficial, a basic premise of this book, then why have nightmares? Why scare yourself by picturing your own death or the death of a loved one, being chased down by something sinister, or replaying the most painful and traumatizing scenes of your life? Because it is necessary for motivation, healing, or perspective. Clever coaches know how to push the buttons of their players and get the best performance out of them, and the dream coach is a clever motivator. If you won’t fight your own battles, dreams bring the fight to you. Face your fears while awake or face them when exaggerated into monsters in nightmares—the choice is yours. Nightmares have that potential to motivate, generally used as a last resort after gentler methods fail. For healing, nightmares are an opportunity to replay and reprocess bad experiences and come out better. For example, when someone who was abused in waking life dreams of besting his or her abuser, it is a sign of moving forward. It allows parts trapped in the past to come into the present, bringing energy and zest. Trauma creates pockets of negative energy that store in he body and mind, so as a self-regulating function, dreams try to release it. Nightmares are a dramatic way of jarring it loose. For perspective, nightmares show what is out of balance in a person. The exaggeration of a nightmare is actually an attempt at balance by graphically portraying it. Good fiction uses the same method to create a memorable story. Take for example the Flannery O’Connor short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” It is set in the Deep South during desegregation, on a bus that only recently allowed blacks to ride, and features a white mother and her son. The mother, raised to be racist in the old South, is full of self-importance based on her perceptions of racial superiority, while her son represents the changing racial attitudes of the time. As a symbol of her self-importance, the mother wears a garish, elaborate hat. So who else gets on the bus wearing the same hat but a black mother with her son. Exact. Same. Hat. The juxtaposition makes for wicked satire as the white mother’s notions are paraded before her eyes. Think of a nightmare, then, as that hat: an exaggeration of fear, a symbol of ego inflation or willful ignorance, a painful realization about negative attitudes or beliefs. Face it while awake or face it while asleep. The psyche is supposed to balance, and if the ego drives to one extreme, the unconscious mind is sure to go just as far in the other direction. J. M. DeBord began studying and interpreting dreams two decades ago. He has worked in newspaper, radio and television journalism, and is the author of a novel, Something Coming: a New Age Thriller. He lives in Tucson, Arizona and interprets dreams as a moderator at Reddit Dreams, where he is known as “RadOwl.” Dreams 1-2-3, published by Hampton Roads Publishing company, is available from Amazon.com, B&N.com and book stores everywhere. xxx |
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