Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

Fear in dreams

In the last two postings of the Book of Dreams Blog*, I’ve examined fear and anger in dreams and in our waking lives. Today’s Dark Knight of the Soul post extends these themes.

The dream (a mild nightmare): A woman is crawling on the ground in obvious distress. In the dream, several different females are in distress.

Interpretation: is this an attack on the soul? Soul stress? On the individuated soul/anima Mundi?

There is a general dysphoria that has gripped the societies of the world. Though this nightmare-like dream may be idiopathic, i.e., not caused by a specific trauma, it may reflect a more global and profound trauma being experienced daily. We are awash in fear-generated news almost 24/7, placing us in nearly constant fight/flight/freeze mode. This affects society’s cohesion, creating an atmosphere of everyone for themselves type of action. Not realizing this fear is internal, we seek ways to mitigate the feelings by attaching ourselves to like-minded people and blaming others outside ourselves and the group we’ve attached to. 

Not knowing where these feelings of fear come from, we conjure wild conspiracy scenarios to create an object of our fears that we can then attack or defend against. But it is us who are the enemy. Wherever we run, wherever we turn, there we are. We flail at ghosts and that which is not us. We try to mitigate what threatens us but always miss the actual perpetrator. Meanwhile, the soul is hung out to dry with its purpose and value-driven existence, drowning in fear and draining its energy as it thrashes about.

*see https://thebookofdreamsblog.wordpress.com/2024/07/21/fear-and-anger-two-sides-of-the-manipulation-coin/

And

Fear and Anger Part II
Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

Situational nightmares vs. replicative trauma nightmares

I’ve written many blog postings about nightmares over the years (see a listing at the end of this article) and dedicated sections on both my website and a section in the book, Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting.

But I want to draw a distinction between nightmares that are born of the need for our health and well-being and those that are reenactments of trauma e.g., the kind many people identified as suffering from PTSD. How you treat them is significantly different.

Nightmares come from the unconscious psyche trying to gain your conscious attention usually because there are events and stressors going on around you or at a subconscious level that you are not paying attention to but can affect you negatively if you don’t act on them. Frequently this kind of nightmare will show up repeatedly until you finally act or until the danger has passed. This type of nightmare can often, though not always, be adequately dealt with by going back into the nightmare while not fully awake or enlivening them after one has awakened, gleaning their meaning and hidden message(s) and or changing the narrative and bringing them to a more satisfactory conclusion. This can be done either on one’s own by looking for the positive in the dream or looking for the environmental triggers that may bring them about. Often this can be done with a friend or even in a dream group.

Being continuously bathed in negative images from TV shows and the news media can often be triggers for recurring nightmares. Limiting one’s exposure to these triggers can prove cathartic and helpful in lessoning or eradicating most recurring nightmare sequences or reduce the number of nightmares over time.

However, those who have suffered extreme trauma e.g., having been physically attacked, raped, intimate partner violence, repeated psychological or physical abuse, experience of extreme events of death, near death, or causing the death of another, or extreme uncontrollable and recurring chaos can sometimes relive these traumas over and over again ad infinitum and require medical and therapeutic help to deal with reoccurring and unrelenting nightmares. These relived or replicative moments of trauma through almost nightly nightmare dreams are symptomatic of those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress and require professional help in dealing with them. To continually relive them can become physically and psycho-emotionally debilitating and fall into the category of a disorder.

Website:

http://thedreamingwizard.com/nightmares_304.html

Blog postings:

Nightmares
Nightmares, Night Terrors, and fear in dreams
Walking the Dark Night
There be Dragons out there: Sailing into the imaginal
The attack of a nightmare often leads to awareness and an opportunity for healing
A drowning dream brings relief