A nightmare is a dream that occurs during sleep that brings out strong feelings of fear, terror, distress, or anxiety. Nightmares usually happen in the second part of the night and wake up the sleeper, who is able to remember the content of the dream.
We have many kinds of dreams during the night.
There are dreams that replay the day and we sort of "work" in our sleep. I seem to recall these ones a lot when I wake up. I feel like I spent a lot of the night working my job--jeez!
Then, we have venting dreams in which we work out anxieties, i.e, falling, being chased, hiding....
Often we have dreams in which we integrate parts of ourselves. We observe someone else's behavior and judge it to be bad, good, scary, or whatever. Interestingly, these are often a reflection of us not owning a part of ourselves, some aspect of our personality. I once got upset because I had lesbian dream and then found out that it made sense at the time. I was owning my female aspect and appreciating my female-ness as I contemplating dating after the divorce. I was in touch with my womanly body and attractiveness. (and, no, fellas--I did not record the dream for viewing!)
We have dreams in which we are also faced with some great calamity and these sometimes signify a need for change in our life. It represents the uncertainty of life and accepting change.
Repetition dreams? Well, those boogers are trying to give us a message to help us evolve, but until we figure it out, we will continue to be plagued by the recurrent nightmare. I had one of a tornado chasing me for years. It drove me nuts. It would find me no matter where I hid. I realized eventually it was reflecting my feelings towards my spouse. I was constantly feeling like a child hiding from the school principal and no matter where I hid, he would stalk me. I stood up to the tornado in one dream and chased it instead. I never had the dream again.
Precognition dreams are not unusual either. I happen to suffer from these, most often airplane crashes and natural disasters. I know they're pre-cog because I seem to be invisible to all people involved in the dream. I stand there and witness it. In one such dream recently. I stood on the highway between Phoenix and Tucson and watched trucks plow into each other and a car go tumbling and I didn't even flinch or move out of the road. I was there as a sort of holographic witness. The next day, on the news they reported a dust storm caused a truck and car pile up. They showed it on the news and it was exactly like the dream, even the very distinct car I saw!
Prophetic dreams occur too. These bring you someone you love who has passed or someone like Jesus who is symbolic to you. There is a message. Try and write it down. I had one with my father recently and I will be writing about it soon. I also had one with that damn alien from my regression session. He showed up in my room again in a dream the other night with a few friends. They were all strangely different--looked like greys, but one of them was decorative and strangely lit. They seemed to be having a conference about me but wanted no contact with me. Just wanted to have a talk with no speech.
Wish fulfillment is the dream I most wish for, well, and sex dreams, but to me those are one and the same! These are good. They work sort of like inner positive talk. I had one the other day where I was at my goal weight and I remembered what it was like to be model thin. I looked at myself in the mirror and looked down at my body in pretty clothing and I felt magically perfect. I woke up and proceeded to work out hard!
So, you can see by all the types of dreams, that sometimes a nightmare is a way to help us work out issues, build up our life skills and be able to handle the demons that come at us the next day. Sometimes, if we're stuck in cycles of nightmares they can be medication-induced (naproxen sodium does it for me, i.e. Aleve), but they can also mean that we aren't feeling confident in our skills to handle things in our daytime life. We practice over and over again and again until we feel we have the skills to survive our greatest fears.
