My earliest memory of a dream is a nightmare.
I’m a little girl, maybe 4 or 5 years old. I’m in a grass or wheat field, or desert - somewhere very dry. The wind is blowing, my hair is whipping around my face. I have a calf-length cotton dress on with black shoes on my feet. Something happens far away and I run through the field. There is a wood plank shack with black tar paper half torn off, blowing in the wind, making eerie sounds as it slaps against the wall. I crunch down and hide behind the plank boards with daylight spilling between them. I’m terrified. I’m alone. There is nowhere else to go. Then suddenly, I’m still a little girl, but I’m watching the scared little girl huddle behind a wooden shack, arms over her head shielding her. I look out across the tar paper roof and in the distance see a massive black wave of thick oil heading her direction. There is nothing I can do to save her. In seconds, the wave washes over the shack and I wake up.
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Nightmares suck. The animal brain doesn’t know our physical body is not actually there in the dream. Whenever I have a nightmare, I wake up in sweats, my heart is pounding, cortisol courses through my veins. My body thinks whatever happened in the dream, happened. Period. The stress of the dream actually happens to my physical body.
That black wave dream reoccured many times throughout my youth, but I never got used to it. My body never chilled out and thought, Oh, here we go again. I got this number. No problem. We know how the story ends. Every time I had that dream, the stress happened to my body all over again.
You may be wondering, “What the hell kind of childhood did you have?” I had a great childhood. Caring parents, a loving (albeit good-crazy) extended family, lots of friends growing up. No traumatic experiences with humans (although plenty of traumatic dreams and visions, which is a whole other subject.) So it seems strange to me as an adult, that I would have been plagued for so much of my childhood with scary dreams.
I did some research.
Check this out:
Nightmares1 are very common among children and fairly common among adults. Often nightmares are caused by stress, traumatic experiences, emotional difficulties, drugs or medication, or illness. However, some people have frequent nightmares that seem unrelated to their waking lives. Recent studies suggest that these people tend to be more open, sensitive, trusting, and emotional than average.
Yes, that last sentence is me.
Even the folks at Harvard are studying this phenomenon and have distinguished between actual Nightmares (like the one above) and Night Terrors. Night Terrors, however, aren’t really dreams but are fearful reactions to shifting from one sleep phase to another. The difference? Nightmares have a narrative. Stuff happens in Nightmares. With Night Terrors, the poor kid wakes up with a pounding heart and the feeling of terror, and might occasionally see one single image, but there is no narrative.
Scott Edwards writes in Harvard’s On The Brain:2
Although adults can suffer from nightmares, they are more typical in children, especially those between the ages of 3 and 6.
So maybe being born a Pisces, with a wide-open channel to the dream realm, is to blame for all the nightmares that scared the living shit out of me growing up. The hairy-scary dreams didn’t start to diminish until I was in my 40’s. But by then, as an adult, I was given tools to deal with them and they didn’t control me. Those nightmares didn’t own me like they did when I was a little girl.
In that same Harvard article, Scott Edwards talks about a psychological therapy called IRT. I wonder if that was around when I was three? Basically, the therapist asks the tortured dreamer to remember and write down their nightmares. Then, back in the office, reclining on the couch, the dreamer rewrites the endings of the dreams that scared the shit out of them and creates positive endings.
If I had a three or four-year-old kid terrorized by nightmares, that is exactly what I would do. I think my parents did some sort of talk-therapy version of this with me. It makes sense.
So, better late than never. Here’s my rewrite for the above nightmare that haunted me the first quarter of my life:
I’m a little girl, maybe 4 or 5 years old. I’m in a green field full of yellow and purple blooming flowers. The wind is blowing, my hair is whipping around my face. I’m wearing my favorite calf-length cotton dress, with pink shoes on my feet. I’m with my best friends and my family and we’re running through the field, laughing. We see a wood plank shack with a bright tin roof shining in the sun. The wind is whistling through the daylight between the boards, sounding like a wind-song. Someone shouts, “Hide and seek!” I run and crouch behind the plank boards, trying not to laugh. A little bunny runs out from under the floor and chews on my pink shoes.
There. I think I can sleep on that.
Your turn.
Oh, geeze don't get me started on nightmares! Where to start...
great story and added research was good. Since starting this newsletter, I have been more aware of my dreams and started writing them down. I notice a trend. Great writing prompts. Taking time to write requires discipline... one of my short comings. thanks for this newsletter.