Some people dream often, others rarely or not at all. But everyone will remember one nightmare in their life. However, in times of crisis, dreams become brighter, and we see more terrible dreams, being frightened of them and trying to forget. In fact, you need to be friends with nightmares, because they help you get through the crisis faster, more resourcefully and more efficiently.
It is in times of crisis that our unconscious more than ever generously treats us with thrillers, action films, and even entire action-packed series. The first thing you want to do is quickly forget the horror. And often we wake up at the very climax, because fear, cold sweat, trembling in the knees, screams are often real, not fictional. Why do we have more nightmares in times of crisis and change?
“Because uncertainty scares us,” explains transactional analysis practitioner, integrative psychotherapist Ekaterina Marinheiro Fagna. And our unconscious in crisis is looking for a way out. For some, this feeling is in normal concentration, while for others it goes off scale, and the person falls into an affect of horror, and then hyperfear overtakes him.
These processes are associated with the limbic system of the brain and all subcortical structures. If they were already overloaded before the crisis, then you are more likely to have a nightmare, and not just a vivid dream of a general apocalypse. During a crisis, people see more active and rich visions. Or vice versa — dreams become not so bright or stop dreaming altogether. And this, too, is an important message from our unconscious.
In a crisis, habitual patterns of reaction to a particular situation are exacerbated, and the scenario of life literally pops up brightly and prominently in our dreams. If you read the message of the unconscious, then you can take a hidden resource to overcome the crisis and to resolve the old pattern. A nightmare is a springboard to a new life, a chance to get out of the trap of the script. The main thing is to overcome the primary fear and understand what our unconscious is talking about.
After reading the message of the unconscious, it is really possible to jump to a new quantum level of life and find yourself with more resources than you entered the crisis. Dreams in the current situation have generally changed. And this is a massive phenomenon. Those who have had dreams stop dreaming, those who have not dreamed begin. Or suffer from insomnia associated with living through a crisis. That is, due to stress, sleep disturbance occurs in various forms.
Often people wake up in a dream when they have a nightmare, they get scared, they walk around under the impression all day. Maybe it’s easier to forget (although more often just the opposite happens — we remember some night horrors all our lives)?
Eco-friendly and fast way to a solution
“I use dreams in crisis as a tool for working with clients and with myself. Their potential is very important to me,” the psychotherapist shares. “Because this is an extraordinary opportunity to get out of the script of life and change it. Fear is the best conductor. Generous helper — he always carries hidden resources. At these moments, the storerooms of the tools that we already have are opened. The main thing is not to be afraid of the keeper, who can come in the form of a monster or a maniac, any image that brings fear.
Dreams in crises, nightmares — this is the material that allows you to jump out of the scenario of life. It helps to do this work more environmentally friendly, more gently, faster than if the crisis had not happened. People will end up paying less money because they need fewer therapist sessions. Because they were able to read the language of the unconscious in a crisis.»
That is, at least do not brush aside sleep. And as a maximum — try to decipher the message and take the opportunity.
Sometimes we dream of events that have already happened. Sometimes we foresee the future or encounter a new fantasy world. The viewer is tempted to interpret the nightmare literally. Or look into popular dream books, of which there are many now. Or share with family and friends, and they will add their variations on the theme “What could it be?”. It does not add clarity and calmness. Moreover, we can harm ourselves by choosing the most disastrous final option from the entire “menu” of the dream book. Generate a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How to understand the plot and plot so that the dream becomes the key to the answer to the question that worries our unconscious?
“I have come a long and powerful way while learning to work with dreams,” recalls the psychotherapist. — My love story for dreams and the desire to use it for psychological self-help began long before I became a psychologist. As a child, I had a difficult personal history and my unconscious reacted very vividly and violently at night.
I was a child when I realized that I can do anything with dreams: I can order them, find comfort, travel through them, correct them by reviewing them, relive them, but in a different way, and get relief.
Later, at the age of 13-14, I got acquainted with the works of Freud and Jung, discovered that there is a scientific psychological approach to the analysis of dreams. At 15-16 she studied the techniques of Castaneda, tantra, the practices of Spanish Christian mystics and Tibetan monks for working with dreams, Hindu methods of work. In a word, she went through a long spiritual path long before she became a psychologist — it was interesting to me.
And in adolescence, I was surprised that we sleep and do nothing, we waste this time in vain. Is it possible to sleep more consciously? I spent many years lucid dreaming.»
On the one hand, dreams are a reality that turns its open side to us, and we cling to and understand something. On the other hand, there is something hidden and sacred, where our unconscious does not let us. And do not rush there ahead of time, Ekaterina is convinced.
“I have a deep conviction, and here I am speaking not as a psychologist, but as a person who has gone through a long spiritual path – there is a spirit and there is a soul. There are things that protect us. No need to be a monkey with a grenade and climb there. I saw those who experimented with the unconscious and lost their minds in these games. I myself lost the ability to dream for two years.
Reach out to fear
From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the objects in our nightly films mean specific things that are important to us. Sometimes it is in a dream that something that entered our life in the preverbal or even the perinatal period manifests itself.
Dreams can be viewed from different sides, layers. Therefore, you need to trust not dream books, but your own subject history, which everyone has their own. The same object for different dreamers in different circumstances will mean different things.
Most of us remain just contemplatives or heroes of a dream that acts according to a plot unknown to us. But you can be a screenwriter and director and change the rules of the game yourself. And help yourself find answers to important questions. This is where the technique of psychological analysis of dreams is needed. Then you can be your own psychologist directly in a dream.
“Lucid dreaming is walking into different dream realities. Science has long found out that we have different types of dreams on different waves, we can descend to different depths, just not everyone knows this, the psychotherapist continues. “An ancient practice teaches you how to act when you are in a nightmare and want help from the main monster of sleep.
You need to ask him for what he saves for you. Say, «Give me what you have,» and reach out. And how to see hands in a dream, the ancient treatise did not say. And I found this opportunity myself. At the beginning of the dream, try to see your hands: either pick up or pass some object, see how your hand opens the door, or just look at them, and then the realization will return to you that you rule here, that this is your reality.
Yes, it’s scary to reach out to the monster — what if he bites it off. The ancients believed this: if you want to get a resource, overcome your fear. And now we have transactional analysis. And here the ancient knowledge is confirmed by modern psychological practice. If you had a horror and a nightmare, do not give in to the first reflex — to run away, pull your hand away so that you do not bite off. Transactional analysis offers a safe buffer between fear and you.”
Marinheiro Fana proposes to create a safe place right in a dream or after a dream in fantasies if it was not possible to do this in a dream. And place it at the distance that suits you — at least in Yekaterinburg, at least in the Far East, the North Pole or in the Mariana Trench.
“Imagine a safe place, an image between you and the monster: either a magic bubble, or a plate, or a ray of light — whoever has something in his head. And ask the monster to manifest in this field or place a magical item, that treasure that will help solve your problem in real life. This item is the most important part of sleep.
Your consciousness does not yet know the answer, but the unconscious has all the solutions, it can connect to information fields where there is a clue. Our unconscious mind scares us into finding the best solution when we are stuck.”
Conscious dream
You can ask your intuition any exciting question and get an answer in a dream, the psychotherapist is sure. To do this, you need to breathe deeply, belly. To fall into a lucid dream, you need to understand exactly that you are breathing from the lower abdomen.
To do this, place your hand so that the center of the palm is 3-4 fingers below the navel. Concentrate on breathing through your hand, you can even imagine the nostrils below. The main thing is not to force, breathe the way you breathe. And ask yourself, your intuition a question about the current stressful situation.
“A woman has two organs that are responsible for intuition — the heart and the uterus. Men have a heart and scrotum. You can try to «breathe» through them and ask a question. In nightmares, the answer may just come.
Our nightmares show us what our relationship with uncertainty is. How do we get used to it. Sleep is the universal language that our unconscious speaks to us.
So if you’re having nightmares, rejoice! Through them, your unconscious processes the stressful situation and provides solutions. If you stop running away from monsters, believe me, much will be revealed to you. The nightmare is our natural salvation, our opportunity to find a better scenario for life.”