Dealing With Difficult Dreams

By Rinita Sen

You are in a meadow, it is vast and green. There is a clear sky above your head. You are running towards someone or something, and suddenly you feel you are running away from something, the sky is overcast, heavy drops of rains drench you to your feet, you still have to run, because something terrible is following you, and with a jolt, you wake up, reaching for that glass of water.

The above is an example of a difficult dream. Many such dreams are frequently encountered by several of us, leaving us devastated in the middle of the night or even till the next morning. We ponder and think how to stop getting these dreams - well, there is really no one way, but some of these tips might help deal with such dreams.

Acceptance

The first step is to be able to accept that dreams are just that, dreams. They are nothing but manifestations of our subconscious mind in various ways. Some dreams do try to tell us things, and there are dream interpreters for that. However, running behind a notion that a dream might have clairvoyant properties might make your mind even weaker. Relenting to the dream is not an option, acceptance is the only key. In scenarios of repeatedly getting the same or similar dreams, a dream interpretation might be essential. However, this should be done at a logical rather than an emotional level. The goal here is to understand your subconscious mind, accept it, and not let it spill over to your conscious mind.

Calming of the mind

There are dreams that put us in a difficult position. For example, if we repeatedly dream of people who have left us, but see them in happier times, in a fun-filled atmosphere, we might almost want to go back to sleep the next night hoping that we would dream the exact same thing, not realizing that the next morning we would probably wake up feeling miserable that those happy times existed only in dreams and not in reality. Such situations might be averted by calming the mind through mind-body-medicine techniques such as meditation, yoga, and so on. When practising such calming methods, it is important to not just do them before bedtime, but also to keep a mindful habit of calming your mind throughout the day, and if practised right, you might get such sound sleep that you could wake up the next morning without having remembered any dreams at all.

Seek Help

As with every other thing that troubles us, it is essential to ask for help if troubled dreams begin to get out of control. Share dreams with your friends and family, chances are, you might find some dreams in common that might help you understand each other better. If that does not help, seek professional help. A good counsellor might be able to identify the root causes in your personality that are causing these dreams to reappear. Communication and guidance are key to a healthy mind.

A dreamless sleep is what we all desire, but if that sounds like an ideal condition, we still can make it near ideal by celebrating the coming and going of the dreams as just another part of the daily routine, without getting thoughtfully involved with them.