Your nightmares tell the truth. If you’re brave enough to open your eyes.
Our worst dreams can tell us who we truly are.
I dreamed I was driving a car downhill. The breaks failed. I was speeding faster and faster towards a crowd of onlookers. Right on track for mass injury. A man pulled up in his car, alongside me. Through our open windows I could call out to him.
“Help! Warn them to move! Find a way to stop my car!”
Instead of acting on my frantic commands, he smiled pathetically. His cold sweaty fingers snaked onto my naked back. A parody of the comforting steady hand I needed.
Other people are haunted by ghosts and hunted by monsters.
My curse is The Disgusting Man.
I’ve met him in my dreams many times before. Sometimes he’s buried, helpless, under the sand. Clawing at my sympathy to protect him.
Other times he’s infuriatingly mishearing me as I urge him to throw water on a fire. His frailty and stupidity condemning us both.
I hate The Disgusting Man.
A more terrifying opponent would give the adrenaline buzz of a real fight. A cuter burden might ignite some maternal glow.
But he is the worst of all worlds. He doesn’t wake me from slumber in a dramatic panic. Instead, he leaves a heaving ache of vomit in the pit of my stomach that lasts all day.
I have written elsewhere about the gifts my dreams grant me. From social connection to career insight. But I struggle to even fake gratitude for The Disgusting Man.
Nightmares can feel like they come from an external source.
If I were living in 12th century England, I would blame The Disgusting Man on a mischievous Mare. A sleep demon sitting on my chest. Home remedies sprung up Across Europe. I would have armed myself against him. I could have kept him out with hay bales hidden under sheets and dirt smeared on gates.
Even today, if I tried hard enough, I could find a way to scape culpability for The Disgusting Man. Shifting responsibility onto some evil external entity. Perhaps labelling him an escapee from an alternative reality. Or a message from the Christian God.
There are 40145 dream-catchers on Etsy alone, promising to snare The Disgusting Man. Intercept him on his journey from his somewhere-far-away birthplace to my skull.
Nightmares are created by our own psyche.
As foreign as the monsters in our sleep might seem, the reality is that they come from part of us. Even though I resent the Disgusting Man and dread his visits, it was my mind that conjured him. It is my brain that writes him into his night time adventures.
I know I’ve foraged pieces from him from my past. His emancipated limbs from a TV news report. Those dead fish eyes from a creep on an empty train platform. A self-pitying simper from a troubled acquaintance.
But now, he is all mine.
All me.
You might not have met The Disgusting Man, but you probably have enemies of your own creation. Almost 29% of us have nightmares about ghosts, aliens, and paranormal entities. 20% of us see unknown dead people. 15% feel bugs crawling.
More than two thirds of us try to forget our nightmares as soon as the sun comes up. If we banish the intruder fast enough, we can pretend it was never there.
Nightmares show us the parts of ourselves we’ve supressed.
Psychoanalysts think that nightmares are the place where a forbidden part of ourselves come out to play. A part that our conscious waking mind works so hard, during the day, to supress.
Carl Jung called this forbidden part our shadow.
Jung said every person, no matter their life experiences, has a shadow. It’s where we hide the aspects of ourselves that we cannot bear to look at. These elements are sent to live in our shadow because they are shameful, or evil, or threatening.
Or simply incompatible with who we want to think we are.
As I grow familiar with my dreams, I grow familiar with my inner world- James Hillman
A psychotherapist describes how a nightmare illuminated the shadow of a patient. The woman had been suffering from chronic depression for four years. Ever since the death of her husband. She had religious beliefs that meant she could not look for a new partner. She told the therapist she was satisfied and had no desire for romance.
The patient seemingly, at least in her conscious mind, believed that story to be true.
Until one night, when she dreamed she was a horribly disfigured sexual predator. Her desire for romantic intimacy had been pushed down into her shadow. Mutating into something that now seemed terrifying and alien to her.
The more the shadow hides, the more it’s outside awareness, the tighter its hold over us. — Connie Zweig
Nightmares must be welcomed home.
Almost all societies tell a similar folk story. It’s a tale about a stranger arriving at a house. The stranger asks the house-owner for entry and charity in their hour of need.
There are cultural variations in the story, but a few things are always the same. In every version the stranger looks dirty and poor. But, really, he is a God or King in disguise. Ready to punish the inhospitable and reward the generous.
The same is true of our shadow, and the monsters it sends into our dreams to meet us. Growth for those who welcome it in. Difficulties for those who turn it away.
We find that by opening the door to the shadow realm a little, and letting out various elements a few at a time, relating to them, finding use for them, negotiating, we can reduce being surprised by shadow sneak attacks -Clarissa Pinkola Este
Supressing bad dreams doesn’t work, at least not for long.
German psychologists asked dreamers to block unwanted thoughts before bed. It made the number of nightmares increase. In fact, deliberately thinking about bad dreams makes them less scary. Researchers in Canada noticed that some nightmare sufferers mine dreams for meaning. They used it as a coping strategy.
For Jung, facing the shadow is not only about minimizing its power to disrupt our sleep and our lives. Facing the shadow is also an important part of growing into a well-rounded person. Without knowledge and acceptance of these hidden parts, a person cannot develop.
Alongside the darkness buried in the shadow are potential, gifts, and creativity. And most importantly, a full understanding of who we truly are.
How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole. – Carl Jung
Nightmares are not easy to accept.
I envy my English ancestors. I image them as peasant famers. Going about their simple 12th century lives. Nonchalantly brushing off their nightmares over morning porridge.
Cursing sleep demons for disturbing their pure and good minds with bad dreams. Hoping the goblin had moved onto the next village. Taking its horrible images and thoughts with it.
Facing the truth is a little less fun. That our nightmares, in all their darkness, are our own. A fundamental part of who we are. Something that must be seen, owned, and integrated.
I still don’t know what The Disgusting Man has to teach me. But perhaps I can start by opening the door.
