This week I had a nightmare. Most people tell me they don’t want to even talk about nightmares. And I haven’t wanted to talk about them myself. A part of me was slightly superstitious that by talking about them I would cause one.
My nightmare was scary and not one I want to repeat. As all nightmares are. The strange thing was as I told a friend about it, the dream sounded worse than it really was.
There was an illustrated quality to the scenes – not a cartoon, really. But the imagery wasn’t really lifelike.
So, while it was scary and I felt strong feelings of fear and was even screaming for help at the end of the dream, it was like a Disney-fied version of a real event. Or to put it less delicately, no bodily fluids or muck.
But even Disney movies can be intense. Have you seen Snow White recently?
The minute I woke up, I wrote down the dream (as I do). Then I looked it up right away, while normally I take my time getting around to the interpretation. But this time I kept asking myself, what was that?
There was a lot of symbolism about anger, hostility, fear, and pent-up powerful emotion.
I’ve been learning that intense emotion takes place in dreams because we don’t have time or a safe place for releasing emotion in our waking life. We can’t let ourselves really feel anger and fear at work or at home when we’re busy.
Some of us may even live with people who can’t handle us being emotional. Or we tell ourselves that we can’t give into our emotions or we’ll upset our kids or our pets. Or we don’t allow ourselves to feel emotions because we worry we’ll be overcome by them and wind up curled up on the bathroom floor. (Just me?)
Enter dreams.
In dreams, it’s actually safe and convenient to release emotions. I didn’t say express emotions. But to release them. We need to release emotions for our own health and well-being. Even for our sanity.
So while I’m not thrilled I had a nightmare and I don’t want another, I am glad to know I released anger and fear, letting them go. Because stuck emotions eventually erupt.
And I really don’t want to end up screaming “help me, help me!” to the IT guy on a workday.
Image by brands amon from Pixabay