We all have them: dreams of being chased by an unknown being or a wild animal, raging storms, fires…the list goes on. The fear can seem so real that you wake up with your heart pounding, and you’re terrified to fall back asleep lest your subconscious plunge you into the dark depths again.
Fear can be a useful thing in waking life. If it’s time to flee from a known danger and the flight response kicks in with a rush of adrenaline, great! Yet, if you’re just thinking about things that make you afraid, and get caught up in those thoughts, then it can be more crippling.
Why do some people have more frightening dreams than others? Stress and anxiety in waking life prove to be the main cause. A distressed mind cannot rest even in sleep. The more severe the stress/anxiety, the stronger the fear dreams will be. On the other hand, fear in dreams lights up the same areas in the brain as fear in waking life. In one article I read, it proposed that frightening dreams help you better handle the fear response in waking life. (Science Daily, How Our Dreams Prepare Us to Face Our Fears). Which makes sense! Think about your dreams as a training ground; the more practice you get, when you encounter a fearful experience in waking life, you’ll say, “Oh! I’ve handled this before! I know what to do!”
When I was a teenager, my emotional health wasn’t the best. I struggled with confidence, and fitting in. Most of the time I was in school, I would feel down, and disconnected. Back then, a lot of my dreams were of car crashes into the lake where I lived where I felt myself drowning unable to escape the sinking car. Over and over, I’d wake up right as I realized I was going to drown.
Looking back, I can now see they were reflecting my feeling of “drowning” in a place where I didn’t want to be, where I felt helpless. When I eventually transitioned out of high school, the car crash dreams were replaced with dreams of fires and tornadoes. Fire symbolizes transformation- destruction of the old to make room for the new. And tornadoes symbolize great overwhelm and winds of change. Naturally, my emotional struggle carried into college, so therefore, the dreams came with me.
The stronger and more frightening the dream, the more your subconscious is trying to get your attention so you can heal from something. Once I was able to grow into a more confident, stronger being, I no longer had those frightening dreams. Now, only once and a while one will pop in to give me a message.
Here is a dream I recently had:
I’m at my house, and as I get ready to step out the front door, I hear deep growling. I look over to the patch of woods that separates our house from the neighbors and see a huge bear. It’s a hybrid of a grizzly and black bear with cubs. I slam the front door and run into the kitchen. I look out the window and see a field with children running and screaming. There are deer, too running away from the bear. I’m afraid, and scream. When I do, the bear stands up and knocks on the kitchen garden window. I’m even more terrified that it’s going to break through. I run to the back door to distract it. I look for Dave and my dad. They’re by the garage. I know my mom is in the basement in her room. I go to tell her about the bear, and she doesn’t listen to me. I feel alone as there’s no one to express my concerns to. I wake up.
Recently, in waking life I was feeling alone in this dreamwork business, and worried about not reaching people. When I discussed this dream with Dave, he used one of my techniques on me. He asked what I’d say to the bear if I could talk to it. I said that I’d tell it I’m not afraid. I also said, I would ask it why it’s here. He then suggested that the bear (protective with its cubs) could be a protector for me- an ally instead of an enemy. The biggest punch to the gut was this: that I can transform the energy of my fear into energy of strength.
Wow.
Absolutely true!
By shifting your perspective in your dreams, and imagining what you’d do differently in the face of fear, you’ll gain access to a whole new realm of possibilities. And healing. So next time you encounter something scary in your dreams, quell your fears by taking a different action in your mind.
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