When I was little, I saw a lot of violence. My step-father at the time, beat my mother pretty often and I saw most of it. At that time child abuse was a big deal and your kids could get taken away in a heartbeat but if you beat your wife, you got one night in the slammer and then it was business as usual. I figured out early on that if I got in the way when he was hitting my mother, I could interrupt the beating session because he didn't want to hit me and I started trying to protect her. To this day, I have very clear memories from that time in my life and I am very grateful that my brother was too young to remember any of it. Why am I telling you this? Because that is when my dreams started.... or I should say nightmares.
Shortly after my mom split up with that idiot, I started having vivid, terrifying nightmares. They lasted for years. I would wake up screaming and would often times end up in bed with my mother. She tried everything to make them stop... she even bought me a dream catcher to hang over my bed and told me it would filter out the bad dreams and only let the good ones through. That worked for a while but eventually the nightmares came back. As I got older, the nightmares matured but I no longer went running into my mother's room. I can remember waking up some nights and being terrified to get up or make a sound and definitely couldn't go back to sleep. I think I was around 10 years old when I went to a friend's house and saw my first horror movie. (They were not allowed in our house.) It was "Nightmare on Elm Street" and although it is a movie that would give most young kids nightmares, I think it actually may have cured mine because shortly after seeing that movie, my nightmares ended and I developed one of my favorite dream habits; lucid dreaming.
I don't remember that movie well but I do remember that the main character would have nightmares about Freddie Krueger who would try to kill her in the dream. The way she defeats him in the end had something to do with her ability to realize she is dreaming and then she can control the situation. After seeing that movie I thought that if I could do that, if I could realize I'm dreaming during a nightmare, then I could end it. It worked. I didn't understand it fully at the time, but I actually taught myself to lucid dream.
It was a slow process. At first, I could recognize I was in a nightmare but I couldn't do anything about it. I would be completely frozen in the dream and couldn't even run away, which actually made it more scary. After that phase came the phase where I would just wake up once I realized I was dreaming. Eventually I got to the point where I could realize I was in a dream, stay asleep, and completely take control of what happened. This is now one of my favorite parts about sleeping.
I rarely have nightmares now but at least a few times a month I will be dreaming, realize I'm dreaming and then proceed to do all the things I can't do in real life. I've had dates with movie stars, bought billion dollar houses, travelled, told people off, quit my job... you name it... I've done it from the comfort of my warm bed.
I recently googled lucid dreaming because I was curious as to whether or not it could be used as a treatment for nightmares. Of course it's been done, but I say screw paying a gazillion bucks on therapy and pop in a Freddie Krueger movie and you'll be all set. :)
Sometimes I wonder if my brain actually works better when I'm sleeping. My husband and I often chat about life when we are in bed before we fall asleep. We talk about problems or plans we have and mull over possibilities. Sometimes there will be a situation we just don't know how to handle and we drift off to sleep talking about it. My husband teases me because I will wake up in the morning with the a solution or plan that, according to him, has enough detail to fill up and hour-long power-point presentation. The first time he asked me how I came up with an idea like that, I thought about it and said, "I don't know. I went to sleep thinking about it and woke up with this idea. I must have figured it out in my sleep."
Maybe the reason he can sleep for 4 hours and be good to go for the day, while I need my 8 hours or I'm a zombie, is because his brain can actually shut off when he's sleeping and mine just keeps on working all night long.... but honestly, I like it that way.
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