My SOUL Sunday – Nightmares Revisited

Sticking with the alliteration …

Today I realized something very important. I have been having similar dreams as I was having when I discussed them in my post about nightmares and why I thought the people I didn’t really care about were the ones “starring” in most of my bad dreams. I have to say, I think I must have hit the nail on the head with that post I wrote on Labor Day (https://thespooniesensei.com/2019/09/03/labor-day-for-spoonies/) because although the content of the dreams is more or less the same and the same “characters” are appearing, the dreams themselves are no longer “nightmares.” Somehow, there has been a paradigm shift in my own “judging” mind that has “re-categorized” these people and what they have done from a PTSD-like “reaction” to a “response” that is much more lighthearted and easy-going (if one could personify “responses,” I suppose!).

An example would probably illustrate this the best right now. Up until very recently I was having awful nightmares about an aforementioned “ex-” and his “wife” – a person I have never met and have no interest in ever meeting. These dreams would always involve me somehow fighting with one of the two or both (I have also had these same kinds of dreams with OTHER “exes” or other friends, &c.) and either the fighting itself would wake me up or the absolute loss of the person in the dream with whom I was involved either in a platonic way or romantically would wake me up – and I would wake up as if I had just dreamed I had died or I had just been literally chased by an angry dog or something just … terrifying. I do think the reaction in that way is very close to a PTSD-type response; the fact that I have encountered REJECTION time and again in many forms by many people more or less over the fact that I have been SICK has just led me to a place where my conscious mind can’t take it anymore. *As a side note, to this day, even with doctors, when they accidentally tell me I had an appointment at the wrong time and I’m marked as a “no-show” when I have the card proving I did nothing wrong or if a receptionist tells me I can’t be seen because I missed 2 appointments – I ALWAYS CALL, by the way – or anything like that, I do have something of a breakdown. I have had just far too many encounters with others and others that control parts of my life in various ways in which I have been either emotionally or psychologically abused or neglected or openly rejected because of my illnesses and after so many times you have been kicked out of classes by professors because you were deathly ill and in the hospital and after so many times that friends just stop talking to you because you couldn’t physically drive out to meet them, &c. it just gets to the point of … “I can’t take it anymore.”* AT ANY RATE! In my dreams now, it seems as if the same people are showing up … and often the same things happen – especially me ending up fighting with the “main character” in the dream and/or others involved … but perhaps because I have IDENTIFIED the underlying causes of these dreams and WHY these people are appearing in my head when there are so many others I actually still have some feelings for in some capacity about whom I NEVER DREAM, these dreams no longer wake me up. I still have the fights, I am still abandoned, I am still talked down to – but somehow, even in the dreams, I back off, laugh it off, see the situation for the absurdity that it is. It is incredibly interesting that the simple IDENTIFICATION of cause and ACKNOWLEDGMENT of cause (and effect) has allowed me to sleep more soundly.

So for this “MY Soul Sunday” (I can’t take “Super Soul Sunday,” heh.), I hope that you will do what I have done if you suffer from any sort of recurring nightmares like I have or if you just suffer from any kind of obsessive thoughts about people and events from your past that just seem to haunt you “without reason.” I PROMISE there IS a reason, however convoluted it might be or how tortuous the path to find that reason (or reasons) might be. Do some digging; look for what it is in the dream that “triggers” you to a “fight or flight” type of response; identify what it is that is “haunting” your unconscious. I promise you that if you suffer from these things like I have, this sort of work, however small it might seem, is anything but small; it is absolutely crucial in your “journey” toward having both a healthier body AND a healthier mind (and soul!)!

Thanks much for taking the time to read this and other posts! I hope you are all having a happy and healthy day wherever you are in the world and I hope you are having the kind of beautiful weather we are here in the “northern mid-Atlantic” area of the good ol’ USA! I hope to write again soon – I have a LONG LIST of topics and “drafts” waiting for me … but an equally long list of appointments this week! I wish you all the luck in whatever you decide to DO this week and please remember, my heart is ALWAYS with YOU….

❤ Always , Beth