“To sleep, perchance to dream,” so said Hamlet in his “to be or not to be” soliloquy, Act 3 Scene 1, as he pondered on the subject of death. “What dreams may come,” Hamlet asked. I was a child who regularly wrestled with nightmares, as many of us did, long before I read Shakespeare. Some of those nightmares were recurring, persistent, determined to disturb my sleep. I discovered early on how to fight back. I realized the other night, when I awakened with anxiety, that the technique I used as an eight-year-old still works sixty years later.
The Harvard Medical School tell us that three to seven percent of the population has a real problem with nightmares. Typically, children tend to suffer more from nightmares because they are “vulnerable to many more threats than adults”. That makes absolute sense to me. I come from a generation of “being seen, not heard”, which at times fostered the sense of being powerless. I tried to raise my children to know they had a voice, had the right to be heard, their feelings and opinions were real. That was my goal, though I’m sure I fell short on many days. Being powerless, either conceived or real, is crushing, no matter our age, and it is that sense that feeds our fears, fears that invade our sleep. That is when my solution to nightmares found its start.
To escape the scary dream, I fled to an imaginary secret hide-out in the forest near my childhood home. A tree was hollowed out, leaving a slide that revealed itself at the sound of my voice and my voice only, allowing only me to jump aboard and maneuver through the roots of said tree into a well-equipped space below ground level, complete with windows closed in with one-way glass that allowed me to see the enemy hopelessly struggling to find me. I could pull levers and hit switches that hurled rocks at the bad guys or catapulted them into space, with me bent double with a hearty laugh. My secret hide-out was always well stocked with treats and books. A smoke-free fire crackled in the corner, keeping the room temperature perfect. I nestled into a cozy chair under a heavy warm blanket, my head on a soft pillow, while I waited for sleepy thoughts to return, and I was safe to come out and find my way back to bed. The space was imaginary, so no rules of science were necessary. I never thought about my escape room during daylight hours or when in the company of my family. It was a dedicated solution to a child’s lonely isolation of nighttime.
Psychology Today tells us nightmares usually happen in the latter hours of REM sleep, when we are wakened by physical reactions to the dream. Some experts believe nightmares give our brain the chance to practice a reaction to a frightening situation and others believe it is one way a mind works through stressful experiences. Insomnia sometimes results from the increased frequency of nightmares. I found it interesting that the frequency of nightmares is twice that for women as compared to men. Where women’s dreams tend to be complicated with many forces at play, men’s dreams tend to involve physical violence and the like. Nightmares are classified as a disorder when they occur often, even as many as several times a night.
I found no conclusive explanation in my reading for common bad dreams such as teeth loosening and falling out or the sensation of falling that jars us awake. Psychology Today went on to say that the best person for finding meaning in a dream is the person doing the dreaming. Any suggestions by another party are merely speculation.
When I waken from something that disturbed me in a dream, I often think of eight-year-old me, and I ask her to invite me into her magical hideout. I applaud her creative mind that dreamt up the ideal solution and sometimes I wish we could share stories while we are curled up with our books. I’m always glad to have her company until I settle back to sleep. Only then does she slip away and leave me to rest.
wendistewart@live.ca
