If you find yourself asleep and stuck in a nightmare, there are actions you can take to ensure it doesn’t traumatize or upset you. I’ll use a recent nightmare I had as an example.
In the dream, my son, daughter, and I were visiting a compound to attend a seminar. My son wasn’t interested in the topic so he went off to play video games, my daughter left to hang out with the “cool kids” somewhere, and I was attending the seminar. Afterwards, I was hanging out with the moms and babies who lived at the compound, having dinner and tea cakes.
In the morning, my son came to me and said he didn’t feel well and wanted to go home. In the dream I wasn’t feeling well either so I asked the lady hosting me where my daughter was so I could collect her and leave.
She said, “Come this way. We had a little incident with her last night getting pretty ornery, and some of my kin wanted to teach her a lesson so she’s been disciplined and is now hanging out in the root cellar.”
As we were led to this cellar the hairs on my neck stood on end and I suddenly realized that the three of us were not leaving this compound alive. When she opened the door to where my daughter was, my dream camera started to pan around, I became lucid, and with absolute certainty knew I wouldn’t want to see what state she was in.
I woke myself up instantly and then I had a decision to make.
The Options
I knew if I went back to sleep that the dream would pick up right where it left off. So my choices were the following: Stay awake until I shook off the dream. Make a conscious plan for how I was going to handle the dream when it picked up again right where I had left off. Or rewrite the dream entirely and force it do what I wanted it to do.
Staying Awake
A good way to avoid finishing a nightmare is to turn on the light and hang out in bed for a bit. I have found that the light disrupts the dream, alters my brain chemistry, and is a good way to “erase” whatever that nightmare had planned for me. I usually have to stay awake for 30 minutes to 2 hours to accomplish the reset.
On that particular night, I had already been awake from 2am to 5am coughing and I really wanted to sleep. So I crossed this option off my list.
But it’s a strong option if you have time. Read a book, look at your phone, play with one of your animal companions, crochet, anything to wake your brain up so it can slough off the dream.
Make a Conscious Plan
For the most part, if you go back to sleep right after you wake from a nightmare, you will continue the dream right where it left off. If you’re ready for what you’re going to see, you can plan your reaction so you’re ready to go when the dream starts again.
For example, in this case, I knew I would immediately see my daughter tortured, bleeding, and wailing at me to rescue her.
Options for handling the situation from that point forward included me suddenly having the superpowers I would need to save her, or trying to talk our way out of them killing us and using us as compost, or planting some weapons on myself that I could use to fight the bad guys (though we were heavily outnumbered).
But this option would still put me in the traumatic position of having to witness my daughter’s anguish. The dream would continue where I’d left off and I would simply be pre-programming my response to it.
And this wasn’t good enough for me. I didn’t want the dream to take me on its journey. I wanted my daughter to never have suffered at all.
So I went with my third option…
Rewrite the Dream Entirely
This takes some effort, but with practice it can be reliably done.
I turned onto my back and replayed the dream in my head to see where we “went wrong.” Accepting the invitation to the compound wasn’t what screwed us over. It was separating from each other once we were there, not having anyone else know where we would be, eating their drugged food, and going to sleep there instead of leaving to go home for the night.
So I made my plan and allowed myself to drift back to sleep. I set the firm intention for the dream to start all over again.
The New Dream
In the new dream, the three of us arrived at the compound. I immediately texted several of my friends and told them where we were, and I specifically reached out to friends in special forces and told them the compound was holding people captive in the root cellar and to send the authorities.
I stayed with my kids and we didn’t eat or drink anything that was offered to us. We stayed with the crowd who had showed up for the seminar instead of allowing ourselves to be led away for a tour of the compound.
This plan worked. Right after the seminar was over, the place was raided by the FBI. They found captives in various places and dead bodies as well. They took away the culprits in handcuffs. After giving our statement, we were allowed to leave, completely intact, unharmed, and untraumatized. I was able to rewrite the dream completely.
Does The Dream Have “Rights?”
Why didn’t I just program a new dream to replace this one? That’s an option as well but if I’m being honest, I wanted these dream people to be stopped and taken into custody for what they did to us in the other version of the dream, and I was willing to take the risk of the dream getting away from me in order to do it. You might make a different decision.
Why didn’t I just let the dream play out and deal with the trauma? Don’t dreams mean something and by changing the dream it means you’re not getting its message? Oh, I got the message. I know exactly why I had the dream and what it was trying to tell me. But I don’t believe I have to be traumatized to appreciate a message either.
So the next time you wake up from a nightmare and you’re concerned it’s going to continue where it left off, just know you’ve got options. You don’t have to be at the mercy of a nightmare. Preserving your mental health and exercising your free will are perfectly legitimate options. In waking life as well.
