Taming Your Nightmares

To most people, dreaming and waking are two distinct states, almost like chapters in a book. One is real, and the other is, well, not—after all, how can we possibly think that a three-armed fish-man chasing us down the street has anything to do with our waking time? These two states are a lot closer than we think.

According to the continuity hypothesis, dreams reflect aspects of our waking time emotions and concerns. Over the years, numerous researchers have noted that a high percentage of dreams contain elements related to the previous day, known as day residue, or the preceding week, which is called a dream-lag effect. It’s not just any part of our day that shows up in dreams, though. Dream content tends to reflect waking time concerns that are more emotional and inter-personal in nature than thoughts about the daily grist, such as schedules, finances, or work. 

We typically don’t have dreams about the paperwork we’ll need to file three months from now. What we will dream about—and potentially have a nightmare about—are the fears, anxieties, and the emotional meaning we have attached to that task. It is the feelings that haunt us, not their practical details. And those feelings may very likely appear as a three-armed fish-man, or any other monster du jour, chasing after us.

The good news: We can use a dreaming practice to help neutralise this anxiety—and the nightmares. Remember that mother’s phrase, “You are what you eat”? Perhaps the same can be said of our dream content. Since COVID-19, media use has skyrocketed. We talk about media consumption, and what we are consuming comes increasingly from social media and influencers. UNESCO’s World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development Global Report (2022/2025) describes this social media landscape as rife with hate speech, entertainment that pushes cultural and gender biases, disinformation, and polarisation. 

Many of us consume this material all day, every day, and even immediately before nighttime sleep. This information doesn’t stay on the screen; we take it in and have a response to it. It follows that what we consume during the day, the evening, and especially, the time before bed will inform even the time we aren’t watching, listening, or seeing something online.

The themes within our media consumption do not just feature in our waking lives, but in our time asleep as well. One of the gifts of dreams is that they can reflect aspects of ourselves we aren’t paying attention to. One example, perhaps, is noticing if we're having an uptick in nightmares. We tend to roll from one news story to another, and intersperse these with other, emotionally provoking media content, without really registering how quickly we are shifting between them, or the effects they are having on us. Noticing we are having more nightmares might be an internal message to step back from so much media consumption, particularly before sleep.

Setting aside technology 30 minutes before sleep creates a space for a new experience. Sit with a book, a friend, or a pet. Not only might you tame your nightmares, but introducing a new, simple activity that allows you to interact with others, focus, or just breathe and be, may be the first step of a larger, positive life shift.

-Psychology Today