HOW ONE STUDENT GOT TO THE CORE OF A SCARY DREAM INVOLVING A MYSTERIOUS MAN
By Michael Black
I used to have the dream often. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning covered in sweat and my heart pounding.
It involved an unidentified man, who was at my doorstep and eventually tried to force his way through the front door. I tried to defend myself by throwing punches his way, but for some reason my arms wouldn’t move. I made a run towards the stairs, but he caught me by the feet about halfway up. That was when I really start to freak out. Suddenly, I jolted awake.
I’ve always wondered the meaning behind it, and if it was a sign for a future event. What was it trying to tell me? Maybe it stemmed from previous events that occurred in my childhood. For instance, I had spent many hours home alone while my parents were at work and received prank calls that often scared the shit out of me. But the memory that probably scarred me the most was when my next store neighbor tried to break into my house while I was home. I dreaded staying home alone for years. At night, it was even scarier.
Perhaps it had to do with fears. But maybe it was something else. I decided to turn to dream experts to help me find out.
I met with Dr. Hilary Stebbins, a psychology professor at the University of Mary Washington to talk about recurring dreams and share my personal experience.
She told me that often times people’s dreams reflect things they have experienced in real life.
“There’s a ton of evidence that shows that you are representing the real world in your dream world. It’s just your brain reactivating stuff that you had experienced in the past. Whether or not that activation is meaningful or not is controversial.
It could be completely random. For instance, say you’re asleep and there is spontaneous activity in the brain, and it happens to activate this cortex, causing this representation. Or it could be purposeful. Your brain may be trying to link things together that you may not in the real world. So you may never think to bring these things up,” she said.
In terms of having recurring dreams, bad dreams, or nightmares, Stebbins states that they are more likely associated with people who have had traumatic experiences.
“It makes perfect sense that if you’ve had something that was significantly emotional in the past, that in the dream state, your cortex would activate that. And again, why it’s doing that is unclear. It may just be random, or it may be that that has a higher likelihood of activation because of that emotionality with it. And so that could explain, especially people with PTSD, a higher occurrence of nightmares and having these types of recurring dreams than other people,” she says.
After sharing my recurring dream with her, I asked if it would be considered as a nightmare or just a bad dream. Dr. Stebbins said there is no real differentiation and straight up definition between the two. There are individual differences in emotional activities in general (Stebbins).
“There’s this area of the brain called the amygdala, and the amygdala is all about fear processing. And so, there are people who just that are more likely to be activated, and I think that correlates with those types of dreams as well,” she said.
People who suffer from PTSD are more likely to describe what they have as nightmares. There are many treatments available to help cope, but only after the condition has been established.
Researchers from the University of Oxford have recently found that playing Tetris could help reduce flashbacks from traumatic events. Volunteers of the study were shown a film with traumatic content. After waiting for 30 minutes, 20 of the volunteers played ‘Tetris’ for 10 minutes while the other half did nothing. Those who had played the computer game experienced significantly fewer flashbacks to the film over the next week (University of Oxford).
From what I’ve gathered, dreams are real and they reflect our real world activity. Folks with PTSD have a tougher time dealing with their dark, emotional experiences. I was happy to come across the research about the Tetris game making a difference. Medication (pills) is not always the best solution in my opinion. There are some effective treatments for civilians and war veterans. For example, they have psychiatric service dog training programs for soldiers.
In my case, my issue was fear as an adolescent. I feared being home alone, and that an intruder may break into my house again. These days, I struggle with different types of fear. The fear of failure and fear of public speaking are two struggles that I have been trying to deal with mentally. I believe my recurring dream was a test, to see how I would react when fear presented itself at my residence. In my dream, when I saw the unidentified man, I reacted and tried to defend myself. Even though I was scared, I was willing to take a chance against fear. So I think the overall message of my recurring dream was to take more chances with my current battles.