Night Dream Meanings

To dream of being attacked with this hideous sensation, denotes wrangling and failure in business.

For a young woman, this is a dream prophetic of disappointment and unmerited slights. It may also warn the dreamer to be careful of her health, and food. ... nightmare dream meaning

To dream that you are listening to the harmonious notes of the nightingale, foretells a pleasing existence, and prosperous and healthy surroundings. This is a most favorable dream to lovers, and parents.

To see nightingales silent, foretells slight misunderstandings among friends. ... nightingale dream meaning

1. A measure of social life (note condition of club and people within).

2. An improvement in social affairs is about to occur; new friends.

3. Aspects of life. ... nightclub dream meaning

Many dreams lead us to feel an intensity of emotion we may seldom if ever feel in waking life.

If the emotions felt are frightening or disgusting we call the dream a nightmare. One of the common features of a nightmare is that we are desperately trying to get away from the situation; feel stuck in a terrible condition; or on waking feel enormous relief that it was just a dream. Because of the intensity of a nightmare we remember it long after other dreams; even if we seldom ever recall other dreams, even worry about what it means.

As so many dreams have been investigated in depth, using such varied approaches as hypnosis, exploration of associa­tions and emotional content, and LSD psychotherapy, in which the person can explore usually unconscious memories, imagery and feelings, we can be certain we know what night­mares are. They arise from six main causes.

Unconscious memories of intense emotions, such as those arising in a child being left in a hospital without its mother. Example: see second example in dark.

Intense anxiety produced—but not fully released at the time—by external situations such as involvement in war scenes, sexual assault (this applies to males as well as females, as they are frequently assaulted). Example: ‘A THING is marauding around the rather bleak, dark house I am in with a small boy.

To avoid it I lock myself in a room with the boy.

The THING finds the room and tries to break the door down. I frantically try to hold it closed with my hands and one foot pressed against it, my back against a wall for leverage. It was a terrible struggle and I woke myself by screaming’ (Terry F). When Terry allowed the sense of fear to arise in him while awake, he felt as he did when a child—the boy in the dream—during the bombing of the Second World War. His sense of insecurity dating from that time had emerged when he left a secure job, and had arisen in the images of the nightmare. Un­derstanding his fears, he was able to avoid their usual paralysing influence.

Childhood fears, such as loss of parent, being lost or abandoned, fear of attack by stranger or parent, anxiety about own internal drives.

Many nightmares in adults have a similar source, namely fear connected with internal drives such as aggression, sexuality and the process of growth and change, such as encounter with adolescence, loss of sexual characteristics, old age and death. Example: see third example in doors under house, buildings.

Serious illness. Example: ‘I dream night after night that a cat is gnawing at my throat’ (male from Landscapes of the Night).

The dreamer had developing cancer of the throat. These physical illness dreams are not as common as the other classes of nightmare.

Precognition of fateful events. Example: My husband, a pilot in the RAF, had recently lost a friend in an air crash. He woke one morning very troubled—he is usually a very positive person. He told me he had dreamt his friend was flying a black jet, and wanted my husband to fly with him.

Although a simple dream, my husband could not shake off the dark feelings. Shortly afterwards his own jet went down and he was killed in the crash’ (Anon.).

Understanding the causes of nightmares enables us to deal with them.

The things we run from in the nightmare need to be met while we are awake. We can do this by sitting and imagining ourselves back in the dream and facing or meeting what we were frightened of. Terry imagined himself opening the door he was fighting to keep closed. In doing this and remaining quiet he could feel the childhood feelings arising. Once he recognised them for what they were, the terror went out of them.

A young woman told me she had experienced a recurring nightmare of a piece of cloth touching her face. She would scream and scream and wake her family. One night her brother sat with her and made her meet those feelings de­picted by the cloth. When she did so she realised it was her grandmother’s funeral shroud. She cried about the loss of her grandmother, felt her feelings about death, and was never troubled again by the nightmare.

The techniques given in dream processing will help in meeting such feelings. Even the simple act of imagining ourselves back in the nightmare and facing the frightening thing will begin the process of changing our relationship with our internal fears. ... nightmares dream meaning

1. Revealing a very personal, vulnerable side of self.

2. A feeling of not being prepared for life, activities or business affairs (to be in a nightgown in public). ... nightgown dream meaning

There is amusement in store for you after a dream of wearing a nightcap to bed.... nightcap dream meaning

To dream you eat the fruits of thii deadly plant is a favourable dream, meaning new interests and surroundings.... nightshade dream meaning

A form of spiritual illumination is quite often felt within this type of dream. There is a gradual awareness rather than a blinding flash of illumination.

A new dawn can bring a great sense of hope. Day and night can represent opposites, as in black and white, boy and girl etc. Indeed, any two opposites may have relevance, and it is up to us to decide what opposition there is in our lives.... dawn / day and night dream meaning

To dream of wearing one denotes an honorable career; to dream of tearing it, hasty action (Gypsy). ... night-gown dream meaning

If a scene in a dream takes place at night, it signifies exploring what is hidden or shadowed in the subconscious. Nighttime may reflect your unconscious concerns versus your conscious concerns.... nighttime dream meaning

To dream of any sort of night birds, as the owlet, the great owlt bittern, and bat, is ominous; and Anselmus Julian us advises those who have such dreams to undertake Do business on the day following.... night birds dream meaning

day

Example: It was a beautiful hot sunny day, and I was in a children’s playground talking to a woman I knew vaguely’ (Kim B). Mostly our mood. In the example Kim feels bright and cheerful.

An overcast day would be the reverse. Also be­ing conscious, seeing’ what we are doing, our waking experi­ence. See light; time of day.

night

Example: I was creeping through a field at night. In darkness I and others were trying to accomplish some secret act, rather as spies or underground agents might’ (Tom). Simi­lar to dark. Usually the unconscious, dark or little-sensed ar­eas of oneself. In the example the secrecy occurs because pans of Tom’s childhood experience were ‘hidden’ behind the forgetfulness or unconsciousness of emotional hurt. Also loneliness; areas of subtly felt urges or feelings. And some­times freedom; we may be constrained by the social or moral rules we apply to ourself during the ‘day’ or waking con­sciousness, but on the edge of consciousness, or in sleep, we find a wonderful freedom which allows us escape. Sometimes shown by escaping from a house at night and running away. See dark. ... day and night dream meaning

(See Night)... moonless night dream meaning

Standing as a night guard in a dream means obeying God’s commands and following the avenues of righteousness.

If a sick person sees himself returning from his night guard shift in a dream, it means that he will recover from his illness.... night guard dream meaning

(The night in which the Holy Qur’an was revealed.) Seeing and experiencing the night of power in a dream means that one’s wish will come true, even if one desired a kingdom or a great treasure.

The same interpretation applies for seeing a celebration of the night of the Nocturnal Journey during which the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, ascended to the heavens to meet his Lord.

The same interpretation is given to seeing the Friday eve in one’s dream.... night of power dream meaning

(See Darkness; Evening; Night)... nightfall dream meaning

If a person sees the crescent of the first night of the lunar month, but in reality it is not the first day of the lunar month, one of the following interpretations could be given : (a) he will been entrusted with someduty pertaining to governing of the land or country, (9) a child will be born in his home,(c) a missing person will return, (d) some new event will occur.... the moon of the first night of the lunar month dream meaning

Magical hour. Greatest strength of the super-consciousness.... night (especially midnight) dream meaning

Messenger of joy, success, faithfulness.... nightingale (singing) dream meaning

Feeling overburdened, fear of the difficulties ahead. Descending into an abyss means paying attention to the unconscious, because that is where the reason for the present difficulties resides. Falling into an abyss is usually accompanied by feelings of depression, similar to those connected to Ashes, Murder, and Trap. Turning away from an abyss is often a sign of having turned a blind eye to the facts; it points to emotional grief.... as a nightmare dream meaning

For a woman to dream that she is dressed in nothing but her negligee means that she has a secret that she is fearful of having discovered.... negligee / nightgown dream meaning

Vision: Seeing a night watchman: take better care of your property; if you lend something to someone you will never see it again.

If you are the night watchman: your domestic tranquility is in danger.

Depth Psychology: 1’he night watchman represents your insecurities and helplessness. You want to place your responsibilities in the hands of a guardian or trusted person. But the dream could mean also that you refuse to let anyone interfere in your affairs.... night watchman dream meaning

Vision: Seeing someone in a nightshirt: you insist on trying to hide your true character. Is the nightshirt clean or dirty, beautiful or torn? See Clothes.

Depth Psychology: The nightshirt or nightgown indicates hidden erotic desires and needs. It could also point to your own character and that of the people wearing the gown.... nightshirt, nightgown dream meaning

To dream that you are enjoying yourself in a night club signifies a future event in your social life.

To dream that you are in a dimly-lit and gloomy night club denotes an end to a romance and/or a possible financial problem.... night club dream meaning

To dream that you arc suddenly overtaken by Night, or by an unexplained Darkness is a bad sign; misfortune will be your lot. But if you persevere, in your dream, and once more see the light of day, then you will recover your losses.... night or darkness dream meaning

To dream of walking in the Night signifies trouble.... night-walks dream meaning

whoever sees that he has left from the darkness into the light, and is from the people of righteousness then he will leave from neediness [and go] into wealth / sufficiency. As for the light which is the day then it is interpreted by: right guidance. And the beginning of the day, is interpreted by: the beginning of the matter which he asks for. Its middle and last parts are compared against that.... night and day dream meaning

Pyjamas or any type of nightclothes suggest relaxation and hence openness.... pyjamas / nightclothes dream meaning

If you dream about a night light, you have understanding and insight about a situation that was once confusing to you. You have the answers within you.... night light dream meaning

A social gathering to enjoy the spirit of competition in a fun atmosphere is at the heart of game night. As a symbol, it represents the need to express the fundamental drive to compete and win but to do so in a way that is harmless and playful. Game night in a dream may be pointing to a buildup of stressors and drives that need release in a constructive manner.... game night dream meaning

Night terrors are not nightmares. In fact they are not even dreams. Also known as sleep terrors, night terrors occur during non-REM sleep, not during REM sleep when the majority of us dream. They typically occur within the first few hours of going to sleep. The person may wake up for about twenty seconds and in most cases settle back to sleep. There is typically an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. There will also be a classic physiological response to fear, with dilated pupils, confusion or panic and sweat. Subjects may scream or yell during an episode and flail their arms and legs around or sit upright in bed. In adults, alcohol, stress, fever or lack of sleep may trigger night terrors and they are believed to have their basis in a purely biological function.

If the terror wakes the sleeper up, they may recall a single image of terror but if they fall back to sleep there is unlikely to be any recall of the feeling.

If you or someone you know experiences more than three or four episodes of night terror a month, then you or they might be suffering from an anxiety disorder. It is important to consult a doctor if this is the case. Night terrors tend to be most common in children between the ages of three and eight, and most sleep experts urge parents and carers not to rush to their child to try and wake and comfort them as this can intensify or aggravate the night terror. You should instead let the night terror run its course and the child will rarely recall the event in the morning. There is not much evidence that night terrors reflect deep psychological problems and occasional night terrors are considered quite normal in young children. See also Sleep paralysis, and Incubus and succubus entries in SPIRITS AND GHOSTS.... night terrors dream meaning

A bar, night club, dance club, or similar location can represent: A place or activity in your life where you interact with others, especially with a casual or upbeat feeling.

Letting go and having fun with others (or a desire for such).

A past situation that involved meeting new people or interacting with strangers (such as a party or shopping at a busy store).

For more clues, pay attention to the people and events in this setting, and how you felt about them.

See also: Drinking; Dancing; Weapon... bar or night club dream meaning

Your personal, private, or home life.

Relaxation, casualness, downtime, or being off-duty.

Evening or nighttime.

Sleep or other nighttime events.

Feeling embarrassed about being seen in your nightclothes can represent a feeling or fear of being vulnerable or exposed (physically, emotionally, or mentally).

See also: Clothes; Night; Underwear... nightclothes dream meaning

In ancient times, nightmares were thought to be caused by evil spirits. The word, in fact, derives from a Scandinavian legend in which a ‘nacht-mara’—the ‘mara’ being a female demon—came and sat on the sleeper’s chest at night, leaving him with a heavy, suffocating sensation of being awake but paralyzed. Nightmares have been known to inspire great artists: John Henry Fuseli’s 1781 painting ‘The Nightmare’ caused a sensation with its depiction of an incubus crouching on the body of a sleeping woman. John Newton—a slave trader and the composer of the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’—became an abolitionist after a nightmare in which he saw ‘all of Europe consumed in a great raging fire’ whilst he was the captain of a slave ship. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was inspired, in part, by a nightmare. Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine, came up with the breakthrough concept of a needle with a hole at the pointed end after he had a nightmare in which jungle warriors brandished spears that had holes in their blades.

As we have seen, both Freud and Jung had theories regarding nightmares: Freud tried to explain them as the expression of unfulfilled wishes, whilst Jung described them as part of humankind’s ‘collective unconscious’ and argued that the helplessness we feel in nightmares is a memory of the fears experienced by primitive peoples. Today, in medical textbooks, nightmares are most commonly defined as a disturbing dream that results in at least a partial awakening.

Nightmares, in common with most dreams, occur during REM stages of sleep and they generally cause the dreamer to wake up.

If you don’t wake up, the dream is not technically a nightmare and could be described as a bad dream. Nightmares are often characterized by the following symptoms: a sense of fear and dread that lingers for hours or days after the dream upon awakening; the ability to recall all or part of a dream scene; in most cases the dreamer is threatened or actually harmed in some way; a recognition of powerful images in the dream or the repetition of the dream itself for months or even years after; and a physical paralysis or lack of muscle tone called atonia which signifies REM sleep.

Drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep and spicy food can alter the quality and quantity of REM sleep and perhaps trigger nightmares but there is no hard evidence to support this. Whilst these things can increase the risk of nightmares, the mundane struggles in daily life are generally thought to be the cause of most nightmares. Sleep researchers have discovered that long-standing nightmare sufferers tend to be emotional, creative, sensitive but prone to depression.

Modern sleep researchers have identified the following causes for nightmares:

• Unconscious memory of intense emotions such as that of a child being abandoned by its mother. Many people have had the experience of feeling trapped in a difficult situation—a terrible marriage or another situation they want to get out of—and nightmares can hark back to that situation, mirroring the intense feelings of being trapped associated with it.

• Intense experiences produced by external situations, such as involvement in war or being a victim of assault. Trauma, surgery, a death in the family, crime and accidents can also cause them to proliferate.

• Many nightmares in adults arise from fears connected with repressed internal drives or from fears concerning the process of growth and change.

• Threats to self-esteem. People may be faced by or fear the loss of something important to them, such as the failure of a relationship or the loss of a child, being seen to fail at work or not being able to cope with life in other ways. Nightmares may arise out of feelings of inferiority or loss of self-confidence.

Some sleep researchers consider the occasional nightmare to be a natural response to stress; the dream is seen to be the body’s way of practicing its ‘fight or flee’ response, providing us with a way to work through aggressive feelings in a safe way, given that the body’s muscles are essentially paralyzed during REM sleep.... the history and science of nightmares dream meaning

If you have experienced a traumatic event, for example an attack, accident or disaster, such as an earthquake, you may find that your dreaming mind recalls the horror of that event but as time passes the nightmares tend to become less intense. In general, they have little meaning other than your memory of it and are an attempt by your dreaming mind to help you deal with the original horror. Post-traumatic stress nightmares are usually different from other nightmares as the content of the dream will closely resemble a traumatic event that happened in their waking lives.

POWs from World War II and concentration camp survivors have been known to suffer post-traumatic stress nightmares for up to fifty years after the event. Unlike ‘normal’ nightmares, these dreamers can experience significant physical symptoms during REM sleep and non-REM sleep, such as an increase in respiration and heart rate, muscle twitches and more than one arousal. Adults might experience other traumatic events in their lives, such as the loss of a loved one or bankruptcy, and these events can also continue to play out in dreams over the years in the form of nightmares. The more standard anxiety nightmare dreamers, however, have nightmares that relate to work, school or relationship stresses. The threat here isn’t to your life but to your self-confidence and sense of self.... post-traumatic stress nightmare dream meaning

Even Nightmares Have a Helpful Purpose. A nightmare is easy to recognize: You wake up feeling anything from mild fright to a complete terror that can leave you screaming. Yet even dreams that scare you come to help. The topic of a dream may well bring up a serious and intense message. However, the message comes from a friendly source—your own psyche—whose purpose is to help and support you. No matter how serious or scary the subject of the dream, the communication from your psyche is an attempt to help you resolve the matter or get through a challenging situation.

WHY A DREAM TURNS INTO A NIGHTMARE. Most nightmares are simply mirrors of your internal fears and anxieties. Paradoxically, as the following reasons explain, it is those very fears and anxieties that “flip” a dream that is otherwise benign into a nightmare.

Think of a dream as a carriage transporting a needed insight about an important problem; the carriage is merely a vehicle for the helpful message. However, the topic of the dream terrifies you. The topic could be about a failing relationship or a career that is falling apart. Because of your terror, as you watch the carriage approach, the shadows of your fears make the carriage look scary. You do not notice the carriage is driven by your psyche, who approaches as a friend and just wants to help.

One way of coping with an anxiety or fear is to distance yourself from it—to push it away. This is a normal reaction. Yet the very act of distancing yourself from a scary topic that a dream may address is what “transforms” a normal dream image into a scary one. It is like a tasty dish that curdles, and your fear curdles the dream dish.

THERE ARE ONLY FRIGHTENED DREAMERS. Though it is natural to run from what scares you, the very act of doing so is what often creates a nightmare. That is why one way of looking at most nightmares is to say, “There are no scary dreams—only frightened dreamers.” If we could put aside all of our fears, there would be few nightmares or frightening dreams.

WHAT CAUSES NIGHTMARES. Mild to severe stress tends to be the main underlying cause of most frightening dreams.

• Daily Stress. Daily stress that ramps up your feelings is the most common reason behind a nightmare.

• Out-of-Control Fear and Anxiety. Like a wheel spinning out of control, negative emotions can unbalance your perceptions and lead to nightmares.

• Emotional Dissonance. The daily push-pull between competing feelings or choices is called “emotional dissonance.” If making a choice feels so unpalatable and impossible that no choice seems right, the pressure can drive you to the edge. This form of extreme anxiety, related to difficult or impossible choices, often invites nightmares.

• Physical or Mental Imbalance. Conditions like fever or depression can produce bad dreams. When the condition passes, the nightmares may disappear.

• Traumatic Events. Repeated bad dreams can happen after a painful event that leaves you feeling vulnerable, such as losing a loved one or the loss of a home after a natural disaster. As the psyche tries to digest the pain, the mind may replay the event as a nightmare. Such dreams are the psyche’s attempt to digest the painful feelings while you sleep. As a person heals and increases their coping skills, the bad dreams lessen and eventually disappear.

• The Nightmares of Those with an Artistic or Sensitive Temperament. Highly sensitive and creative individuals tune in more deeply to the world’s pain and suffering, and as a result, they often report nightmares. A man at a seminar shared his constant nightmares about war scenes and mangled bodies, even though he lived a normal life and worked as a bus driver. Digging deeper, he began to see that he was tuning in to the daily pain that he saw on the faces of his passengers. Witnessing their distress gave his sensitive heart emotional indigestion, which he experienced as frequent nightmares.

• Traumatic Stress. Those with a medical condition called post-traumatic stress disorder, such as combat veterans or rape victims, can have nightmares that are different in content and structure to regular nightmares. Experiencing extreme forms of trauma can produce nightmares that are more severe and that disrupt sleep cycles, which regular nightmares do not. While researching the nightmares of combat veterans, I created presleep stories as a sleep aid that attempts to restore the normal sleep cycles of combat veterans; details are available at InterpretADream.com.

NIGHTMARES: THREE TYPES

Like other dreams, nightmares can be distinguished by their origin and purpose. The most common nightmares engage your struggle to grow in character and personality. A few bad dreams deal with specific life fears, and fewer still predict actual tragic events.

1: The Most Common Type of Nightmare

A NIGHTMARE THAT UNVEILS A NEGATIVE CHARACTER TRAIT. Facing an unpleasant truth about yourself is never easy. Everyone glosses over shortcomings like anger, acting stupid, or failing at something, and no one wants to face a weakness. As a result, when a dream holds up a mirror about a trait that does not jive with your “I am great” image, your normal reaction is to say, “That can’t be me.” In colloquial terms, such nightmares expose your blind spots, which is an unpleasant experience for everyone.

For example, a man had a nightmare about a raging bull charging through his grocery store and wondered if the dream was a warning that vandals would soon raid his premises. Since most dreams are about you—the dreamer, he came to see that the bull was a metaphor for his short temper when dealing with employees. Seeing himself as an out-of-control bull was not easy, but the image produced the desired effect. The man softened his attitude and as a result, the atmosphere at the grocery store became more relaxed and as a bonus, his sales improved.

When a nightmare acts as a mirror of a not-so-great trait, it invites you to grow into a better version of yourself. After an initial “ouch,” you realize that the dream is an ally, helping you correct what could cause problems down the road.

2: A Scary Dream That You Meet Less Often

FRIGHTENING DREAMS THAT PORTRAY ACTUAL, SPECIFIC FEARS. One of the functions of dreaming is to process your emotions. When a fear gets out of hand, a nightmare that relates to that fear is the equivalent of a pressure cooker’s safety valve that allows the hot steam to escape. In this case, the experience of having the nightmare, in and of itself, becomes an outlet for your exploding feelings.

Acting like an emotional digestion system, fear-processing nightmares let you experience a fear as an external picture that your mind can examine and label. A “see it, name it, and label it” nightmare helps you digest your fear, and as a result, whatever tied you up in knots begins to unravel. Such nightmares handle actual fears, one piece at a time, until they disappear. You may encounter a sequence of nightmares during a time of enormous challenge such as a divorce or the sudden loss of a loved one. Then one day, a morning arrives when you feel a sense of peace. You do not know why you feel better, but you know you have turned a corner. Your dream digestion system—that you experienced as nightmares—has done its work.

Nightmares that deal with true fears come with a bonus. A bad dream that relates to a painful issue can include an insight about how to handle what frightens you. A woman kept dreaming of a terrified young girl who walks to the edge of a murky black pond in the middle of the night. As she is about to fall into the deep black water, she sees a light in the distance and becomes aware that the light can lead her to safety. Upon discussion, those images brought back memories of the dreamer’s terror of being raped as a young girl. The light in the distance made her realize that she could resolve the unexpressed pain that had been festering for years. Thanks to the dream’s metaphor of a distant light as a place of safety, the dreamer became aware that she needed a counselor who could help her confront the emotional leftovers of her childhood trauma.

3: Actual Warnings—A Rare Type of Frightening Dream

FRIGHTENING DREAMS AS TRUE WARNINGS. Most scary dreams are stress-related, a few may tussle with your actual fears, while a miniscule percent can be actual warnings about something dire. Nightmares can warn you about the possibility of a real tragedy that may involve death, serious illness, or a natural disaster—whether in your life, someone around you, or in your community. Or sometimes they are warnings about less serious matters.

LESS URGENT, YET TRUE WARNING DREAMS. Before examining frightening dreams that are dire warnings, let’s take a look at dreams that address issues which are not life threatening, yet still urgent. For example, a dream may give you a heads up about how your words hurtfully impacted another’s feelings that you missed, and as a painful issue, it becomes cloaked in scary images. Or, a dream may point out what will happen if you keep eating three desserts a day; seeing what you look like in a dream, with an extra fifty pounds on you, can be pretty scary. Or, a frightening dream may point out a topic such as an unpleasant relationship, that you have put on hold, which now needs attention. Because these less urgent issues deal with topics that make you anxious, the warning dream can still be experienced as a nightmare. Such not-so-dire warning dreams touch upon intense topics that are not life threatening, but can still intensely shake you up.

DREAM EXAMPLE: A FRIGHTENING DREAM ABOUT A NORMAL ISSUE—MY DAUGHTER IS IN A CAR CRASH. A mother dreamed that her daughter was in a car crash, and from a distance, she watched as her child was taken to the hospital. Afterward, a doctor announced that her daughter was okay. The dream felt so intense that the mother woke up terrified, fearing for her daughter’s safety. The mother brought up her dream at a conference. A conversation brought out how, at the time of the dream, her only daughter announced that she was about to relocate because her new husband had been transferred to a job a thousand miles away. Since mom and daughter had never lived more than a few streets apart, the mother experienced a nightmare that registered her shock and distress at the news. Nothing terrible had happened. The nightmare simply registered the mother’s reaction to the sudden, unexpected news of being separated from her daughter.

A TRUE WARNING NIGHTMARE ABOUT A POTENTIAL TRAGEDY. Though extremely rare, a nightmare can be a warning about an actual tragedy as a type of ESP dream, as in the following example.

DREAM EXAMPLE: A NIGHTMARE AS A TRUE WARNING—MY DAUGHTER IS IN A CAR CRASH. Another mother had several dreams that showed her only teenage daughter getting into a car with friends, then seeing the car in a deadly crash. Each time she had the dream, she debated whether to talk to her daughter about safe driving with her teenage friends but decided against it. Sadly, the repetitive dreams turned out to be an actual warning and she lost her only daughter. Meeting this woman at a seminar, I marveled at the grace with which the mother had resolved to learn about dreams, and to use future warnings for herself and loved ones. That took great courage.

Only the divine hand can know whether a tragedy foreshadowed in a dream can be averted. However, no matter how a predicted event turns out, such actual warning nightmares serve a constructive purpose. On the one hand, they give a dreamer time to build up their strength and cushion the shock of the actual event, if it comes about. On the other hand, according to stories exchanged in dream circles, such warning dreams can, at times, avert the real danger.

True dream warnings about dire events are extremely rare. They have noticeable features like repetition, intense emotions and literal details.

For more examples of nightmares and frightening dreams of every kind, have a look at the e-library of dreams at InterpretADream.com which is searchable by keyword.... nightmares and scary dreams: frightening dreams are your friend dream meaning

1. Church/altar (as the communal place where we drink of the Spirit);

2. The world;

3. Haunt of the workers of the flesh;

4. Gathering place for lovers of darkness.... bar/nightclub dream meaning

Nightmares often depict issues that threaten your emotional safety and wellbeing and you may find yourself dreaming of the same event, person, situation or setting over and over and over again. One theory holds that dreams with recurring themes may coincide with life stages or are an underlying response to the psychological stresses of events such as divorce or the loss of a loved one.

Women tend to report recurring dreams more than men. For example, the thing young children fear the most is abandonment, as without the love and protection of their parents or carers they would die. Later, as they begin to crawl, then walk, then run, they fear bodily harm. Some dream analysts believe that these two issues—fear of bodily harm and abandonment—recur again and again in a person’s life. A forty-year-old woman who discovers her husband has had an affair may, for example, dream of an earthquake and her inability to find a place of safety. This relates to fears of being abandoned.

Recurring nightmare dreams may be an indication that the dreaming mind is trying to present troublesome emotions or situations to a conscious mind that is somehow stuck in a habitual feeling state or response. The dream is encouraging the dreamer to find ways of resolving the trauma or difficulty underlying the dream.... recurring nightmare dream meaning

Generally, nightmares come from a range of emotions, including anxiety, guilt, confusion and stress. If you are going through a tough time in your life, then you’re more susceptible to this type of dream. Depression is another cause, but while stress is a major factor, other things can trigger these types of emotionally charged dreams. Eating late at night, consuming too much caffeine and even certain medications all produce nightmares. If you continue to be plagued by the same dream and it’s affecting how you feel in your waking life, then try and change the narrative. You can do this by bringing the dream scenario to mind, but instead of letting it play out in a negative way, change the ending so that it becomes positive – in other words, the monster turns out to be friendly and only wants to play. Repeat the positive version of the narrative every day, running through it in your mind and over time the original nightmare will dissipate.... nightmares in general dream meaning

If your dream finds you having a brief fling with a complete stranger, then this suggests you’re tempted to throw caution to the wind. This could be a good thing, if you’re the type of person that always sticks to the rules and needs to be more spontaneous, however, there’s an element of danger here. Deep down, you know there’s a risk involved. You need to weigh up whether it’s worth it or not.... one-night stand dream meaning