Q: I’m nine years old. I’ve had the same bad dream for a couple of days now. I go down to the basement to get something out of the freezer for my mom, but there’s something scary waiting in the shadows. It starts to walk toward me. I try to run up the stairs, but it seems like I can’t move. When I get to the top of the stairs, I always trip and fall down, and it is at the bottom waiting to get me. Then I wake up.
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It’s really scary. I’m afraid to go to sleep because I might have the same dream again. How do I stop the dream?
A: Maybe you can’t stop the dream, but you can handle it without becoming as scared.
The more afraid you become about dreaming, the more likely you will keep on having that dream. Dreams can seem very real and be scary. Most people have some type of falling dream over and over again during childhood.
In this dream, you seem to be falling, falling, falling and can’t stop. You get more scared by the moment. Then, you wake up. You may be safe now that you have woken up, but your mind is still back on that scary dream. But you usually feel relieved that the nightmare is finally over, and after a while you usually fall back asleep again.
When you start to be afraid of what might happen, even though it hasn’t, we call that the “fear of fear.” When we give our fear a lot of attention, it almost seems real, and really scares us or controls us.
Let me give you some ideas about how to handle these scary dreams. One man used to wake up so scared he was sweating, and then couldn’t get back to sleep all night. A counsellor taught him to talk to his fear whenever he was woken up by his scary dream. He called the fear “Mr. Spook.” He told Mr. Spook how he felt and how inconsiderate Mr. Spook was to wake him up.
A face for the fear
After talking to his fear for a while, which was really talking to himself, he felt better. He then said, “Mr. Spook, you are boring. I’m tired of talking to you. I’m going to go back to sleep.” Then he turned off his bed lamp, and was asleep in a matter of minutes, something he never could do before.
Get to know that scary feeling, not as a horrible fear, but as a nuisance and a pest who keeps coming into your life on some nights. If you are woken up by that bad dream, make up a name for it. Call it that name, speak with it and tell it how you feel about it. When you talk out your frustrations and angers you are in charge.
You will end up being in control of that scary feeling, instead of it controlling you.
