How To Make A Bad Dream A Good Dream

I had the biggest ‘aha’ moment last week surrounding my dreams. I stumbled across something that could help you transform your nights sleep, and how many of us struggle with the night terrors. I've had to share as it has really helped me to make a bad dream a good dream, and I am blown away by what I have discovered. This unique dream analysis I have come across has changed the way I see my dreams, and I will no longer spend my nights in a permanent cycle of a REM sleep (rapid eye movements), because of a recurring bad dream.

You know those nights when you wake up, you've had a terrible dream, and it woke you up and you feel totally disturbed by it. It's hard to put it into words, especially in the throes of the wee hours, but something within feels off, you're shaken to the core and you can't get back to sleep. Hiding under the duvet unsettled, you know it's a long night of poor sleep ahead. Whether this experience is a horrible nightmare or a really nasty dream it affects you nonetheless and can stay with you for days.

Like so many of us I experience these dreams from time to time. I tend to find mine happen in batches. I'll have weeks of sleeping soundly, and then out of nowhere I'll experience a bout of vivid bad dreams. I've been in a period of bad dreams lately. I'm awoken in the night  by a dream where I am at a job, and my boss, who is pretty scary, is shouting at me. He is telling me to do something, but I am not doing it properly, and he is saying I can't follow rules, I can't follow instruction. He shouts and shouts, and I am left cowering and scared, terrified of him and what will happen to me. I hate this dream, and I wake up feeling tired, shaken and dazed from my poor night's sleep, It's a really unpleasant experience

So last week when I was listening to my current favourite podcast ‘The Gathering Pod, with Martha Beck’ - for anyone who doesn't know Martha Beck, she is an author, life coach and an extraordinary woman who is fascinating, I love her, she is brilliant. I was delighted to hear the latest episode ‘Your best worst thing’

(https://marthabeck.com/gathering-pod/your-best-worst-thing/)

In this episode Martha talks about how the worst things that happen to us, can quite often turn out to be the best thing. She goes on to talk about this relating to not only life events but the dreams you have at night, the ones that keep you awake and leave you shaken.

It was the dream part that really caught my attention, as that day I had awoken once again to this recurring nightmare, my not so friendly night terror had returned once more.

What she goes on to say is to get really curious about the dream. I have never been any good at interpreting my dreams, and dream interpretations have always left me scratching my head, wondering. The brain activation that takes place in the stage of sleep that we are able to recall, the lucid dreaming, is something I had put down to a part of my subconscious mind, where something deep and emotional lies. I'm always interested in the subconscious mind and the role it plays, and I was keen to delve into this dream analysis.

So I began to dream recall, and to try and remember as much detail as possible to my waking state. It can be difficult to remember your dream, so I do recommend having a pen and paper by the bedside, ready to make notes as you recall what has taken place in that stage of sleep.  Still, nothing was really speaking to me about my dream yet. She then tells you to become the fear part of your dream, and to play out its role. She encourages you to see what the fear is trying to tell you, and see what comes through.  When you begin to embody something and see it through different eyes, you are able to switch up the story. The more curious you get the more you can see things from a different perspective. You have to take on an acting role almost.

And this is when it happened, this is when I had my big ‘aha’ moment. My dream may be seemingly on the surface me being told I am incompetent and I cannot do something, but when I looked at the symbology of it, and through the eyes of my perpetrator, my dream (or nightmare) is telling me to fly solo, that I'm not designed to do something that involves me following instruction, that following the rules isn't for me - which is something I have always believed. The perceived bad dream wasn't a nightmare, it was my subconscious screaming at me to believe in myself, shouting at me to tell me I am capable of all my dreams and desires. My dream is saying, no Charlotte, you cant be told what to do, you are not here to follow instruction, you are here to be yourself, to be your own authentic version of yourself, not what someone or something is telling you to do. I am being told to be myself unapologetically. Realising my dream was telling me something positive rather than scaring the s**t out of me was incredible.

To see my dreams in this light has blown my mind. Martha believes that negative stories are quite often presented to us to capture our attention, however it is our responsibility to flip that story and make sense of it. She says this is a superpower, and I completely agree. This way of thinking can be adopted to all parts of our lives and can really change so much. 

We can be haunted by so much, our minds tell us one thing, we automatically look at things through one lens. But if we can try on a different set of glasses from time to time our stories really can change. Try it and see for yourself, you'll be amazed at what comes through.

I highly recommend listening to Martha's podcast in full, it's a great listen, and will hopefully bring you some life changing ‘aha’ moments as it did me!