I’ve been experiencing nightmares since my early teens, even sometimes night terrors where I wake up swinging at the air or pillow and screaming. There’s always a common theme of someone or some group chasing me and I can’t get away. I panic and I feel out of control and very anxious. I do not take any medications and am a very healthy individual but wonder why the heck I am so anxious in my sleep? I would like to get this solved and sleep in peace. Any insight and help would be very much appreciated.
Thank you,
Anonymous
There is some issue in your past that you have still not gotten closure over, or not resolved. It keeps chasing you and you keep trying to get away from it. You are avoiding (out of fear) facing something, someone or some event from your past, probably dealing with your teen years since that’s when the dreams began. It could be earlier, in your childhood, however. The inability to get away in the nightmares may stem from a feeling of helplessness and uselessness in waking life. This nightmare may be triggered any time you feel useless or unable to resist something during the day. What are you avoiding facing? Anything? And what is making you feel out of control in your daily life? It could be something small or something buried in your past, but whenever you feel the slightest bit out of control it triggers this anxiety program in your mental computer. Up comes the program and starts its mission of seek and destroy. It destroys your calm sleep and your normally calm demeanor. There is something you’re not able to look at just yet, but very soon will be able to. Self-examine, observe, observe. You will find the unresolved issue and once you do, it will finally have to go away. Just identifying it “solves” it when it comes to nightmares. Another solution is to hold onto the nightmare after it wakes you up and try to go back into it while still awake. There you are, just woke up in a panic, but don’t turn on the lights, don’t open your eyes, don’t get out of bed. Instead go back, find those people that were chasing you…remember what they were like this time. See ’em? Look at them. Picture them stopping the chase and standing there behind you. Now turn yourself around (in your mind’s TV screen) and face them. Yes, look squarely at them and speak. Say, “Who are you and why are you following me?!” Now wait. Listen. See what the pursuers “answer” back in your self-guided dream replay. Usually some message will come forth, just see what pops into your head — what they “say” — after you ask that question. Demand an answer! If the dreams keep coming night after night and no luck with this post-dream replay method, you can conjure up the dream right before sleep. Then enact the scene described above. Turn, face, confront, demand an answer. For some people the before sleep method works better than the after-awakening from nightmare method. Try one or both — and let us know how it goes. Good luck, we’re here for ya.
Great feedback!! Thank you!!
When I was 12 my mom would let anyone come over and boys were allowed in my room alone. I had sex at 12 and was date raped at 13. I felt unprotected and so ashamed. I also grew up in a home with lots of yelling and my mom would “freak out” under almost any semi-stressful circumstance. You never knew when the next outburst would be. So that explains it more. So what do I need to face is a question I need to answer. To be haunted all these years, literally, is exhausting. I’m frightened to face the past, and my mom, for fear she’ll blow up!!! I would like to face this head on and not run anymore. Will try the staying asleep technique and do dream journals and see if there’s any success. I’ve been in therapy on different occasions over this issue with some success, but not full, and currently nightmares are very often. I have a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 9 month old and as you know with children, you can’t control anything. I get tense when I feel out of control and have to make a conscious effort to breathe, and just chill. I’ve had success in my daytime life with being “chill,” but have an uneasiness I carry around with me. When I’m around my mom I go on major “chill” mode but inside I want to scream!!! Any further advice would be appreciated. Thanks again!!
Anonymous, 30 years old, Calabasas, CA.
Please help me! I had a dream that I was trying to convince my husbands mistress to return to her husband. In my dream she confided her feelings about our situation with me. Suddenly there where men in a red car looking for her. Those men asked me to help them find her. She wasn’t running away from us, she was just walking away from me and the men in the car. When I caught up to her, she smiled at me and we both got on a backseat of a van, where my husband was on the passengers seat. In the van i tell her i am apologising to her for whatever pain i might have caused her. We hug each other and smile but she doesn’t react to the apology itself, she immediately looks away. I am disturbed about the scenario and would like to get some insight to this hopefully. Thank you!
Does your husband have a mistress, and is this woman her, in real life? If not, then she is a symbol for part of your own personality that you want to apologize to, want to reconcile with. The men in the red car are the part of you that is angry — anger asks for your help, but you don’t fall into that trap.
PPlease help me,
I just woke up from a terrifying dream. First my mother was murdered and being put into a ambulance …. as i was stumbling to find out the hospital she was going to men started to appear in my house i rejected all of them until one of them told me he had been paid to murder me, my 3month son, and 5yr old daughter … i managed to get away with my sleeping son but my daughter was taken by what turned into a mob of african or carribian men they were whooping my daughter with a belt … although i mamaged to get her back i dont know how and up until i woke i was being chased by these men. Iv had dreams like these before usually its always people chasing me this dream scared me particularly because the setting was my house, my two children sleeping and struggling to wake up and understand that we must leave … please help i can usually deal but this one frightened me.
I have had a recurring dream for over 20 years. I am in a house that I know is mine (although it is not my house in real life) and I find a room or sometimes an entire section of the house that is unused that I didn’t know existed and I ask my husband “Why haven’t we been using this space??” My children are usually there but not part of the conversation. Recently we were divorced after a 25 year marriage and my dream has morphed into me being in “his” house (with him and his new wife) or he is standing outside of our old house and he is kind of shriveled and our kids are there but everything is in disrepair and chaotic. It’s really strange that I’ve had these dreams for so many years and I remember them vividly.
Dear Kim: A recurring dream comes to us whenever something in waking life re-triggers it, whenever we need that message again. The house is YOU, your personality, your SELF. There is unrealized potential in you, symbolized by your discovery of unused space. Now him and his new wife have intruded into your personal SELF. The divorce affected you on a deep level, it seems so that sometimes you feel like you don’t “own” your own self, that it still belongs to him. When he is standing all shriveled and old looking outside your old house, that is a good sign that you have gotten him “out” of your identity, your SELF, your being. He is shriveled and the house is in disrepair and chaotic because that house symbolizes your former relationship with him, your marriage. Your subconscious mind thinks of it as all messed up and chaos. The kids are there because they are part of this picture, he sired them. But that’s the only role they fill in this issue — placeholders — because these dreams are not about them. It’s about YOU and how you are grappling with and most importantly moving on from the past.
I have been having a dream where someone or something is chasing me and it like I can’t run or my legs will move but not fast enough
This dream means there is some situation or or person in waking life you are trying to get away from, trying to avoid facing, or may be afraid of. You can’t get away from it, whatever it is (symbolized by legs not moving) so you may also feel trapped. The important thing is to face it. In your mind, just after waking from this dream, turn and face the “pursuer” and say, “Who are you and what do you want?!” The answer may surprise you– it may be a “friendly”.
Help! I believe dreams have a meaning and I have had a few that I don’t understand that reoccur!
1. I can’t seem to get away. My feet feet like they are stuck to the ground and I can’t run away from what is chasing me. I feel stuck and it’s terrifying.
2. Pregnancy. It’s always me whose pregnant. It’s always just been that though. But last night the dream started where I was almost full term & I went into labor and delivered at home. It was very fast and I felt the pain and remember holding the baby. I remember what she looked like and remember what her name was. It freaked me out and I just can’t seem to let it go. I’ve been thinking about it all day.
3. My cousin passed a couple years ago and she was a baby. I have this dream where she can come visit from the dead but in order for her to come to earth somebody has to take her place while she’s visiting. Even though me and her had a close connection I always volunteer to go bc I know so many other people want to see her. When I take her place I’m literally underground staring up at them through glass. Nobody knows I’m there and I’m helpless.