To subscribers suffering from mental strife and seasonal depression that may run concurrent with this time of the year, I highly recommend keeping a dream journal.
Sharing your dreams with a network of confidants is healthy— in moderate dosage. Like any overuse, oversharing isn’t the answer. Having someone hooked into your REM-set horror stories like you’re the next binge-worthy batch of whacked goodies signed, sealed and delivered by Ryan Murphy will ultimately do more to entertain them than help you.
To begin the process of true processing, log your experiences and interpretations. Reading them back later on from an alternative, more objectified perspective will mirror the concept that dream interactions are confrontations with personified manifestations of your collective subconscious. In dreams that overstay their welcome, the final item in pioneer Carl Jung’s four-pronged strata
of archetypal categorization – “trickster” – will tend to reveal itself and try to reign supreme.
Jung believed that due to the archetypes, the others being “mother,” “rebirth” and “spirit,” key symbols in dreams are universal. This same principle beckons the conflict model confirming every story ever told can be boiled down to “man v. man,” “man v. environment” or “man v. himself.”
Taking this into account, dream-journaling acts as a one-foot-in, one-foot-out the door control re-acquiescing agent. When you read back nightmare entries, you can bookmark them for cautionary purposes– lest you risk repeating the cycle of night terror-inspired restlessness.
It’s essential to share your demons with somebody– a friend, a family member or a licensed therapist. But constant regurgitation without action is the wrong type of manifested destiny to pursue.
Here is what you can do to stay the most preferred course: set yourself attainable life goals that
you can casually think about, not dwell upon, during your fade off into a slumber.
Positive reinforcement will beget an uptick in positive dream probability, give or take some gobsmacking outliers. But prolific dreamers know the more positive experiences you jot down and re-experience through a transcribed lens, the better off you are during those small pockets of daytime where your subconscious goes hunting. If all it can find are nuggets of joy, then you’re
golden. And if it’s something less than pleasant, the silver lining: your brain, and you, will work unpaid overtime to help you confront what’s long-needed confronting.
Overly obsessing over that once-in-a-blue-moon fantasy-gone-awry will condition you to practice bedtime reluctance. Don’t dread another bad dream featuring the same repertory players and “triggers.” Embrace it and dispel its fury by not giving into its power– ergo, not jotting it down if its Exhibit A on-record already suffices.
Instead, follow the “positive vibes” cliche brigade. Let the fear wash over you once, with one reread, so you have a taste of the virus enough to fight it off when it forges an attempt at reappearance.
To self-fulfill this prophecy, write all successive nightmare entries in pencil, and the delights in pen. That way you can erase the nightmares whenever you want. And nothing says you can’t rewrite that page with a positive spin of the same tale, either.
Words can only help you in dreams and in your waking life— two places where you’re the writer of your story, nobody else. So dream big, and dream often. And don’t forget to do your due diligence. Self-assistance by way of conducting ample research is just as important as incorporating rest and relaxation into your daily routine.
