On Recurring Nightmares

I found a webpage: http://www.dreams.ca/nightmares.htm#Resolving

It has some great stuff about recurring nightmares, recognizing their signs, and how to deal with each one. I found it enlightening and helpful. Here is the important part below:

Suggestions for Common Nightmares and Recurring Dreams

It has been extensively demonstrated that various nightmare and recurring dream themes are quite universal, even cross-culturally, and that such situations can be transformed into positive and even pleasant experiences. The key to such evolution is a change of perspective, often accompanied by a new emotional response to the situation such as taking on an attitude of acceptance, curiosity and exploration to replace the existing reaction of fear or judgment (as in the dream example above). When these types of dream are connected with deep traumatic waking events, such as abuse, war, death, etc. the evolution of the dream into a more positive form may understandably take longer and require more waking attention and focus.

Though there is no unerring rule as to what any given dream might be about, a good rule of thumb is to re-experience the feeling of the dream and find out where this same feeling shows up in our waking life (often alluded to by the setting of the dream, though perhaps figuratively). This is the rule of associative logic - the dream associates to our life, and sometimes to our past, by a specific feeling.

I have no intention of providing an absolute dream dictionary (since dreamers and their experiences relating to specific symbols are so individual) and have no illusions about prescribing instantaneous solutions or cures, however a great number of people have gotten a lot of help and insight by learning about universal nightmare and anxiety dream themes which they are also experiencing. Here are some of the most common themes (with positive outcome examples for each scenario) and suggestions about what the dreamer might look at in waking life:

· chase or attack : )

· falling dream :)

· car out of control : )

· unprepared, late for or failing an exam : )

· stuck in slow motion, unable to move or make any noise : )

· embarrassed to be nude or naked in public, though nobody seems to notice or mind : )

· personal injury, dismemberment : )

· trapped, locked in : )

· drowning, threatening waves, tsunami (tidal waves) or flooding : )

· helpless, abandoned, or crying baby, monkey, bunny or small animal : )