T hanks to a month of sleepless nights, 21-year-old Tanvi Jha (name changed) looked tired and groggy. Something was gnawing her insides and she didn’t know what. With a little coaxing from family and friends, Jha sought professional help. “She used to have this recurring dream about being coiled like by a snake and disappearing,” says psychologist A Sridhara.
After a few sessions, Sridhara asked Jha to watch television programmes on snakes and understand their nature, with a hope that her dreams would stop. “However, she told me that her dreams were a reflection of her fear of not being able to conceive in future,” says Sridhara.
Jha’s mother used to make her take circles around a tree, which had snake gods and idols around it. “The idea behind the ritual was to make Jha’s future conception smooth,” Sridhara explains. “But Jha was convinced that she would not conceive. And it was this fear that her dream reflected.”
Dr Sridhara says that because of her nightmares, Jha could deal with her fear with ease. “When she told me this little secret, she felt lighter and unwound,” he adds.
He also suggests that after a bad dream or a nightmare, writing it down would be a good way of throwing out some unwanted feelings. “The moment you snap out of a bad dream, write down the last part of it or the part that you can recall, to avoid its recurrence.”
Dr Murali Raj, head of the department of psychiatry, Manipal Hospital, agrees. He says that dreams also help individuals unwind. “In a way, bad dreams help a person release pent-up emotions. Once they dream it, the emotions are out of the system and the
individual feels relaxed,” he says.
Apart from being an outlet for undesired emotions, nightmares also help people deal with real life tricky situations. A study conducted by a Finnish researcher Antti Revonsuo suggests that nightmares help people cope with life. He says, “The nature of nightmares is that they contain threatening events and force us to go through those threatening events. Hence, in the waking world, when we encounter similar or different kinds of threatening events, we are more prepared to survive when we have been training for them in our dreams.”
”Nightmares or dreams occur during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) part of a person’s sleep. They can be an effect of anxiety or depression in a person or its cause,” says PS Murthy, consultant psychiatrist, Manipal Hospital.
While some doctors believe in dealing with nightmares and understanding them, there are many who believe that nightmares should simply be ignored. “A nightmare is like watching a movie without knowing its reviews. Hence, one doesn’t know what he or she is in for. Bad dreams should just be forgotten,” says B Kapur, consultant psychiatrist, Lakeside and Columbia Asia Hospital.
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