Letting Go

I have been trying to remember and write down certain of my dreams for a long time, at least fifteen years by loose count.  But I have been trying a lot longer to forget others.  See, while I believe strongly that dreams are great sources of inspiration and story material, I do not deal in nightmares.  For one thing, I have never felt drawn to write horror stories, so chronicling nocturnal fears serves less practical purpose than jotting down my latest adventure dream.  Also, I really dislike being woken up at 4:00 a.m. by heart-clenching terror, only to realize that I then have to scrounge what rest I can in the hour and a half left before my alarm goes off.  Add in the very personal, ugly content of many nightmares, and I am forced to conclude that such dreams are generally useless, exhausting, and disturbing neural misfires.  I would much rather forget them.

The problem is, nightmares can blaze searing trails through memory, making them easier than usual to remember.  Worse still, because nightmares jolt me prematurely back to consciousness, I often linger half-awake long enough for the dreams to solidify more fully in my mind.  So I am frequently unable to escape my bad dreams completely.  Like the incubi of legend, they squat on my chest, constricting my breath while they worry at my mind.  In the end, letting go of the nightmares often takes as much effort as holding onto the dreams.  And though I do not have time to thoroughly discuss techniques for recalling dreams, I think I can offer a fairly simple recipe for letting go of nightmares.

First, I try to wake up my body.  I get up, drink some water, go to the bathroom, walk around -- anything to warm up my limbs and let muscle memory take the burden of control off my mind.  Usually, getting ready for work in the morning is a great dream-killer, so similar behavior should work great on nightmares.

Second, I distract myself.  I turn on lights, check my face in the mirror, and focus harder on my surroundings to help dispel the nightmare influence.  If my brain seems reluctant to cooperate, I may read a book, lay out my clothes for the morning, or let the TV screen beat my gray cells into submission.

Beyond those two steps, I think everyone's mind works a little differently, and it is important to discover one's own idiosyncrasies.  Personally, I think a white noise maker and the bottom of a whiskey shot do wonders!