After having briefly mentioned the topic of nightmares during a visit with other Aspies and gaining an unexpected response from one individual, my curiosity about them resurfaced. It became a recent strong interest I’ve been indulging in and trying to satisfy with professional data gathered from current research studies. Maybe if I summarize what I’ve found out so far it might arouse the same curiosity in some others too.
About two percent of adults experience recurring nightmares¹ at least once a week. Nightmares diminish greatly before adolescence. Those who spend most of their sleeping life having nightmares learn to not be bothered by them.
Headway seems to have been made over the years as to why nightmares occur, but since new information often times disproves the old, it’s important to remember what’s new for today might someday be outdated.
Research in areas difficult (if not impossible) to prove seem much like mystery novels. A brilliant author can keep the reader guessing as to who is to blame. It’s much easier to rule out possibilities than it is to be sure without a reasonable doubt. Contemporary experts in the same field of study don’t have consistent data much of the time.
When it comes to nightmares, what seems to agree with most of the recent studies is that people with thick boundaries don’t have nightmares. Adults with frequent nightmares have been found to share the characteristic of having thin boundaries. Thin boundary people are open (not only towards others, but also towards their own unconscious processes) and are prone to enter into personal relationships quickly. They also are more: vulnerable, aware, creative, sensitive, artistic, fragile, easily hurt, complex, intelligent, unusual, resourceful, empathetic, and defenseless.
Thinner boundaries enable greater creativity and may be why artists are referred to as the “mine canaries” of civilization. I go along with the theory that it’s possible for a person to have the same kind of receptor for magnetic fields that enable birds to use the information for guidance in traveling, provided that his boundaries are permeable. Such abilities can be both a blessing and a curse. Not getting lost is good, but along with heightened sensitivity in multiple areas can come an intense awareness of all the potential dangers around. The saying, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you” is intended for things which have already happened. If it’s something that hasn’t happened yet, not knowing could hurt you because being unaware leaves you vulnerable. It requires greater inner strength from an individual to keep emotions balanced when being hyper-aware than it does to live life at a ‘normal’ level where things aren’t felt ‘too’ intensely.
How’s that for ironic? Being extraordinarily aware causes the sensation of feeling vulnerable, but yet being less aware is what actually makes a person vulnerable.
Information I’ve gathered from multiple sources say it’s always the self that is under attack in a nightmare, but beyond that researchers seem to be relying more upon speculation than anything else. The other basic observation they agree on is that nightmares do not involve projecting onto others one’s own angry impulses.
Dr. Ernest Hartmann (Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and well known for his research on nightmares) states,
Nightmare sufferers are not persons with an excess of aggressive drive or of hostility, but rather persons with thin boundaries such that normal fears and angers “get through” more and become more vivid and frightening for them than for most of us.
Dr. Patrick McNamara (The neurocognitive scientist and associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine who has spent ten years researching and writing about nightmares) states,
Instead, nightmares appear to be about the strength of the ego, the “I,” the self. It is always the self that is under attack in a nightmare. It appears that people who suffer frequent nightmares have more fragile egos than the rest of us, but when you look deeper, these people very likely have the strongest egos, or sense of self, on the planet. Nightmare images haunt our awareness for days. Frequent nightmare sufferers cope with this stuff on a regular basis. They are very strong individuals.
I did think about doing a series of posts on the topic of nightmares. It’s certainly a subject full of unending avenues to explore, but the deeper the investigations go, the less reliable and more conflicting the information becomes. Just ask any canary how far down a mine it would like to travel. Life is better where the sun shines and the air is clear. Dark places are for nightmares.
¹They do not recur in the sense that the same scene is replayed night after night, but the individual does experience frequent nightmares. Post-traumatic nightmares, on the other hand, do recur with the same scene, with minor variations, replayed over and over.
