A reader recently wrote me an email stating, “ I haven’t seen you address the issue of recurrent nightmares.” On reading it, I reacted “What?”
I knew I addressed the topic of nightmares along with dreams in some previous posts. I had, yet discovered on searching through the archives, that I hadn’t done so in a few years, so it’s high time for nightmares.
Dreams, including nightmares are part of your recovery process. Although unpleasant, nightmares are about your mind coming to grips with what’s going on. Your mind is trying to adjust to what happened.
News of the affair is a shock. With any shocking news, it takes your mind and heart time to adjust to what just happened. The more shocking the affair, the more time it takes in adjusting to it.
Your world changed, and it takes time for your emotions and mind to catch up to that change and what it means.
Your mind with its problem solving ability often handles news of an affair first. Your heart follows your mind in coming to grips with the news.
When you don’t talk about your feelings or what’s going on with you, it takes even longer. If you keep them stuffed inside, the struggle intensifies.
Like a split screen, your head and heart each show a different part of what you are dealing with. Those two systems try working together when you dream. With something as shocking as an affair, you may experience nightmares as they struggle with the affair.
Keep in mind that dreams aren’t real life. They feel very real, and can be vividly life-like, but they’re not real life. They are about an emotional reality, not a factual reality.
Fears find ways of sneaking into your nightmares as well, creating terrifying ‘what if’ scenarios. At times, your own fears enjoy tormenting you while you sleep, if you can sleep.
At times those same fears torment you by not letting you sleep at all. The more you give into it, the stronger the fears become. The more power they have, the more torment they bring.
The nightmares can happen with you or your spouse. They are not limited to just one person. The nightmares, like all highly emotional experiences need to be talked about in order to defuse them and the fears inspired by them.
The principles laid out in “Getting Past the Affair Crisis” are some of the same which will benefit you in dealing with nightmares. Rather than continue another day with your mind filled with horrid things, you can start changing things now.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
