essay on bad dream

Essay on A Horrible Dream

Students are often asked to write an essay on A Horrible Dream in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on A Horrible Dream

A horrible dream.

Dreams are mysterious, sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening. Last night, I had a horrible dream. I was in a dark forest, alone and lost.

The Dark Forest

The forest was eerie, filled with strange noises. Trees seemed like monsters, and the wind whispered threats. I felt fear gripping my heart.

Chased by Shadows

Suddenly, shadowy figures started chasing me. I ran, tripping over roots, heart pounding in my chest. I could hear their footsteps getting closer.

The Awful Awakening

Just as they were about to catch me, I woke up. Sweating and panting, I realized it was just a dream. But, it was a horrible one.

250 Words Essay on A Horrible Dream

Introduction.

One night, I found myself trapped in a dystopian world, a horrifying dream that remains etched in my memory. The world was barren and desolate, devoid of life and color. The sky was a perpetual dark grey, and the air was thick with an undefinable dread. Buildings crumbled, trees were leafless, and silence reigned, echoing the desolation.

The Encounter

Suddenly, I saw a figure approaching through the desolate landscape. As it neared, I recognized it as an embodiment of my deepest fears and insecurities. It was a grotesque, monstrous entity, a symbol of failure, rejection, and despair. The encounter was terrifying, leaving me paralyzed and helpless.

Interpretation and Impact

Upon waking, I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief, realizing it was only a dream. However, the dream served as a stark reminder of the fears and insecurities that I had been subconsciously suppressing. It forced me to confront these fears, leading to introspection and self-analysis.

A horrible dream, despite its distressing nature, can be a powerful tool for self-realization and growth. It can expose our deepest fears and insecurities, prompting us to address them consciously. While the experience may be unpleasant, the introspection it triggers can lead to personal development and emotional resilience.

500 Words Essay on A Horrible Dream

Introduction: the realm of dreams.

Dreams, the mysterious phenomenon of the human mind, are a fusion of reality and imagination. They can be delightful, inspiring, or sometimes, deeply unsettling. This essay explores one such instance of a horrible dream, delving into its possible meanings and implications.

Unraveling the Nightmare

The symbolism of fear.

This dream was a horrific experience, but it also served as a potent symbol. The old house could symbolize my subconscious mind, filled with forgotten memories and suppressed fears. The spectral figure might represent unresolved issues or repressed emotions, haunting my thoughts. The dream, therefore, could be a manifestation of internal conflict or anxiety, a reflection of my inner turmoil.

Interpreting the Nightmare

Dreams, especially nightmares, are believed to be influenced by our waking life. The stress of daily life, academic pressure, or personal issues can seep into our dreams, transforming them into frightening experiences. My horrible dream could be a subconscious response to such pressures, a way for my mind to express its distress and seek resolution.

Psychological Perspective

The impact of the nightmare.

Despite its disturbing nature, this dream had a profound impact on me. It served as a wake-up call, prompting me to address the stress and anxieties in my life. It encouraged introspection, pushing me to delve deeper into my subconscious and understand the underlying causes of my fears. In a strange way, this horrible dream became a catalyst for personal growth and self-improvement.

Conclusion: The Power of Dreams

In conclusion, dreams, even the most horrible ones, hold a mirror to our subconscious mind. They are powerful tools for self-discovery and personal growth. While nightmares can be distressing, they can also be enlightening, offering valuable insights into our deepest fears and anxieties. As we navigate through the labyrinth of our subconscious, we learn more about ourselves and our inner world, turning even the most horrible dream into a journey of self-discovery.

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A Frightening Dream, Essay Example

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When I was younger, I used to frequently have one dream. I remember myself running around some annoyingly huge house, with too many corridors, rooms and doors, totally confused by the abstruse architecture of an odd building I have happened to be in. I have no idea where I am and how could I ever get in here from my nice, sweet bed. The only thing I clearly realize is I have to find my family somewhere in this jungle of never-ending walls.

The turning point of a dream is when I realize the building is on fire. I have not yet found anyone of my family, and yet I start to smell smoke and feel how the air is getting hot and how the rooms are getting stuffy. I can’t stop however, since now I have no time to dawdle. I observe neither windows to let the fresh air in, nor doors to escape from the burning trap.

My lungs are now felt with smoke; I can see nothing because my eyes are watering badly. However, I keep on running, since I feel strongly like somewhere behind a smokescreen someone I am looking for is hidden.  I feel extremely tired, my eyes hurt badly, I can only observe the chaotic flares surrounding me like thousands of snares. They are getting inevitably closer.

Never finding anything and anyone I has been searching for, I wake up in a cold sweat, with evident signs of crying on my face and pillow. I finely feel relieved, since I realize it all has just been a terrifying dream.

I used to see this nightmare repeatedly, and it turned out to be a true torture to me. Fortunately, now I do not see it anymore, but I still recall it as one of the most frightening dreams I have ever had. Now, when being older and able to take a sober view of the nightmare, I believe it to be an embodiment of my greatest fear, which is the one of losing my family and lacking responsibility to protect it from all kinds of troubles.

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Bad Dreams, and What to Do About Them

You have more bad dreams and nightmares than you think..

Posted May 19, 2021 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

Sleep is “Nature’s soft nurse,” according to Shakespeare, but too often it is “Nature’s Nurse Ratched." Unhappiness doesn't restrict itself to the waking hours, and peaceful rest is too often denied to us.

A psychologist named Calvin Hall, born in Seattle at the turn of the last century, collected dreams as others collect seashells. By the time he died in 1985, Hall had gathered more than 50,000. His own college students provided many of the reports, but he also wrote about Kafka’s dreams and even those of a convicted child molester. In his reports, unpleasant emotions, such as fear , anger , and sadness (in order of descending frequency) were twice as likely as pleasant ones. For some reason, doors featured frequently in the dreams. There was more sex in men’s dreams than in women’s, but other themes were much more prevalent: Dreams about being attacked, for instance, were reported much more frequently than those with erotic content.

To make matters worse, research has also shown that we underestimate the frequency with which we suffer nightmares.

Happily, there are a few things one can do to help matters. The first is a little counterintuitive: Bad and vivid dreams may be the result of poor quality sleep, which can be improved by limiting the time we spend in bed. Sleep restriction has even been used as a treatment for depression , precisely because it is a simple way of improving sleep. It can be difficult to implement, however, particularly if one is feeling under the weather emotionally or very tired.

In some instances, medication can help. There is a curious therapeutic puritanism surrounding the prescription of drugs to aid sleep, as if a good night's sleep was something that could only be earned and never achieved by chemical means. My own view is that we shouldn't rule out the deployment of any of the weapons in our armory to combat psychological suffering.

Finally, there is something called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy , in which one consciously changes the ending to a nightmare while awake. This seems to reset the bad dream and make it more pleasant if it were to recur. There is something lovely about the idea of changing an ending at will. If only we could do that with all other things that end badly in life.

Rafa Euba is a retired seasoned consultant psychiatrist, based in London. He has lectured in several universities and written many articles in the general and academic press, as well as three books.

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We need to keep dreaming, even when it feels impossible. Here’s why

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We live in a world that often feels like the headquarters of Mayhem Enterprises, breaking our hearts into pieces every single day with chaos and madness.

It is too willing to disappoint us with tragedies, horrific news and bad hair hats. And we have to live in constant suspense, not knowing when these things will happen to us. Pandora’s box is forever opening.

So I get why we fear dreaming. It’s hard for us to get our hopes up that things will go the way we want them to. Yet and still, we need to put this worry as far away from our psyches as possible. You might call it madness, but I call it necessary.

When we are afraid of having too much hope, we’re actually afraid of being disappointed. We are anxious about expecting the world to gift us and show us grace, because what if we end up on our asses?

So we dream small or not at all. Because if we expect nothing or expect something small, we cannot be disappointed when the big things don’t happen. We think it’s a great defense mechanism, but what it really is is a liability on our lives, because we are constantly bracing for impact.

Many of us have lost our ability to dream, or we were never allowed to have it in the first place.

When we are afraid of thinking things can be too good, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

This shows up in real life when we don’t go after jobs we want because we already expect the answer to be no. We might not apply to the school we wanna go to because we think we have no chance in hell of being admitted.

But what if we would have met a life helper or the loves of our lives there, or landed that perfect internship that would have led to the job of our dreams? Basically, we end up living the colorless versions of the lives we truly want, which then confirms that life is shitty.

Here’s the thing. Life can absolutely be a filth bucket, even for people who TRY and STRIVE and DREAM. The difference is that those people can go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning knowing that they at least tried. They can take some small solace that they did what they could. Life’s shenanigans can be off-the-chart levels for them. But they blame life, not themselves.

Many of us have lost our ability to dream, or we were never allowed to have it in the first place, since we live in a world that makes it really hard if you’re not white, male, straight, Christian, able-bodied and cisgender. We’ve been bound by oppressive systems that are designed to not give us an inch, even when we earn a mile. We have been shunned and disrespected and erased from the things we are entitled to.

I’m asking us to trick ourselves into thinking we have the privilege of dreaming big.

I say with this caveat and without naivete: Dreaming big is in itself a privilege. However, I’m asking us to trick ourselves into thinking we have the privilege of dreaming big.

When I was in college, my friends peer-pressured me into starting a “weblog.” And by “peer-pressured” I’m pretty sure I only needed one suggestion and I was into it. I started it in early 2003; it was titled something emo like “Consider This the Letter I Never Wrote.” In it, I documented my whole college career, writing about exams I wasn’t studying for, the D I got, roommate problems. The blog used Comic Sans font, so you know it was a mess. But I loved this new hobby. I did a few marketing internships and realized I was good at that too.

When I graduated in 2006, I deleted that undergrad blog and started what is now AwesomelyLuvvie.com . New life, new blog!

I’d work my 9-to-5 job in marketing, but when I came home, I’d blog. As I wrote about the world and how I saw it, word of my blog spread, and in 2009, I won my first award: Best Humor Blog in the now defunct Black Weblog Awards. I was geeked because here I was getting recognition for my hobby.

Hobby. Yeah, okay.

I liked my job as a marketing coordinator. I was fine. Except I wasn’t.

Get this. I was afraid to call myself a writer . WRITER? WHERE? I was afraid of that title and all the dreams that could come from it that I would be unable to fulfill. Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston. Those were writers. I was just a girl who put up blog posts talking about whatever was on my spirit. Writer? “Bish, bye. You can’t measure up to that title.” That’s what I told myself.

I liked my job as a marketing coordinator for a nonprofit. I was making enough to pay my bills, which weren’t many. I was fine.

Except I wasn’t. I was bored with the job, and I felt restless. But I wasn’t going to quit. Nah, son. We don’t do that. We will just swallow down the discomfort and keep clocking in every day.

In April 2010, I was suddenly laid off. That layoff/firing was God and the universe pushing me to take a leap of faith to stand in this writer dream I was too scared to have. But I’m a stubborn goat, so I didn’t see it as that. Instead, I was on Monster.com sending résumés left and right because I needed my biweekly paychecks and insurance! This shoe habit was not going to keep itself up, after all.

Throughout this period, there were times I’d wonder if I needed to stop putting so much time into my blog, but I couldn’t quit. Something wouldn’t let me.

After a year and some change of looking for a traditional job (and still blogging), I finally got hired for a full-time position as social media manager for a global food brand. I went into the office on that first day, decked out in my “I’m serious” business-casual slacks and a button-down. My first task was to create a deck for a campaign, and I was in there knocking it out!

Then came 1PM and the walls of that building started closing in on me. Isweartogawd I wanted to slide off my nice ergonomic chair unto the floor and lie there. My spirit was not gelling with this new job. That night, I wrote an email to my new boss. I thanked them for the job and notified them that it was my first day AND my last. Bless it, but I couldn’t do it.

A few months later in February 2012, I was credentialed to do press coverage on the red carpet and backstage of the Academy Awards. I was chosen because a producer who loved my blog thought I should be there. There I was, in my role as Awesomely Luvvie, backstage at the Oscars, eating Wolfgang Puck’s shrimp and chocolates, next to journalists from the BBC, CNN, Entertainment Tonight! Me. WOW.

We must give ourselves permission to be who we want to be, even if we don’t have the blueprint yet.

That experience shifted my world: I was in that room and breathing that air because of my gift, because of my words. How was I NOT a writer ? I might not be Toni or Maya but I was Luvvie, and the fear of the writer title had kept me from truly honoring my purpose .

I was afraid because I couldn’t find an example of a writer like me, but I became that example for myself. And because of that, I am now that example for other people. Often, when we want something that doesn’t come with a manual, we are afraid of it, because we could lose our way since there’s no map. Well, maybe WE are supposed to draw the map, so someone that comes behind us won’t get lost.

Create the map you didn’t have. That’s what I did. We must give ourselves permission to be who we want to be, even if we don’t have the blueprint yet, and that starts with dreaming.

The lives we live are full of people’s dreams realized. The things we use every day are born from the audacity of someone who thought it was possible. There are many times when I’m traveling and I’m in awe of the fact that I’m in a tin can in the sky. When I’m eye level with clouds and think, “Bruhhhh, whose great-great-great-great-grandparent would have thought this was possible?” that shit feels magical. Science is made up of imaginations that ran wild and dreamed magical things that actually became achievable.

When our dreams come true, we’re expanding the worlds of others because now they know theirs can too.

So why don’t we operate our lives in this way?

When we dream, we’re giving others permission to do the same.

When our dreams are big, we’re telling the folks who know us that they don’t have to be small either.

We must dream and dream boldly and unapologetically.

Have the audacity to dream and ask. Sometimes, the universe/God amplifies the ask to bigger levels, and that is the best surprise. You have everything to gain, as he adds suya seasoning and Maggi cubes to your desires.

Life’s adventures never promised a straight path, and that’s often what stops us. But we must dream. All we have, even in the worst moments, are the dreams of better things to come.

Adapted from the new book Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, published by Penguin Life, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Awe Luv, LLC.

Watch her TED Talk now:

About the author

Luvvie Ajayi Jones  is an award-winning author, speaker and podcast host, who thrives at the intersection of comedy, media and justice. She is the author of Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual, recently published by Penguin Life, and the New York Times bestseller I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual. She also hosts the podcasts Professional Troublemaker and Jesus and Jollof, where she covers all things culture with a critical yet humorous lens. She is cofounder of the #SharetheMicNow global movement and runs her own social platform, LuvvNation, which is a safe space in a dumpster fire world.

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Dreams: Why They Happen & What They Mean

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Eric Suni has over a decade of experience as a science writer and was previously an information specialist for the National Cancer Institute.

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Dr. Dimitriu is the founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine. He is board-certified in psychiatry as well as sleep medicine.

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Table of Contents

What Are Dreams?

Why do we dream, when do we dream, do dreams have meaning, what are types of dreams, what are nightmares, do dreams affect sleep, how can you remember dreams, how can you stop nightmares.

• Dreams are mental, emotional, or sensory experiences that take place during sleep.
• Dreams are the most common and intense during REM sleep when brain activity increases, but no one knows for sure why we dream.
• Dreaming is normal and healthy, but frequent nightmares can interfere with sleep.
• Waking up gradually and journaling your dreams may help you remember them better.

Dreams are one of the most fascinating and mystifying aspects of sleep. Since Sigmund Freud helped draw attention to the potential importance of dreams in the late 19th century, considerable research has worked to unravel both the neuroscience and psychology of dreams.

Despite this advancing scientific knowledge, there is much that remains unknown about both sleep and dreams. Even the most fundamental question — why do we dream at all? — is still subject to significant debate.

While everyone dreams, the content of those dreams and their effect on sleep can vary dramatically from person to person. Even though there’s no simple explanation for the meaning and purpose of dreams, it’s helpful to understand the basics of dreams, the potential impact of nightmares, and steps that you can take to sleep better with sweet dreams.

Is Your Troubled Sleep a Health Risk?

A variety of issues can cause problems sleeping. Answer three questions to understand if it’s a concern you should worry about.

Dreams are images, thoughts, or feelings that occur during sleep. Visual imagery is the most common Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source , but dreams can involve all of the senses. Some people dream in color while others dream in black and white , and people who are blind tend to have more dream components related to sound, taste, and smell Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source .

Studies have revealed diverse types of dream content, but some typical characteristics of dreaming include:

• It has a first-person perspective.
• It is involuntary.
• The content may be illogical or even incoherent.
• The content includes other people who interact with the dreamer and one another.
• It provokes strong emotions.
• Elements of waking life are incorporated into content.

Although these features are not universal, they are found at least to some extent in most normal dreams.

Debate continues among sleep experts Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source about why we dream. Different theories Trusted Source Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School A production of WGBH Educational Foundation and the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine. View Source about the purpose of dreaming Trusted Source National Center for Biotechnology Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source include:

• Building memory: Dreaming has been associated with consolidation of memory, which suggests that dreaming may serve an important cognitive function of strengthening memory and informational recall.
• Processing emotion: The ability to engage with and rehearse feelings in different imagined contexts may be part of the brain’s method for managing emotions.
• Mental housekeeping: Periods of dreaming could be the brain’s way of “straightening up,” clearing away partial, erroneous, or unnecessary information.
• Instant replay: Dream content may be a form of distorted instant replay in which recent events are reviewed and analyzed.
• Incidental brain activity: This view holds that dreaming is just a by-product of sleep that has no essential purpose or meaning.

Experts in the fields of neuroscience and psychology continue to conduct experiments to discover what is happening in the brain during sleep, but even with ongoing research, it may be impossible to conclusively prove any theory for why we dream.

On average, most people dream for around two hours per night. Dreaming can happen Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source during any stage of sleep , but dreams are the most prolific and intense during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage.

During the REM sleep stage, brain activity ramps up considerably compared to the non-REM stages, which helps explain the distinct types of dreaming Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source during these stages. Dreams during REM sleep are typically more vivid, fantastical, and/or bizarre even though they may involve elements of waking life. By contrast, non-REM dreams tend to involve more coherent content that involves thoughts or memories grounded to a specific time and place.

REM sleep is not distributed evenly through the night. The majority of REM sleep happens during the second half of a normal sleep period, which means that dreaming tends to be concentrated in the hours before waking up.

How to interpret dreams, and whether they have meaning at all, are matters of considerable controversy. While some psychologists have argued that dreams provide insight into a person’s psyche or everyday life, others find their content to be too inconsistent or bewildering to reliably deliver meaning.

Virtually all experts acknowledge that dreams can involve content that ties back to waking experiences although the content may be changed or misrepresented. For example, in describing dreams, people often reference people who they recognize clearly even if their appearance is distorted in the dream Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source .

The meaning of real-life details appearing in dreams, though, is far from settled. The “continuity hypothesis” in dream research holds that dreams and waking life are intertwined with one another and thus involve overlapping themes and content. The “discontinuity hypothesis,” on the other hand, sees thinking during dreams and wakefulness as structurally distinct.

While analysis of dreams may be a component of personal or psychological self-reflection, it’s hard to state, based on the existing evidence, that there is a definitive method for interpreting and understanding the meaning of dreams in waking, everyday life.

Dreams can take on many different forms. Lucid dreams occur when a person is in a dream while being actively aware that they are dreaming. Vivid dreams involve especially realistic or clear dream content. Bad dreams are composed of bothersome or distressing content. Recurring dreams involve the same imagery repeating in multiple dreams over time.

Even within normal dreams, there are certain types of content that are especially identifiable. Among the most recognizable and common themes Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source in dreams are things like flying, falling, being chased, or being unable to find a bathroom.

In sleep medicine, a nightmare is a bad dream that causes a person to wake up from sleep Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source . This definition is distinct from common usage that may refer to any threatening, scary, or bothersome dream as a nightmare. While bad dreams are normal and usually benign, frequent nightmares may interfere with a person’s sleep and cause impaired thinking and mood Trusted Source American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM)|National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information View Source during the daytime.

In most cases, dreams don’t affect sleep. Dreaming is part of healthy sleep and is generally considered to be completely normal and without any negative effects on sleep.

Nightmares are the exception. Because nightmares involve awakenings, they can become problematic if they occur frequently. Distressing dreams may cause a person to avoid sleep, leading to insufficient sleep. When they do sleep, the prior sleep deprivation can induce a REM sleep rebound that actually worsens nightmares. This negative cycle can cause some people with frequent nightmares to experience insomnia as a chronic sleep problem.

For this reason, people who have nightmares more than once a week, have fragmented sleep, or have daytime sleepiness or changes to their thinking or mood should talk with a doctor Trusted Source Medline Plus MedlinePlus is an online health information resource for patients and their families and friends. View Source . A doctor can review these symptoms to identify the potential causes and treatments of their sleeping problem.

For people who want to document or interpret dreams, remembering them is a key first step. The ability to recall dreams can be different for every person and may vary based on age Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source . While there’s no guaranteed way to improve dream recall, experts recommend certain tips Trusted Source American Psychological Association (APA) APA is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States, with more than 121,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students as its members. View Source :

• Think about your dreams as soon as you wake up. Dreams can be forgotten in the blink of an eye, so you want to make remembering them the first thing you do when you wake up. Before sitting up or even saying good morning to your bed partner, close your eyes and try to replay your dreams in your mind.
• Have a journal or app on-hand to keep track of your dream content. It’s important to have a method to quickly record dream details before you can forget them, including if you wake up from a dream in the night. For most people, a pen and paper on their nightstand works well, but there are also smartphone apps that help you create an organized and searchable dream journal.
• Try to wake up peacefully in the morning. An abrupt awakening, such as from an alarm clock, may cause you to quickly snap awake and out of a dream, making it harder to remember the dream’s details.
• Remind yourself that dream recall is a priority. In the lead-up to bedtime, tell yourself that you will remember your dreams, and repeat this mantra before going to sleep. While this alone can’t ensure that you will recall your dreams, it can encourage you to remember to take the time to reflect on dreams before starting your day.

People with frequent nightmares that disturb sleep should talk with a doctor who can determine if they have nightmare disorder or any other condition affecting their sleep quality. Treatment for nightmare disorder often includes talk therapy that attempts to counteract negative thinking, stress, and anxiety that can worsen nightmares.

Many types of talk therapy attempt to reduce worries or fears, including those that can arise in nightmares. This type of exposure or desensitization therapy helps many patients reframe their emotional reaction to negative imagery since trying to simply suppress negative thoughts may exacerbate nightmares Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source .

Another step in trying to reduce nightmares is to improve sleep hygiene , which includes both sleep-related habits and the bedroom environment . Healthy sleep hygiene can make your nightly sleep more predictable and may help you sleep soundly through the night even if you have bad dreams. Examples of healthy sleep tips include:

• Follow a stable sleep schedule: Keep a steady schedule every day, including on weekends or other days when you don’t have to wake up at a certain time.
• Choose pre-bed content carefully: Avoid scary, distressing, or stimulating content in the hours before bed since it may provoke negative thoughts during sleep.
• Wind down each night: Exercising during the day Trusted Source Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. View Source can help you sleep better at night. In the evening, try to allow your mind and body to calmly relax before bed such as with light stretching, deep breathing, or other relaxation techniques.
• Limit alcohol and caffeine: Drinking alcohol can cause more concentrated REM sleep later in the night, heightening the risk of nightmares. Caffeine is a stimulant that can throw off your sleep schedule and keep your brain wired when you want to doze off.
• Block out bedroom distractions: Try to foster a sleeping environment that is dark, quiet, smells nice, and has a comfortable temperature. A supportive mattress and pillow can make your bed more inviting and cozy. All of these factors make it easier to feel calm and to prevent unwanted awakenings that can trigger irregular sleep patterns.
• Study Finds Bedtime Procrastination Impacts Sleep Quality
• Only Murders While You’re Sleeping: The Parasomnia Defense
• Crime Risk and Depression Differentially Relate to Aspects of Sleep
• Mechanism During Sleep Found to Determine Which Memories Last

About Our Editorial Team

Eric Suni, Staff Writer

Medically Reviewed by

Alex Dimitriu, Psychiatrist MD

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Meaidi, A., Jennum, P., Ptito, M., & Kupers, R. (2014). The sensory construction of dreams and nightmare frequency in congenitally blind and late blind individuals. Sleep medicine, 15(5), 586–595.

Scarpelli, S., Bartolacci, C., D’Atri, A., Gorgoni, M., & De Gennaro, L. (2019). Mental sleep activity and disturbing dreams in the lifespan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(19), 3658.

Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School. (2021, October 1). Science of Sleep: What is Sleep?.

Purves, D., Augustine, G. J., & Fitzpatrick, D. et al. (Eds.). (2001). The Possible Functions of REM Sleep and Dreaming. In Neuroscience (2nd Edition).

Pagel, J. F. (2000). Nightmares and disorders of dreaming. American Family Physician, 61(7), 2037–2042, 2044.

Payne, J. D., & Nadel, L. (2004). Sleep, dreams, and memory consolidation: the role of the stress hormone cortisol. Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 11(6), 671–678.

Kahn, D., Stickgold, R., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Hobson, J. A. (2000). Dreaming and waking consciousness: A character recognition study. Journal of Sleep Research, 9(4), 317–325.

Schredl, M., Ciric, P., Götz, S., & Wittmann, L. (2004). Typical dreams: stability and gender differences. The Journal of psychology, 138(6), 485–494.

Paul, F., Schredl, M., & Alpers, G. W. (2015). Nightmares affect the experience of sleep quality but not sleep architecture: an ambulatory polysomnographic study. Borderline personality disorder and emotion dysregulation, 2, 3.

Aurora, R. N., Zak, R. S., Auerbach, S. H., Casey, K. R., Chowdhuri, S., Karippot, A., Maganti, R. K., Ramar, K., Kristo, D. A., Bista, S. R., Lamm, C. I., Morgenthaler, T. I., Standards of Practice Committee, & American Academy of Sleep Medicine (2010). Best practice guide for the treatment of nightmare disorder in adults. Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 6(4), 389–401.

A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. (2018, March 26). Nightmares., Retrieved October 14, 2020, from

Mangiaruga, A., Scarpelli, S., Bartolacci, C., & De Gennaro, L. (2018). Spotlight on dream recall: the ages of dreams. Nature and science of sleep, 10, 1–12.

Barrett, D., & Luna, K. (2018, December). Speaking of psychology: The science of dreaming. American Psychological Association.

Kröner-Borowik, T., Gosch, S., Hansen, K., Borowik, B., Schredl, M., & Steil, R. (2013). The effects of suppressing intrusive thoughts on dream content, dream distress and psychological parameters. Journal of sleep research, 22(5), 600–604.

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Population Health. (2016, July 15). Tips for better sleep. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., Retrieved October 28, 2020, from

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A Horrible Dream (Essay Sample)

Table of Contents

Introduction

The brain is a magnificent creation where no one could fully explain how it came about, how it started, and how it was designed. It functions in such a manner that the whole body and physiological system of a human being works and correlates together. The brain is also affected whenever we experience good or negative memories and events. It reacts and connects to the emotions, affecting the heart, mind, soul, body and spirit. There are times when the mind has to rest and relax from all the activities of the day and enter into a deep sleep. Upon entering sleep, there are instances when we dream of positive things and negative things. Some professional counsellors would often say that the dreams are a result of the things which happened in our lives while others have dreams of the future. As impossible as it may seem to see the future through dreams, there are people gifted with such incredible skill. Some horrible dreams come from negative experiences and traumatic events in life. There are people who experience having the same dream over and over. It causes further agitation and sadness. Some psychologists and psychiatrists would say to fill thoughts with positive things and to focus on the beauty of life. This will help lessen the nightmares and horrible dreams while asleep. There are different kinds of horrific dreams such as the death of a relative, failure in a certain area in life, rejection from a job, lover or friend, weird dreams of teeth falling off, or images of ghosts and monsters, dreaming of losing a battle or other types of dreams depending on the type of character, memories and experiences a person has.

What to Do whenever having Horrible Dreams?

There are different strategies upon waking up from a bad dream. Sometimes, I drink water and turn the radio on to listen to music because at times when we wake up from a nightmare, it is difficult to forget the memory of such dream. There are times when people cry or suffer in pain despite the fact that this is only imaginary, a pigment of the imagination and the unconscious level of our brains. Sometimes, elderly people would explain that horrible dreams are usually the goals that we have in life which were not achieved and have been the cause of our pain and sorrow for the past years. It manifests itself through negative images at night while we are deep in our sleep. Sadly, there are people who have died due to nightmares because their hearts stop beating in the middle of the horrible dreams. Another scientific and medical explanation of this is phenomena is the emotions become so high whenever we dream of images and unconscious thoughts that are affecting us that much so people have stroke or heart failure in their sleep. Whenever I have nightmares, I know how to teach and tell my mind to wake up before I go too deep into the nightmare. It is possible. Likewise, praying at night and listening to comforting music will help prevent horrible dreams. Exercise during the day will also help evade dark sleep. Most often, after we have gone through such terrible dreams, we feel tired and discouraged when we wake up. A repetition of these dreams might even cause depression, confusion and frustration. It helps talking to a counsellor to settle things out and to have some form of release that would help heal old wounds and hurts in the past that come hunting us through these negative dreams. The movies we watch or news we listen to also affects our dreams so it is better to choose wisely what we watch and listen to.

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Waking Up from the American Dream

If you are an undocumented person anywhere in America, some of the things you do to make a dignified life for yourself and your loved ones are illegal. Others require a special set of skills. The elders know some great tricks—crossing deserts in the dead of night, studying the Rio Grande for weeks to find the shallowest bend of river to cross, getting a job on their first day in the country, finding apartments that don’t need a lease, learning English at public libraries, community colleges, or from “Frasier.” I would not have been able to do a single thing that the elders have done. But the elders often have only one hope for survival, which we tend not to mention. I’m talking about children. And no, it’s not an “anchor baby” thing. Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.

I am a first-generation immigrant, undocumented for most of my life, then on DACA , now a permanent resident. But my real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.

You pick them up young. Something we always hear about, because Americans love this shit, is that immigrant children often translate for their parents. I began doing this as a little girl, because I lost my accent, dumb luck, and because I was adorable in the way that adults like, which is to say I had large, frightened eyes and a flamboyant vocabulary. As soon as doctors or teachers began talking, I felt my parents’ nervous energy, and I’d either answer for them or interpret their response. It was like my little Model U.N. job. I was around seven. My career as a professional daughter of immigrants had begun.

In my teens, I began to specialize. I became a performance artist. I accompanied my parents to places where I knew they would be discriminated against, and where I could insure that their rights would be granted. If a bank teller wasn’t accepting their I.D., I’d stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun, and fresh Stan Smiths. I brought a pleather folder and made sure my handshake broke bones. Sometimes I appealed to decency, sometimes to law, sometimes to God. Sometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, “So, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account. You close at four, but I have all the time in the world.” Then I’d wink. It was vaudeville, but it worked.

My parents came to America in their early twenties, naïve about what awaited them. Back in Ecuador, they had encountered images of a wealthy nation—the requisite flashes of Clint Eastwood and the New York City skyline—and heard stories about migrants who had done O.K. for themselves there. But my parents were not starry-eyed people. They were just kids, lost and reckless, running away from the dead ends around them.

My father is the only son of a callous mother and an absent father. My mother, the result of her mother’s rape, grew up cared for by an aunt and uncle. When she married my father, it was for the reasons a lot of women marry: for love, and to escape. The day I was born, she once told me, was the happiest day of her life.

Soon after that, my parents, owners of a small auto-body business, found themselves in debt. When I was eighteen months old, they left me with family and settled in Brooklyn, hoping to work for a year and move back once they’d saved up some money. I haven’t asked them much about this time—I’ve never felt the urge—but I know that one year became three. I also know that they began to be lured by the prospect of better opportunities for their daughter. Teachers had remarked that I was talented. My mother, especially, felt that Ecuador was not the place for me. She knew how the country would limit the woman she imagined I would become—Hillary Clinton, perhaps, or Princess Di.

My parents sent loving letters to Ecuador. They said that they were facing a range of hardships so that I could have a better life. They said that we would reunite soon, though the date was unspecified. They said that I had to behave, not walk into traffic—I seem to have developed a habit of doing this—and work hard, so they could send me little gifts and chocolates. I was a toddler, but I understood. My parents left to give me things, and I had to do other things in order to repay them. It was simple math.

They sent for me when I was just shy of five years old. I arrived at J.F.K. airport. My father, who seemed like a total stranger, ran to me and picked me up and kissed me, and my mother looked on and wept. I recall thinking she was pretty, and being embarrassed by the attention. They had brought roses, Teddy bears, and Tweety Bird balloons.

Getting to know one another was easy enough. My father liked to read and lecture, and had a bad temper. My mother was soft-spoken around him but funny and mean—like a drag queen—with me. She liked Vogue . I was enrolled in a Catholic school and quickly learned English—through immersion, but also through “Reading Rainbow” and a Franklin talking dictionary that my father bought me. It gave me a colorful vocabulary and weirdly over-enunciated diction. If I typed the right terms, it even gave me erotica.

Meanwhile, I had confirmed that my parents were not tony expats. At home, meals could be rice and a fried egg. We sometimes hid from our landlord by crouching next to my bed and drawing the blinds. My father had started out driving a cab, but after 9/11, when the governor revoked the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants, he began working as a deliveryman, carrying meals to Wall Street executives, the plastic bags slicing into his fingers. Some of those executives forced him to ride on freight elevators. Others tipped him in spare change.

My mother worked in a factory. For seven days a week, sometimes in twelve-hour shifts, she sewed in a heat that caught in your throat like lint, while her bosses, also immigrants, hurled racist slurs at her. Some days I sat on the factory floor, making dolls with swatches of fabric, cosplaying childhood. I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the dolls—I sort of just screwed around, with an eye on my mom at her sewing station, stiffening whenever her supervisor came by to see how fast she was working. What could I do to protect her? Well, murder, I guess.

Our problem appeared to be poverty, which even then, before I’d seen “Rent,” seemed glamorous, or at least normal. All the protagonists in the books I read were poor. Ramona Quimby on Klickitat Street, the kids in “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” Every fictional child was hungry, an orphan, or tubercular. But there was something else setting us apart. At school, I looked at my nonwhite classmates and wondered how their parents could be nurses, or own houses, or leave the country on vacation. It was none of my business—everyone in New York had secrets—but I cautiously gathered intel, toothpick in mouth. I finally cracked the case when I tried to apply to an essay contest and asked my parents for my Social Security number. My father was probably reading a newspaper, and I doubt he even looked up to say, “We don’t have papers, so we don’t have a Social.”

It was not traumatic. I turned on our computer, waited for the dial-up, and searched what it meant not to have a Social Security number. “Undocumented immigrant” had not yet entered the discourse. Back then, the politically correct term, the term I saw online, was “illegal immigrant,” which grated—it was hurtful in a clinical way, like having your teeth drilled. Various angry comments sections offered another option: illegal alien . I knew it was form language, legalese meant to wound me, but it didn’t. It was punk as hell. We were hated , and maybe not entirely of this world. I had just discovered Kurt Cobain.

Obviously, I learned that my parents and I could be deported at any time. Was that scary? Sure. But a deportation still seemed like spy-movie stuff. And, luckily, I had an ally. My brother was born when I was ten years old. He was our family’s first citizen, and he was named after a captain of the New York Yankees. Before he was old enough to appreciate art, I took him to the Met. I introduced him to “S.N.L.” and “Letterman” and “Fun Home” and “Persepolis”—all the things I felt an upper-middle-class parent would do—so that he could thrive at school, get a great job, and make money. We would need to armor our parents with our success.

We moved to Queens, and I entered high school. One day, my dad heard about a new bill in Congress on Spanish radio. It was called the DREAM Act, and it proposed a path to legalization for undocumented kids who had gone to school here or served in the military. My dad guaranteed that it’d pass by the time I graduated. I never react to good news—stoicism is part of the brand—but I was optimistic. The bill was bipartisan. John McCain supported it, and I knew he had been a P.O.W., and that made me feel connected to a real American hero. Each time I saw an “R” next to a sponsor’s name my heart fluttered with joy. People who were supposed to hate me had now decided to love me.

But the bill was rejected and reintroduced, again and again, for years. It never passed. And, in a distinctly American twist, its gauzy rhetoric was all that survived. Now there was a new term on the block: “Dreamers.” Politicians began to use it to refer to the “good” children of immigrants, the ones who did well in school and stayed off the mean streets—the innocents. There are about a million undocumented children in America. The non-innocents, one presumes, are the ones in cages, covered in foil blankets, or lost, disappeared by the government.

I never called myself a Dreamer. The word was saccharine and dumb, and it yoked basic human rights to getting an A on a report card. Dreamers couldn’t flunk out of high school, or have D.U.I.s, or work at McDonald’s. Those kids lived with the pressure of needing a literal miracle in order to save their families, but the miracle didn’t happen, because the odds were against them, because the odds were against all of us. And so America decided that they didn’t deserve an I.D.

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The Dream, it turned out, needed to demonize others in order to help the chosen few. Our parents, too, would be sacrificed. The price of our innocence was the guilt of our loved ones. Jeff Sessions, while he was Attorney General, suggested that we had been trafficked against our will. People actually pitied me because my parents brought me to America. Without even consulting me.

The irony, of course, is that the Dream was our inheritance. We were Dreamers because our parents had dreams.

It’s painful to think about this. My mother, an aspiring interior designer, has gone twenty-eight years without a sick day. My dad, who loves problem-solving, has spent his life wanting a restaurant. He’s a talented cook and a brilliant manager, and he often did the work of his actual managers for them. But, without papers, he could advance only so far in a job. He needed to be paid in cash; he could never receive benefits.

He often used a soccer metaphor to describe our journey in America. Our family was a team, but I scored the goals. Everything my family did was, in some sense, a pass to me. Then the American Dream could be mine, and then we could start passing to my brother. That’s how my dad explained his limp every night, his feet blistered from speed-running deliveries. It’s why we sometimes didn’t have money for electricity or shampoo. Those were fouls. Sometimes my parents did tricky things to survive that you’ll never know about. Those were nutmegs. In 2015, when the U.S. women’s team won the World Cup, my dad went to the parade and sent me a selfie. “Girl power!” the text read.

My father is a passionate, diatribe-loving feminist, though his feminism often seems to exclude my mother. When I was in elementary school, he would take me to the local branch of the Queens Public Library and check out the memoir of Rosalía Arteaga Serrano, the only female President in Ecuador’s history. Serrano was ousted from office, seemingly because she was a woman. My father would read aloud from the book for hours, pausing to tell me that I’d need to toughen up. He would read from dictators’ speeches—not for the politics, but for the power of persuasive oratory. We went to the library nearly every weekend for thirteen years.

My mother left her factory job to give me, the anointed one, full-time academic support. She pulled all-nighters to help me make extravagant posters. She grilled me with vocabulary flash cards, struggling to pronounce the words but laughing and slapping me with pillows if I got something wrong. I aced the language portions of my PSATs and SATs, partly because of luck, and partly because of my parents’ locally controversial refusal to let me do household chores, ever, because they wanted me to be reading, always reading, instead.

If this all seems strategic, it should. The American Dream doesn’t just happen to cheery Pollyannas. It happens to iconoclasts with a plan and a certain amount of cunning. The first time I encountered the idea of the Dream, it was in English class, discussing “The Great Gatsby.” My classmates all thought that Gatsby seemed sort of sad, a pathetic figure. I adored him. He created his own persona, made a fortune in an informal economy, and lived a quiet, paranoid, reclusive life. Most of all, he longed. He stood at the edge of Long Island Sound, longing for Daisy, and I took the train uptown to Columbia University and looked out at the campus, hoping it could one day be mine. At the time, it was functionally impossible for undocumented students to enroll at Columbia. The same held for many schools. Keep dreaming, my parents said.

I did. I was valedictorian of my class, miraculously got into Harvard, and was tapped to join a secret society that once included T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. I was the only Latina inducted, I think, and I was very chill when an English-Spanish dictionary appeared in our club bathroom after I started going to teas. When I graduated, in 2011, our country was deporting people at record rates. I knew that I needed to add even more of a golden flicker to my illegality, so that if I was deported, or if my parents were deported, we would not go in the middle of the night, in silence, anonymously, as Americans next door watched another episode of “The Bachelor.” So I began writing, with the explicit aim of entering the canon. I wrote a book about undocumented immigrants, approaching them not as shadowy victims or gilded heroes but as people, flawed and complex. It was reviewed well, nominated for things. A President commended it.

But it’s hard to feel anything. My parents remain poor and undocumented. I cannot protect them with prizes or grades. My father sobbed when I handed him my diploma, but it was not the piece of paper that would make it all better, no matter how heavy the stock.

By the time I was in grad school, my parents’ thirty-year marriage was over. They had spent most of those years in America, with their heads down and their bodies broken; it was hard not to see the split as inevitable. My mom called me to say she’d had enough. My brother supported her decision. I talked to each parent, and helped them mutually agree on a date. On a Tuesday night, my father moved out, leaving his old parenting books behind, while my mom and brother were at church. I asked my father to text my brother that he loved him. I think he texted him exactly that. Then I collapsed onto the floor beneath an open drawer of knives, texted my partner to come help me, and convulsed in sobs.

After that, my mom became depressed. I did hours of research and found her a highly qualified, trauma-informed psychiatrist, a Spanish speaker who charged on a sliding scale I could afford. My mom got on Lexapro, which helped. She also started a job that makes her very happy. In order to find her that job, I took a Klonopin and browsed Craigslist for hours each day, e-mailing dozens of people, being vague about legal status in a clever but truthful way. I impersonated her in phone interviews, hanging off my couch, the blood rushing to my head, struggling not to do an offensive accent.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you regret how stupid you were for taking those sweet, painless days for granted? Although my days are hard, I understand that I’m living in an era of painlessness, and that a time will come when I look back and wonder why I was such a stupid, whining fool. My mom’s job involves hard manual labor, sometimes in the snow or the rain. I got her a real winter coat, her first, from Eddie Bauer. I got her a pair of Hunter boots. These were things she needed, things I had seen on women her age on the subway, their hands bearing bags from Whole Foods. My mom’s hands are arthritic. She sends me pictures of them covered in bandages.

My brother and I now have a pact: neither of us can die, because then the other would be stuck with our parents. My brother is twenty-two, still in college, and living with my mom. He, too, has some skills. He is gentle, kind, and excellent at deëscalating conflict. He mediated my parents’ arguments for years. He has also never tried to change them, which I have, through a regimen of therapy, books, and cheesy Instagram quotes. So we’ve decided that, in the long term, since his goal is to get a job, get married, have kids, and stay in Queens, he’ll invite Mom to move in with him, to help take care of the grandkids. He’ll handle the emotional labor, since it doesn’t traumatize him. And I’ll handle the financial support, since it doesn’t traumatize me.

I love my parents. I know I love them. But what I feel for them daily is a mixture of terror, panic, obligation, sorrow, anger, pity, and a shame so hot that I need to lie face down, in my underwear, on very cold sheets. Many Americans have vulnerable parents, and strive to succeed in order to save them. I hold those people in the highest regard. But the undocumented face a unique burden, due to scorn and a lack of support from the government. Because our parents made a choice—the choice to migrate—few people pity them, or wonder whether restitution should be made for decades of exploitation. That choice, the original sin, is why our parents were thrown out of paradise. They were tempted by curiosity and hunger, by fleshly desires.

And so we return to the debt. However my parents suffer in their final years will be related to their migration—to their toil in this country, to their lack of health care and housing support, to psychic fatigue. They were able, because of that sacrifice, to give me their version of the Dream: an education, a New York accent, a life that can better itself. But that life does not fully belong to me. My version of the American Dream is seeing them age with dignity, being able to help them retire, and keeping them from being pushed onto train tracks in a random hate crime. For us, gratitude and guilt feel almost identical. Love is difficult to separate from self-erasure. All we can give one another is ourselves.

Scholars often write about the harm that’s done when children become caretakers, but they’re reluctant to do so when it comes to immigrants. For us, they say, this situation is cultural . Because we grow up in tight-knit families. Because we respect our elders. In fact, it’s just the means of living that’s available to us. It’s a survival mechanism, a mutual-aid society at the family level. There is culture, and then there is adaptation to precarity and surveillance. If we are lost in the promised land, perhaps it’s because the ground has never quite seemed solid beneath our feet.

When I was a kid, my mother found a crystal heart in my father’s taxi. The light that came through it was pretty, shimmering, like a gasoline spill on the road. She put it in her jewelry box, and sometimes we’d take out the box, spill the contents onto my pink twin bed, and admire what we both thought was a heart-shaped diamond. I grew up, I went to college. I often heard of kids who had inherited their grandmother’s heirlooms, and I sincerely believed that there were jewels in my family, too. Then, a few years ago, my partner and I visited my mom, and she spilled out her box. She gave me a few items I cherish: a nameplate bracelet in white, yellow, and rose gold, and the thick gold hoop earrings that she wore when she first moved to Brooklyn. Everything else was costume jewelry. I couldn’t find the heart.

I realized that, when my mother found the crystal, she was around the same age I am now. She had probably never held a diamond, and she probably wanted to believe that she had found one in America, a dream come true. She wanted me to believe it, and then, as we both grew up, alone, together, she stopped believing, stopped wanting to believe, and stopped me from wanting to believe. And she probably threw that shit out. I didn’t ask. Some things are none of our business. ♦