Dear Mrs. Bluth,
You are the first person to hear my plight, since I don’t have a clue as to how to deal with this phenomenon that has taken over my nights and affected my days. I know I need help, but I don’t know if there is anyone who can help me with this problem. All I do know is that if I do not address this thing that has taken over my every waking moment and invades my nights, I am sure I will lose my mind. Maybe, I’m suffering some sort of breakdown or mental disturbance, if so, please help me find a source of help or I am lost.
Up until five or six months ago, I was a perfectly normal, well-adjusted forty-eight year old wife, mother and grandmother. My marriage was fairly stable, the only pressures presenting themselves were strictly financial, what with weddings and other simchas to pay off. Other than that, baruch Hashem, my husband and I share a close and loving relationship. I have a strong and loving relationship with my three youngest children and two of my three sons. The one child who gives me angst is my oldest married daughter, who has always been quarrelsome and argumentative and causes rifts between the others. We have not spoken since my mother, a’h, passed away some six months ago. I have a good job that keeps me busy and a warm and supportive extended family and large circle of friends.
So, here is the problem. About five or six months ago, I went to bed with a bad cold. I had taken cold medicine to help me sleep and dozed right off, but what followed was extremely unnerving. I had a dream in which I was making dough for challas, but it did not appear to be for Shabbos, as the setting was a public place with many people milling about. I had to run up many flights of stairs to find an oven in which to bake my challas. In the dream, and in my sleep, I was very agitated because I was constantly being interrupted by visitors, many of whom were relatives and friends who were no longer alive, and I couldn’t keep track of the when I was supposed to take the challas out of the oven. Suddenly, the smell of burning dough filled my nostrils and I frantically raced up the floors to reach the oven and removed the blackened and burnt, challas.
I woke up covered in sweat with the small of the charred challas in my nostrils. This, in and of itself was frightening, as I never recall any dreams in my waking moments, let alone smells. Also, I do not bake challah.
I reasoned the whole thing away as hallucinations due to the cold and, perhaps, over medicating myself.
Several nights later, I had the dream again, with all the same visitors and a few new ones – my father, z’l, and my recently departed mother and again I woke up smelling burnt challah. The small lingered for a few moments even after I woke up frightened and upset. This time, I couldn’t pin the dream on anything and it left me fearful.
The next day at work, my co-workers made mention of the bags under my eyes and I explained that I wasn’t sleeping well. Some suggested having a glass of wine before bed. So before going to sleep the ensuing nights, I took a small glass of red wine and it seemed to work for a few weeks. And then, the dream, in its exact and vivid form, returned.
I understood then that what I was experiencing was something inexplicably extraordinary and a manifestation of my own mind. I have become so fearful of going to sleep that it has affected my health. I have lost weight and am extremely nervous. I don’t accept invitations that require sleeping over at my children’s homes, for fear that my frequent nightmare will visit me there. I have become morose and short tempered and people have noticed the change in me. It is now affecting my home life and this is why I need your help. Do I need a psychiatrist? Or have I already crossed over the boarders of sanity?
Dear Friend,
This is, indeed, a new frontier for me to address, but I think I can say, with a great deal of confidence, that you have not lost your mind. There are many reasons why dreams and nightmares invade our sleep, most easily explained, others a bit more mystical and harder to believe. So, I will try to cover most of the logic and the mystery and hope that you will find some relief and menuchas hanefesh.
Ordinarily, we dream during our R.E.M sleep, the deepest part of our sleep where we have little to no control over matter, and the focus is usually on a particular episode that impacted on us during the day. Good things turn into pleasant dreams and bad experiences may manifest themselves into nightmares. Children who read or see frightening stories or movies will surely have nightmares and horror dreams. These are ordinary dreams that have no reoccurrence and leave no mental or emotional mark.
Then we have memory-vision dreams, where events from years back return to haunt us in this deep state of sleep where all our defenses are down. I have seen people who recalled abuses and violations they experienced as children and buried away in their subconscious out of fear and terror. However, because they were not dealt with, years later those terrors come back in the form of horrific nightmares. The particular form of nightmare you are having can be dealt with through therapy. A competent therapist will guide the afflicted person back to his/her childhood and revisit the long buried trauma in safety and the person will finally achieve closure. Once this is done, the nightmares generally disappear shortly thereafter.
And then, you have the inexplicable – dreams that reoccur in precise context, over and over; dreams in which you can touch and feel, smell and taste; dreams that are in color and which you can recall verbatim long after you’ve awakened. These are often dreams in which those no longer in the world of the living come, usually to impart a message or warning. These are the dreams that therapists may have to work a bit harder to make go away.
My personal feeling is that usually, such a dream is a message from a departed loved one who is trying to make you aware of an important development in your life that needs attention. There are people who are astute in interpreting dreams, mekubalim who have this talent, or a rav, but that is something you would have to carefully research.
What I would suggest is that you go through the carefully and try and recall exactly what the souls who came to visit you said. Don’t skip anything as everything means something. The burnt challah may be indicative of something that needs fixing in your life.
If it is any comfort, I, too have had dreams in which my mother, a’h, has come to warn me of the things that are now coming to pass. You must have had a special connection with your parents that they came to convey a message to you. Embrace it and try to decipher what they mean, as neshamos speak in a different way.
