What Do Nightmares Mean Spiritually? The Truth About Bad Dreams

What do nightmares mean spiritually? There are a few reasons why you may be having nightmares, as well as solutions to getting rid of your nightmares for good.

Bad dreams are no fun to have. They can make you fearful to go back to sleep, leaving you tired and anxious.

I’ve found that there are spiritual reasons for having bad dreams which you can work with in order to get rid of them for good.

You don’t need to suffer and be afraid of falling asleep. If you are wondering what nightmares mean spiritually, these are the most common reasons for them.

What Do Nightmares Mean Spiritually?

1. Unprocessed Trauma

Trauma can show up as nightmares. It doesn’t matter if this trauma was recent, from a long time ago in the past, or from a past life. If you have unprocessed trauma and emotions, then your dreams may be trying to process them for you.

In simplified terms, trauma is an event that affected you negatively and that you are still carrying around with you. It is something that still bothers you and you have pain from it. It doesn’t matter how big or small the event was, just that it is still with you.

If you were a child then it can be something that may seem little to you now but when you were younger, it really upset you.

For example, it can be a child saying something mean to you at school and you still carrying around the emotions of how you felt when it happened.

If you feel like this is the case, then do your best in your waking life to process this trauma so that you can have a more restful sleep. How do you do this?

You do this by feeling your pain and then doing your best to let it go. If you are resisting feeling what wants to be felt, then you might process it in your dreams instead. It might be time to dive into some shadow work to heal this energy.

Feeling your uncomfortable emotions and not resisting them is one of the fastest ways through your pain. Resisting them will only prolong the pain and it will have to come out another way.

It may come out through your dreams or even your physical body. Energy never stops moving so stuffing your pain down won’t work in the long term. Allow yourself to heal your inner child or whatever pain is within you, and you will find your nightmares start to fade away.

2. Negative Energy Around You

If your nightmares started when you moved into a new house, started a new job, or started hanging out with someone new, then it is very possible that there is a negative energy around you.

As an example, I rarely get nightmares but as soon as I moved into this older house, I was having them often. I felt a negative presence at this place, and it seeped into my dreams. As soon as I moved from that place into a new one, the nightmares stopped.

Environments can have negative energy in them from previous owners. This is especially the case if lots of people occupied a space, something bad happened or the previous owners were in a low energy themselves. They could have attracted lower beings to their house where these beings stayed.

You may also find this in a new workplace, on a vacation, or even with someone new that you hang out with. This new person may have a negative entity or entities attached to them. Or your workplace may have a lot of negative energy in it.

Maybe you are living with new people and have new roommates or guest staying with you. Their frequency may be attracting negative energy and causing you to have bad dreams.

The best way to get rid of this negative energy in your space is to leave the space (permanently if you can), spend less time with a person, or do things to clear away the negative energy.

Grab some sage and sage your place and yourself to let out that negative energy. Make sure to open your windows so that the negative energy has somewhere to go. Otherwise, it will stay in your house.

It may take some time to figure out where the negative energy is coming from, but you will put the pieces together. Notice when you started getting nightmares (if anything new happened.) Also, notice if your bad dreams start to go away if you change anything in your life.

3. Fear

Your fear can play out in your dreams. When you are fearful of something in your waking life, it can show up as a bad dream. Often this fear will show up in a different form, but the emotions will be the same.

The best way to stop bad dreams is to face your fears in your waking life. This may look like having a conversation with someone else, quitting one thing, or starting another thing.

Fear can also stem from watching a scary movie or doing something scary the night before. Scary movies can cause you to have fear within you.

The last time I watched a scary movie, I had the worst nightmare of my life. I haven’t watched them since.

Nightmares can also show up if you have a really bad day. If you’ve experienced something that was pretty uncomfortable the day before, you may end up having a bad dream.

Your fears can be from anything, but you’ll find that once you face your fears, they go away in your dream state as well.

[optin-monster-inline slug=”ofb09lms8sbnbij3onm4″]

4. Something is Out of Alignment

Another reason why you may get nightmares is that something in your life and within you is out of alignment. What I mean by this is that something in your life isn’t in resonance with you anymore.

You may have recently had a big shift in energy and a spiritual awakening and now the old things that used to bring your joy are no longer bringing you joy. Your bad dreams are asking you to look at what is out of alignment.

So, ask yourself, “what no longer feels right in my life.” When you fix this misalignment, your bad dreams should go away.

5. You Are on the Wrong Path

If you are on the wrong path in life, then your spirit guides may try to get your attention through your dreams to alert you to this.

While I don’t completely agree that there is a wrong path as everything is a learning experience, there may be a path more suitable for you. This path may be one of a higher vibration that brings you more joy and expansion.

If you are having nightmares and you feel that something in your life isn’t right, then it is worth it to look at what you can change.

Is there something else that is calling to you? What does your soul want right now? Spend some time to look at where you may want to step into a new, higher path for yourself.

6. Sleep Aids

This last one isn’t a particularly spiritual reason, but I wanted to mention it because I know it will help you if you are having bad dreams.

Sleep aids and even ‘natural’ ones such as melatonin can mess with your mind while you are sleeping.

I know this because I used to take melatonin thinking that it was ok because it’s somewhat ‘natural’, but it caused me to have bad dreams. It is still a synthetic product and isn’t the same as the natural melatonin that your body produces.

You can buy natural melatonin but it is made from the pineal gland of animals. If you are consuming something from animals then you may be taking on that animal’s energy. So, it is labeled natural but it still carries the frequency of that animal.

Since I stopped taking melatonin, I found that my dreams have not been so crazy or scary.

If you do take any sort of sleep aid and are getting crazy, bad dreams, it’s worth it to look at these products and use less of them if you can.

How to Get Rid of Your Bad Dreams

I’ve already mentioned a few ways to get rid of your nightmares, such as facing your fears, getting yourself into alignment, clearing negative energy, watching less scary tv, and taking fewer sleep aids but there’s something else that you can do that has worked wonders for me.

It is to ask your higher self, spirit guides, and angels to help you to only have good dreams. I always ask when I’ve had a bad day because I know that is when the nightmares are most likely to show up. It’s a good idea to ask every night before falling asleep especially if you get them often. 

You can also use crystals and place them on your nightstand or under your pillow to help you have better dreams and sleep.

Dreamcatchers are another option. They work to catch negative dreams and filter out bad energy so that you can have good dreams. Try hanging one of these above your bed to get rid of your nightmares.

Final Thoughts – What Do Nightmares Mean Spiritually?

There are many spiritual reasons for nightmares and it’s worth looking at what is going on in your life in order to find the root cause of the nightmares.

You shouldn’t have to be afraid of going to sleep or have to suffer from bad dreams. There is a reason you are having them.

Look at all the reasons I mentioned above and try to pinpoint when your bad dreams started. You will find a correlation between when they started and what changed in your life around that time. You can then take the steps to heal or eliminate the source so that you can have a restful, peaceful sleep.

~Meghan