Nightmare Help

She started:

Since I can remember I’ve dealt with disturbing or terrifying dreams. They all have had something to do with my past, whether abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual) or my severe depression after I had my son.

I replied:

I feel for you. I encourage you to seek God and perhaps a counselor for full healing from the horrors you suffered in the past. I have quite an understanding of sexual abuse. Although it is common for the mind to try to suppress bad memories, it is also common for the mind to rebel against this and try to bring the matters to the person’s attention through dreams. I urge you to explore all the links on Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors.

I then shared with her Positive Confession or Living in Denial? about what can be touted as bold faith can sometimes be cowardly living in denial. You have already read most of this if you have read How to Cope with Nightmares and Unwanted Dreams.

She wrote:

Lately, I have been having recurring dreams about doing to my son worse things than happened when I was so sick (mentally). I’ve woken up to looking into the hallway from my bed and seeing or thinking I’m seeing a dark figure or shadow. I don’t have any fear though, just guilt and sadness. I love my son, and I know that my past is not who I am in Christ. But I feel and think because of other issues regarding sexual abuse and still sometimes using the habits I developed at a young age as coping mechanisms such as food that I’m still that same person in a way.

It is one thing to know intellectually that in Christ you are a new creation – and I commend you for that knowledge – but it is another thing to be convinced of it in every fiber of your being. You have no doubt told yourself – and probably been told – negative things about yourself over and over and over. This ends up being a very powerful brainwashing process and gets deeply ingrained in your subconscious. The only way to be rid of these lies it to keep repeating the truth and dwelling on it as much as you did in the past with those lies. To help you with this, I urge you to read Forgiving Yourself and keep following for very many pages the main link toward the bottom of each page. I strongly suggest you read a bit each day – and, if possible, several times a day – for literally months. The same applies to reading How Much does God Love Me? Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You and all the links there. This will take much discipline but it is most important for your healing.

You are not the same person that you used to be but deeply ingrained habits of thinking and seeing yourself and coping with stress are very difficult to break. God could miraculously deliver you from all of this but see Life’s Mysteries Explained for insight into why the long, slow, hard method ends up achieving far more for you.

My old self thinks I deserve to be punished and suffer, while Jesus in me is saying, “No, that wasn’t you. Come follow me this way.”

You have correctly identified a key issue. As I have said, you need to reprogram your mind to undo all the brainwashing of the past. This requires much discipline over a long time, dwelling on the truth and repeating the truth to you. Doing this out loud, when possible, will be even more effective.

Here’s what I wrote near the end of my favorite web book:

Despite my relentless longing to share these truths, it hurts to let this book be published. The more I work on the book, the more immersed in its truths I become. It’s continually washing away layer after grimy layer of negativity and buoying me ever higher. I hate the thought of this process ever ending, but dour experience affirms that it will – soon after I put the book down. I have had to reread it scores of times to halt my slide back into the bog. And still I need it.

Though my need is chronic, I doubt if the mildest affliction could be relieved forever through one reading of this book. I expect you to feel better after a single dose but regular doses are essential for a permanent cure. So I urge you to keep this book handy, even after completing it. Long-term problems need long-term solutions. I covet a new life for you, not just a momentary easing of the pain. Experience suggests you will need this book year after year. We never reach the point where temptation leaves us forever.

Negative thoughts have been roosting in our heads, pecking away at the fruit beginning to form in our lives. We’ve shooed these pests away, but they will stealthily return. That’s our cue to skim through the book again. Highlight the parts that especially speak to you or uplift you. Personalize them. Write them out. Display them. Memorize them. Add to them. Share them. Live them. They will keep the vermin away and bring you to new levels of fruitfulness.

Find ingenious ways to kept in your consciousness truths you particularly need. At work I must set and use several computer passwords. I might say to myself I will praise the Lord at all times, while typing the first letter of each word. IWPTLAAT then becomes my new password. No one could guess such an apparently random string of letters and I can remember it only by rehearsing in my mind that positive declaration every time I must use it. Perhaps you could put a little heart somewhere to remind you how much you are loved by God. There are thousands of possibilities. Finding some that work for you will be well worth the effort.

I’d be thrilled if my expressions sometimes help. I have tried to shape them to stick in slippery memories. But don’t be chained to my words. Using your words will help the truths become yours. And don’t be confined to the paltriness of my insight. Hound God with the passion and confidence of a cherished lover until you receive your own Bible-based, Christ-centered revelations.

No matter how hot it’s served or how much it’s sweetened, second-hand revelation is as insipid as second-hand tea leaves unless the Holy Spirit comes upon you, exploding those words within you with such power that it becomes your own divine encounter. A hand-me-down word from God might bring a little refreshment, but a truth super-charged by the Spirit of God percolating through one’s life is so superior that no cost is too high a price to pay for it. Fervent prayer and Bible meditation is the usual price.

Though I have prayed incessantly that this book bless you as much as it has me, I fear I’m asking God to break one of his principles. Why should he command us to seek and to ask and devote our lives to poring over Scripture unless that’s the way he prefers to reveal his truth? It is truths in the heart, not words in a book, that set us free. And lodging them there takes spiritual and mental effort. I crave the joy of serving you by doing all the prayer and study, but that’s like trying to play tennis for you – I get the healthy exercise and you miss all the fun.

I fail time and time again with just walking with Jesus moment by moment.

That’s understandable, but keep persisting. As I have written elsewhere:

Satan is a sore loser. Once he finds something that shakes us up he keeps trying it over and over relentlessly until he is absolutely convinced that his tactics will never again work with you. When, finally, he seems to leave, it is only to bide his time for a surprise attack. His persistence is so very unpleasant. The positive side, however, is that this will make you stronger and stronger as you keep resisting his lies.

One of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents falls, what’s the first thing he does? He runs to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, can run to Daddy. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively recoil from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arms’ length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort.

Please pray that these dreams of mine will start to cease as a result of me listening and acting upon what Jesus is telling me to do moment by moment, day by day.

You have worded that well. Dreams are just an alarm going off indicating that there is a problem. The last thing you want is for the alarm to break down but the danger to continue. What you need is to continually renew your mind so that the habits of the past are slowly broken. In the above links I have provided important helps in this process.

I would like to encourage you with this from my writings:

The Surprising Joy of Trials

When Things Get Tough   Keep following the link at the end of the text on each page.

Related Pages

How to Cope with Nightmares and Unwanted Dreams

Your Sex Dreams: Normal, Demonic or Highly Revealing?

Deliverance from Sleep Paralysis with Hallucinations, Lucid Dreaming, Out of Body Experiences, Astral Travel, Haunted Houses, Ghosts, Demonic Attacks

Demons: A Sane Look at a Perplexing Subject

More about multiple personalities: Healing Your Inner Child

Not to be sold. © Copyright 2012, Grantley Morris. May be freely copied in whole or in part provided: it is not altered; this entire paragraph is included; readers are not charged and it is not used in a webpage. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings available free online at www.net-burst.com  Freely you have received, freely give. For use outside these limits, consult the author.

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