all in your head.

Nightmares are sneaky. They come at you when you are unsuspecting and defenseless, and they come from inside your own head. Then again, I suppose all these things are the advantages of nice dreams, so maybe I shouldn't complain too much. One of the most upsetting things about nightmares is that they continue to be upsetting. As a kid, you might have thought they were terrifying, but at least your Mom didn't get them.

But that's not true at all. The worst nightmare I've ever had was as an adult, in college. I dreamed that I was testifying at a trial, saying that my dad had abused me. I was sitting in the witness box, looking out at Daddy sitting at the defendant's table. The absolute worst part of it was that I knew that I was lying. I knew Daddy had never touched me, and I didn't understand why I was doing all this. It still makes me shudder.

I have tricks to combat nightmares. They don't actually work, but since I think that they do, somehow that means that they do work after all. That's the most brilliant and nonsensical thing about them. They're just little things that grown-ups told me when I was little and earnest and nightmares were my biggest problem. I believed the grown-ups, because they were grown-ups. Then the tricks worked, and so I really believed in them. Oddly enough, two-thirds of my tricks are religious in nature. If you don't think that's odd, I have a brother who does.

The first thing is prayer. Some Sunday School teacher told me once that praying not to have nightmares would prevent them. I added that to my prayer routine that very night, along with protecting my family and pet cats. I never did any sort of study to see if it worked. You know, develop my hypothesis, pray not to have nightmares one night, then don't pray about it the next night for control purposes. My thirst for scientific knowledge was not strong enough to risk bringing bad dreams upon myself. Of course, I still occasionally had nightmares, but I wasn't going to get mad at God for letting one slip through. Never did it occur to me that I was asking God to please enforce mind control over me.

The second trick was from a preacher, who told me that if you invoke the name of Christ during a nightmare, it will go away. So while the prayer was a preventative measure, this was actual battle. I remember the first time I tried this one. I was probably nine. I don't remember what the nightmare was about, but I remember having that pivotal moment when you realize, Oh wait, I'm having a nightmare. I'm really asleep and none of this is real. So I gathered up all my mind strength and screamed out "Jesus!" in my head (and possibly out loud). The dream actually faded into wispy smoke and a completely different setting appeared, a view of a chimney on top of a building in London at sunset. I wonder if my parents thought I was a sleep-blasphemer.

I was enthralled with this effective maneuver. I tried a thing and I got results. Of course, now I realize that the important part was probably the realization that it was a dream and the decision to take control of the dream. Obviously, at that point, I was at least somewhat conscious and could control my thoughts. I mean no disrespect to Son of God. While logically, I believe that the actual word has nothing to do with it, I'm not going to start calling out "Zeus!"

The last trick doesn't have an interesting story and is not religious at all, or at least no religion I've ever heard of. If you wake up in the middle of the night, having had a nightmare, roll over. This will "clear" the nightmare and you'll go back to sleep to dream about something else. There is nothing more irritating than escaping from a terrible dream into reality only to go right back into it. Logically, this probably has more to do with waking up enough to move. But who wants to be logical all the time? It's magic.

None of these things work, and all of them do. Try them, or don't. It's all in your head.