The Abyss of Nightmares
Absentmindedly, I was watching Tik-Toks from the comfort of my bed last night. The blue light shining upon my tired face as people whose names I will never remember danced before my eyes. This was so mindless that it made me tired or so I thought. Perhaps I was just wanting to be connected a moment longer to the waking world.
The mindlessness stopped when I saw a Tik-Tok of a man alleging under his “weird sleep facts” that there are links to dementia and nightmares. He claimed that a scientist was looking into the connection between those who have dementia and RBD, an REM sleep disorder.
I froze. His words echoed in my mind.
There have been moments in my adult years where my mother has mused that she understood parts of my own diagnosis with severe depression based on her own mother’s fight with depression when they were all much younger. My Granny is currently battling an ongoing form of dementia and every day seems to be a quiet, steady progression into mental decline. Where she was once full of generational stories and southern adages about life, she is now quite solemn and easily angered.
I have never been diagnosed with RBD or anything, but some of my dreams have made me very aware of the depth of the abyss within my own heart and mind. Before I go further, it is worth noting - in my religion it is not considered proper to describe one’s nightmares to another person.
Dreams are of three types:
Good dreams, which come from Allah (SWT)
Dreams of things on your mind, which can be random or just memories - these are neutral in essence
Nightmares that wake you with a bad feeling or cause pain, which are considered to be from Shaytaan.
(As seen in a hadith in Sahih Muslim, the Book of Dreams)
The nightmares started when I was sixteen or so, and followed me into adulthood. After becoming Muslim, they lessened a bit but were still regular. I thought they were unfortunate but normal, but some Muslims I met felt they were reason for concern and caution.
Do not utter a word of these night terrors to anybody else, they would warn me.
The concern was that if the dream did not come true for me, or did not have importance to me, they could potentially cause stress for another person. That perhaps Shaytaan could use my nightmares as a conduit of negativity into the lives of the people I loved. They said it was best to keep it inside unless I was describing them to seek medical help for them.
I resisted at first. All I had known for years were countless nightmares. I met people in them I did not know in my waking life, and what troubled my heart was sometimes so outlandish, I knew it could not come true. Why would I ever need to censor myself for people I barely knew at that time? It hurt my heart not to share parts of myself.
Like swallowing a bitter pill, I struggled to keep my personal realities to myself. I started to seek out spiritual care and weirdly enough, I’ve seen quite a lot of improvement, but that could be from a variety of things. Truthfully, I planned to make another blog post about what worked for me so far (maybe I’ll put a link here after I finish it, insha’Allah)
But my main worry is this: I know very little about why my brain is the way it is. What if by the time I am my grandmother’s age I will have dementia too? Are these signs of an impending reality I did not foresee until now or is it purely a case of “correlation does not equal causation”?
I truthfully only wrote this as an exploration of my own brain. The study didn’t say all people who have ever had a nightmare will get dementia or anything, so please do not take what I’ve said as a scientific fact or even something highly reputable in this particular piece. I would hate for this to cause concern in many others who have no reason to worry. I desire to see the results of this study in the future since there is so little we understand about the mind.
