Nightmares Don’t Get the Last Word

 From failing grades to naked shame, trauma sharpened my dreams—until healing dulled the blade

You shall not be afraid of any terror by night.
— From Psalm 91:5

For most of my life, I have been visited by two recurring “night terrors.” They sound almost comical in the daylight, but in the middle of them, they were paralyzing.

The first: I would realize, in exam week of college, that I had not been to a single class, not turned in a single assignment. My life felt ruined. I’d wake up in a sweat, heart pounding.

The second was even more exposing. I walked into a classroom completely naked. No way to hide. At first, no one noticed. Then slowly, everyone turned, stared, and gathered around. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t fix it. Sometimes in later years, the students in the dream were peers of my own children, making the shame even heavier.

These dreams chased me well into adulthood — the exam nightmare lasted into my 60s, and the naked one trailed me for forty years. At their core, they carried the voice of trauma. Stress weaponized itself into my sleep, turning insecurity and shame into suffocating scenarios.

But last night, something changed. I dreamed the naked dream again. Only this time, I wasn’t terrified. I shrugged, almost laughed, and thought, “Oh well… I meant to do that.” Casually, I corrected the situation and went on. The people around me weren’t mocking or condemning. They simply said, “Unfortunate, but you’ve got this.”

That moment felt like the Psalmist’s promise fulfilled.

The terror by night doesn’t always disappear. Sometimes the dream remains. Sometimes the stress still surfaces. But when you face trauma head-on, when you allow yourself to heal, confess, change, and let go of old attitudes — the terror loses its teeth.

The exam week panic? It stopped around the time I finally named what had happened to me in the spring of 1980. The naked dream? Now it, too, is losing its sting.

Maybe this is what the Psalmist meant: not that we will never face terrors by night, but that we need not fear them. Healing reframes them. What once felt life-ending may become manageable, even laughable, in the light of recovery.

The dream may remain. But the panic does not.

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