I study demonic possession dreams. Here’s what we’ve found. | Patrick McNamara

This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation.

What are nightmares, and why do we have them? Patrick McNamara, an experimental neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of sleep, dreams, and religion, believes nightmares have both important spiritual and emotional functions for our minds.

While nightmares can be deeply unpleasant, they have been experienced and recorded by humans for thousands of years, and historically those who were able to withstand and control their nightmares were held in high societal regard — appointed as spiritual guides, or shamans.

Beyond the spiritual, McNamara explains that nightmares can provide insights into the neurobiology of our REM sleep, where we can confront and process trauma. Nightmares can create a kind of exposure therapy, assisting emotional regulation and helping to maintain healthy emotional responses to the environment. That’s why REM sleep is crucial for processing emotional trauma: it allows us to integrate traumatic experiences into our long-term memory stores.

0:00 When REM sleep goes off the rails
0:30 Your brain on nightmares
1:33 Investigating religious nightmares & demonic possession
3:52 Those who conquer demons
4:45 REM neurobiology: Trauma processing

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About Patrick McNamara:
Patrick McNamara is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northcentral University. He also holds appointments in the departments of Neurology at the University of Minnesota and Boston University School of Medicine. He is a founding editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior, the flagship journal for the emerging field of neuroscience of religion. McNamara's current research centers on the evolution of the frontal lobes, the evolution of the two mammalian sleep states (REM and NREM), and the evolution of religion in human cultures.

McNamara is the editor of Where God and Science Meet and Science and World Religions, and the author of The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press), Religion, Neuroscience and the Self: A New Personalism (Routledge), and numerous publications on the neurology and psychology of religion. McNamara is a John Templeton Foundation award recipient for his research project The Neurology of Religious Cognition.

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Read more from The Well:
How saying “me” or “we” changes your psychological response — and the response of other people
Biology’s unsolved chicken-or-egg problem: Where did life come from?
Why has every postwar generation since the 1950s become less religious?

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About The Well
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Together, let's learn from them.

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[bigthink]

Do you get nightmares or other recurring dreams?

[MrHappyfeet]

I use to have nightmares all the time, they were always very similar with something chasing me. One day telling my friend he said “why don’t you just turn around and face whatever is chasing you?” I was dumbfounded but The next time I had the nightmare I did just that and it worked. I never had that dream again

[LoFoSho]

I had a dream once like 4 or 5 years ago where I woke up from a dream and there was a “demon” standing right next to me and I screamed, crazy enough I woke up FOR REAL and it threw me and I will NEVER forget that. It was like inception, a dream within a dream. It was the sweatiest I had ever been when I woke up.

[rRagnaBR]

I suffered this when I was a kid. Growed up and, over time, I was facing anything that entered my dreams to scare me with pure rage. Since then, no nightmares anymore.

[renemedina]

I've had this experience before. A large bear like creature with 3 eyes would be in my room and I couldn't react to it because of paralysis. After 3-4 months of this it had gotten to a point where the creature was at the foot of my bed. Then one night as it was at the foot of my bed, a man that looked very similar to my late grandfather entered my room. The man then sat at the foot of my bed and looked at the 3 eyed creature. He then spoke to me, "Mio it's ok." I fell back to sleep and since then will occasionally see the 3 eyed creature moving around my home when I'm in my dream state, but stays a good distance away from me.

[eyguz]

I have experienced sleep paralysis and hallucination of entities often enough in my life that at this point I know how to deal with them even in a dreaming state. One of the most profound moments however was many years ago for my 3rd instance of paralysis when I collected myself in face of a perceived demonic threat. I was dreaming I was sitting in my room with some relatives when one of them rushed to shut the door to the room suddenly and the rest threw bedsheets over themselves and laid still. I looked around them confused before the hairs on my body stood up and I felt a cold sensation chill the blood in my body. I think at this point since I had already experienced the familiar onset of sleep paralysis, my subconscious began the process of waking me up because I felt my dream body shift into the prone sleeping position of my real body and my "dream" eyes closed. I saw a shadow presence come over my closed eyelids and heard rasping breathing inches from my face as it stared me down with intensity I'd never felt before. I remained calm and focused on waking up rather than giving into fear or even opening my eyes to meet the entity's gaze. Eventually I woke up in a calm state and spent some time thinking about the experience. A couple of nights ago though I experienced a short paralysis again and dreamt that I saw a shadow entity staring through a window in my house just watching me. I woke up just as a powerful thunderstorm began in my city. I can't really ascribe meaning to these experiences, but they feel vividly real almost to the point of being on the same level as memories. This existence of ours has more than meets the eye.

[ashessnow_]

Had the same dreams. After shadow work, my shadow essentially revealed to me that I had an abusive caretaker (mom) that I was afraid of especially when entering the room or finding me in my safe space. Rem cached that trauma until I was an adult in a similar abusive relationship with another broken woman. Rem is dangerous if it's not addressed in a transformative way because we are attracted to "familiar spirits." Good luck!

[gabeiocovozzi]

In my experience, I have learned to take control of my dreams so that when I’m having a nightmare, I can change it. Though with this comes facing the negative… standing up and rising above allows you control. You are strong, believe in your ability to face and overcome whatever heavy energy it is. Practicing lucid dreaming can help you shift a nightmare into something more positive or to wake up even. Best to you all, sending good vibes 🌜🌞🌛

[erikbudrow]

I was having regular dreams where some sort of predatory animal was chasing me or stalking me. I'd always wake up when it got really close. But then I started getting very serious about changing my life for the better, exercising, journaling, doing cold therapy, facing things that I hated. Then when those predator dreams happened I started being able to fight back and the predators would run away from me. I haven't had too many of those predator dreams since then. 💪🙏

[xXshadowXx]

I can control my dreams. I still have the feelings like being scared or nervous but I can now control my dreams and become aware that I'm dreaming making it easier to get over it.

[doolallyshake]

I used to have vivid nightmares, sometimes I'd confront the monsters but I would feel u comfortable as they stared at me in shock and horror. Then one time I had a nightmare of a monster coming up the stairs towards me. I was so furious with all the nightmares I was having I screamed at it and ran towards it, jumping down the stairs just to hit it. I felt such a great sense of relief after that, I wasn't going to let any monsters get the better of me anymore, I would use my rage and misery against them. My nightmares stopped being regular after that, and now my nightmares consist of being late for a project deadline and boring things like that.

[AwokenEntertainment]

wow, who knew so much healing processes occurred during REM sleep - this is powerful

[shadw]

The reason why religious people tend to dream about demons is because they believe them. Expectations and beliefs effect how you dream and what you dream about. This is also how you can gain influence over the dream and learn to control it

[ShadeFC]

I would be extremely curious to see some in depth psychological analysis on quantifying the demonic entity as far as what part of the psyche is being represented especially when it has the ability to literally take over or "possess" the active mind. That is assuming he didn't mean it literally in a supernatural sense.

[DollfaceKim]

I have had nightmares my entire life. I talk in my sleep to others, it was so interesting to my dad that he recorded them to try to understand dreams more. I had a dream diary that I'd write in every morning until around 20yrs old. Then the dreams became worse, my nightmares were ruling my days, I would get flashbacks throughout the day of my nightmares, it was hell. I absolutely have PTSD from my nightmares but recently I've begun to meditate a lot. I focus on the dreams and even started to do personal vlogs, recording myself talking about the dream to my camera phone. I have gained so much insight about my dreams and my true self now, and in my dreams I am able to say "wait, that can't happen, this is stupid" and it's become pretty amazing, almost enough to call it "cool". What are nightmares if we don't have the ability to fear? Just your brain trying to problem solve while working with the subconscious mind. It's all about experiencing and problem solving the fears that may come along, in my opinion. Your brain has these experiences while you sleep to secrete certain hormones that sometimes we need is what I've heard in order to fully experience and understand how to deal with things in life and to get over a certain traumas and obstacles so that we can focus on what really matters. Which one would hope is to obtain good dreams and happiness. But that's just my thought.

[GO-jibu]

I've had dozens of sleep paralysis episodes throughout my life. It was at its worse when I was 15-16. I remember one week specifically when it was happening every night and I remained awake throughout much time of the night, just so I would't have to deal with SP. Years later, Im 31 now, after much learning, I've realized (or at least I tell myself) that the hallucinations seen during SP, i.e. the shadow man, come from our collective unconscious (thank you Carl Jung) and can also come from our own individualized unconscious. Once I internalized this, I realized that the hallucinations are more vulnerable than I am during SP. When the usual shadow man appeared again in my room, I "spoke' with him and told him to come closer so I can finally get a good look at him, and I told him to come clean and admit that he, the shadow man, is a part of my unconscious trying to communicate something to me. He laughed and doubled down that he was not part of me. Convinced he is (as I now know better) I told him "I'll slap the sht out of you" if he didn't do as I told him. Ever since then, I haven't had as many episodes. When I do, I can usually handle them. Although now instead of the shadow man talking back to me during SP, I hear sounds like strong waves breaking which is scary but this too doesn't faze me as I still hold frame during my SP episodes. Aside from the scary imagery, there is nothing else to fear from SP.

[stephaniepink]

Thank you for this video @Big Think, Patrick McNamara and team.

This helped me immensely, and answered questions I had about my young childhood, my current life path, and even an explanation why my friend with aphantasia (inability to create mental imagery) sleeps so well and is less affected by traumatic things, like responding to a life saving emergency. 🙏

[cht]

I grew-up in a family with no religious interest or spiritual practice. Nothing was animated. I had one recurring dream that truly terrified me. It was like a cardboard cutout of just the head of a person bobbing up and down and up and down in the waves of a colorless sea. No warmth, just a mechanistic and unfeeling void. The dream no longer troubled me after about age 15 or so. But it was and is still descriptive of my life.

[CharlieRagnarok]

I used to constantly get nightmares about vampires and vampire cults.. they were so vivid and terrifying. In hindsight, I think the people I was surrounded by in my waking life were "draining" my energy constantly. But they were people I could not get away from at the time, trapped by the constraints of societal expectations (school, work, home).

I think subconsciously, I felt like they were "sabotaging" me. They did not have my best interests in mind. I could not trust them.

Then I had a dream where they said I was finally "one of them, " which was during the worst mental health crisis of my life to date. A time where I was basically "sabotaging" my own mind. Where I felt like I was giving in to my own fear.

[Allaiya.]

I have not had any nightmares about demons even with suffering sleep paralysis (though did have recurring dreams of the Scream guy breaking into my house as a kid).

I did have a dream once where I encountered 'God' though when I was 16. It was in high school after my sister's friends brother, about my age, died from leukemia. I felt horribly guilty about not visiting him in the hospital (my mom discouraged it as she said you 'wouldn't want to remember him' that way). Anyway, I had dreamed that God told me everything was alright. God was represented by a blinding light, basically like the sun. Couldn't look directly, just through the trees branches. Definitely the most peaceful I ever felt in a dream.. and haven't had anything like it since.

I have also had dreams a few times where I realize I am dreaming & can control what's happening. It's pretty neat. I don't feel like I remember my dreams these days.