Hi Liam
My heart goes out to you so much. It's a horrible thing to dread going to sleep, on top of facing the horror (in your dreams) of one of the things you dread the most and that is losing your family. Dread and/or stress in both waking hours and sleeping hours can prove so challenging for the mind and nervous system. Such emotions impact us in many ways.
While I think it can be natural to occasionally question just how much members of our family really mean to us, I've found a side effect of such questioning can be 'What would happen and how would I feel if I lost them?'. Such thoughts can begin to play on our mind more often than not if there's no way to manage them. How to become the gatekeeper of intrusive thoughts can involve some imaginative strategies. Finding what works for you could take some trial and error but eventually you can find what works for you personally. For example, if you're a highly imaginative person, you might imagine in your mind that there is a gate which your thoughts come through and guarding that gate is a gatekeeper. What does the gate look like and what does the gatekeeper or guard look like? Next time a thought presents itself at the gate, what do you imagine the gatekeeper doing to stop the thought from fully entering? Is the gatekeeper a centurion type, an angelic type or maybe a powerful baseball player, batting that thought way off out of the park? Maybe it's a wizard type that dissolves the thought with a spell like 'Stop, do not enter here. This is a place of love not fear'. Perhaps this could eventually become your mantra, without having to go into your imagination.
I actually know a couple of people who are into 'lucid dreaming', where you're not simply the helpless victim of your dreams you actually become an active participant in them. These people dictate the course of their dreams. Personally, I've never done it (lucid dreaming) but it does sound fascinating. To be conscious in a semi conscious state is seriously masterful stuff when it comes to the mind. I'm still trying to master I suppose what you could call lucid daydreaming or fully conscious daydreaming. Trying to change visions in my imagination to less stressful or deeply upsetting ones is, I feel, a good start to mastering the mind. Becoming fully conscious is one of the greatest challenges in life. There's just so much we're not fully conscious of.
Btw, I've found that the imagination can also be incredibly helpful if and when someone we love does pass away. In there we can find what makes things easier over time, where grief is no longer a constant. While my brother mentioned just yesterday that he imagines there's absolutely nothing beyond this life, I choose to imagine something entirely different because what I imagine is what works for me personally. If I imagined what my brother does, it'd just be depressing for me and life would feel pointless in a way. As I say, we gotta imagine what works for us, no matter what anyone says.
