Embracing the Fear:
A Trauma Perspective on Mercer Mayer’s There’s A Nightmare In My Closet
by Karen Wiens, LCSW, Psychotherapist, P.C.
Treating adult survivors of childhood trauma has been my professional passion for the last 30 years. I also love children’s books. There’s A Nightmare In My Closet, by Mercer Mayer, seems to exemplify what I hear from my trauma clients.
Trauma fears are intensely induced into the psyche and the body, disturbing one’s sense of self. The disturbance can create dissociated affect, sensory material, and the conscious knowing of trauma. This is the BASK model of dissociation by Bennett Braun. He conceptualizes trauma to be dissociated into four different dimensions—–behavior, affect, sensation, and knowledge.
There’s A Nightmare In My Closet demonstrates, I believe, how a little boy has buried his fears/nightmares in the closet. Mayer depicts these nightmares as a monster. The following is my interpretation of this beautifully written and illustrated children’s book from the trauma perspective.
When a child experiences a terrifying act, often perpetrated by a trusting adult, the child often survives through the process of “dissociation” –the act of separating memories and feelings from consciousness. In the first few pages, he tells us his nighttime routine of making sure the closet door is soundly shut.
He was “even afraid to turn around and look.” When the traumatized child moves into adulthood, there is the strong need to not look back. It is too scary.
The little boy “peeks……sometimes” out from under his covers. Trauma rarely allows one to rest, so we do “peek” and take a look back. It is often the “behaviors” (Braun 1988) that moves one to look at the pain and get help. It is the depression, the anxiety attacks, the addictions, the unraveling marriage, and other symptoms that interfere with full functioning.
Armed with a toy gun, the little boy prepares to battle his nightmare, the monster, or the past dissociated fears. He prepared to shoot the nightmare once it emerged from the closet. The trauma survivor has built many defenses to conquer the past abuse, and/or the family infractions of disconnection, or attachment injuries.
The nightmare came out. The little boy was ready and said, “Go away Nightmare or I’ll shoot you. I shot him anyway.” The dissociated fears, anger, sadness, and despair are ones we just want to go away. The survivor has an arsenal of defenses –denial, minimization, delusions, projections, displacement, idealization, rationalization, etc.– used to combat the pain.
The “nightmare began to cry.” The fears are now exposed and there is an emotional expression in “affect” (Braun 1988) and in “sensation,” (Braun 1988). Another of my favorite researchers, Peter Levine, in Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997), and the Somatic Experiencing™ Trauma Institute would likely see this somatic and emotional expression as important in discharging the fears of trauma.
The nightmare wouldn’t stop crying so the little boy “tucked him in bed and closed the closet door.” In my trauma work, THIS is the magic. Here the fear is exposed, embraced, and then comforted. The fears are “known” (Braun 1988) and felt in a myriad of ways, enabling the trauma to become less dissociated.
When the fear is discharged from the body, there is healing.
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Bibliography
Braun, M.D., Bennett. “The BASK Model of Dissociation.” DISSOCIATION 1:1, [March 1988]:4-23. Mayer, Mercer. There’s A Nightmare In My Closet. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1998. Levine PhD, Peter. Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma. New York: Random House, 1997.
© 2013 Karen Wiens, LCSW, Psychotherapist, P.C.
Box 2004, Monument, CO 80133
kwienslcsw@comcast.net • karenwiens.com
Mercer Mayer is the writer and illustrator for Little Critter First Readers, as well as Little Critter Spectrum. He began writing and illustrating children’s books in 1966 and since that time, he has published over 300 titles. Open almost any of the award-winning author/illustrator’s books, and out may pop dragons, cuddly monsters, wonderful creatures, and endearing critters.