What causes nightmares. How can you prevent disturbing dreams. Why do we experience vivid and scary dreams. What are common nightmare themes. How to cope with nightmares and improve sleep quality.

The Science Behind Nightmares: What Happens in Your Brain During Bad Dreams

Nightmares are vivid, disturbing dreams that evoke strong feelings of fear, anxiety, or distress. They typically occur during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which takes place in the latter half of our sleep cycle. During REM sleep, our brain activity closely resembles that of our waking state, with high energy consumption and intense neural firing.

Why do nightmares feel so real? During REM sleep, our brain’s motor cortex remains active, simulating movement in our dream world. However, a natural paralysis mechanism prevents us from physically acting out these dreams, protecting us from potential harm.

The Prevalence of Nightmares

• 10-50% of children aged 3-6 experience sleep-affecting nightmares
• Over 80% of children aged 7-9 occasionally have bad dreams
• 85% of adults report at least one nightmare per year
• 8-29% of adults have monthly nightmares
• 2-6% of adults report weekly nightmares

Interestingly, the frequency of nightmares tends to decrease with age. Older adults are 20-50% less likely to experience nightmares compared to younger adults.

Common Nightmare Themes: Unveiling Our Shared Fears

Despite our unique life experiences, research shows that many people share common themes in their nightmares. A 2014 University of Montreal study analyzed 253 nightmares and 431 bad dreams, revealing fascinating insights into our collective nocturnal fears.

Top Nightmare Themes

1. Physical aggression
2. Death
3. Health concerns
4. Threats
5. Natural disasters (more common in men)
6. War (more common in men)
7. Interpersonal conflicts (more common in women)

A German study further identified five recurring nightmare themes:

• Falling
• Being chased
• Paralysis
• Being late
• Death of family or friends

These shared themes suggest that our nightmares often reflect universal human fears and anxieties, transcending individual experiences.

The Emotional Impact of Nightmares: Beyond Fear

While fear is the emotion most commonly associated with nightmares, research shows that these disturbing dreams can evoke a range of intense feelings. In addition to fear, nightmares frequently cause:

• Sadness
• Confusion
• Disgust

This emotional complexity highlights the profound impact nightmares can have on our psychological well-being, even after we wake up.

Factors Influencing Nightmare Content: Unraveling the Mystery

While the exact causes of nightmares remain elusive, researchers have identified several factors that may influence their content and frequency:

Daily Experiences

Our dreams often incorporate aspects of our waking lives, both literally and symbolically. Common elements include:

• Work or study-related stress
• Relationship issues
• Recent conflicts or arguments
• Repetitive daily activities
• Current problems or challenges

Emotional State

Our emotional well-being plays a significant role in shaping our dreams. Negative emotions experienced during the day, such as stress, fear, worry, and anxiety, can manifest in our nightmares.

Medications

Certain medications have been linked to an increased likelihood of nightmares. These may include:

• Antidepressants
• Blood pressure medications
• Parkinson’s disease drugs
• Smoking cessation aids

If you suspect your medication is causing frequent nightmares, consult your healthcare provider before making any changes to your regimen.

Traumatic Events

Experiencing trauma can significantly impact our dream content. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often associated with recurrent nightmares related to the traumatic event.

The Evolutionary Perspective: Why Do We Have Nightmares?

While the exact purpose of nightmares remains unknown, some researchers propose an evolutionary explanation for their existence. Could nightmares serve an adaptive function?

The Threat Simulation Theory

This theory suggests that nightmares may have evolved as a way to simulate threatening situations in a safe environment. By experiencing fear and danger in our dreams, we might be better prepared to face real-life threats.

How might this work? During a nightmare, our brain activates the same neural pathways involved in real fear responses. This activation could potentially strengthen these pathways, making us more alert and responsive to potential dangers in our waking lives.

Emotional Regulation

Another perspective posits that nightmares may play a role in emotional regulation. By processing negative emotions and experiences in our dreams, we might be better equipped to handle them during our waking hours.

This theory aligns with the observation that individuals who experience more frequent nightmares often report higher levels of creativity and emotional sensitivity. Could nightmares be a byproduct of a more active and emotionally attuned mind?

Nightmare Disorders: When Bad Dreams Become a Serious Problem

While occasional nightmares are a normal part of the human experience, some individuals suffer from nightmare disorders that significantly impact their quality of life. How can you tell if your nightmares have crossed the line into a disorder?

Diagnostic Criteria for Nightmare Disorder

• Repeated occurrences of extended, extremely dysphoric, and well-remembered dreams
• The individual becomes fully alert upon awakening
• The nightmares cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning
• The nightmares are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance or another medical condition

If you suspect you may have a nightmare disorder, it’s essential to consult with a sleep specialist or mental health professional for proper diagnosis and treatment.

Treatment Options for Nightmare Disorders

Several therapeutic approaches have shown promise in treating nightmare disorders:

1. Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT): This cognitive-behavioral technique involves reimagining and rewriting the ending of recurring nightmares while awake.
2. Exposure, Relaxation, and Rescripting Therapy (ERRT): This method combines relaxation techniques with nightmare rescripting and exposure to nightmare content.
3. Lucid Dreaming Therapy: This approach aims to increase dream awareness, allowing individuals to exert some control over the dream narrative.
4. Medication: In some cases, medications such as Prazosin may be prescribed to reduce nightmare frequency, particularly in individuals with PTSD.

Strategies for Preventing Nightmares and Improving Sleep Quality

While we can’t completely eliminate nightmares, there are several strategies we can employ to reduce their frequency and impact:

Establish a Consistent Sleep Schedule

Maintaining a regular sleep routine helps regulate your body’s internal clock, potentially reducing the likelihood of nightmares. Aim to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends.

Create a Relaxing Bedtime Routine

Engage in calming activities before bed to help your mind transition into sleep mode. This may include:

• Reading a book
• Practicing gentle yoga or stretching
• Taking a warm bath
• Listening to soothing music
• Meditating or practicing deep breathing exercises

Manage Stress and Anxiety

Since daytime stress can contribute to nightmares, implementing stress-reduction techniques can be beneficial. Consider:

• Regular exercise (but not too close to bedtime)
• Mindfulness meditation
• Journaling
• Talking to a therapist or counselor

Limit Exposure to Disturbing Content

Be mindful of the media you consume, especially before bed. Violent or suspenseful movies, books, or news stories can influence your dream content.

Create a Sleep-Friendly Environment

Optimize your bedroom for restful sleep:

• Keep the room cool and dark
• Use comfortable bedding
• Minimize noise and light pollution
• Remove electronic devices or use blue light filters

Address Underlying Health Issues

Certain health conditions, such as sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome, can contribute to sleep disturbances and nightmares. If you suspect an underlying health issue, consult with your healthcare provider.

Coping with Nightmares: Strategies for Adults and Children

Even with preventive measures, nightmares may still occur. Here are some strategies for dealing with nightmares when they happen:

For Adults

1. Practice grounding techniques: Upon waking, focus on your surroundings to remind yourself that the nightmare wasn’t real.
2. Write it down: Keeping a dream journal can help process the emotions associated with nightmares.
3. Reframe the narrative: Try reimagining the nightmare with a different, less frightening ending.
4. Talk about it: Sharing your nightmare with a trusted friend or therapist can provide relief and new perspectives.
5. Engage in a calming activity: If you’re having trouble falling back asleep, try a quiet, relaxing activity until you feel ready to sleep again.

For Children

1. Provide comfort and reassurance: Stay with your child until they feel safe and calm.
2. Encourage discussion: Let your child talk about their nightmare if they want to, but don’t force it.
3. Empower them: Teach children that they can change the ending of their dreams or imagine a protective figure.
4. Create a “monster spray”: For younger children, a spray bottle filled with water labeled as “monster spray” can provide a sense of control.
5. Establish a soothing bedtime routine: Reading positive stories or practicing relaxation techniques can help create a sense of security.

By understanding the nature of nightmares and implementing these strategies, we can work towards minimizing their impact and achieving more restful, rejuvenating sleep. Remember, while nightmares can be distressing, they are a normal part of the human experience and often reflect our mind’s efforts to process complex emotions and experiences.

How to Avoid Nightmares and Get More Restful Sleep

Teeth falling out? Lost in the wilderness alone? Being chased but can’t scream? Most of us can remember at least one such dream for its vividness, resulting visceral fear and lingering discomfort.

The mind’s reel of horrors never ceases to amaze, and many of these dreams can be off-putting if not downright disturbing. From feeling all too real to playing on our deepest fears, bad dreams can also make it harder to get back to sleep and lead to bedtime anxiety for children as well as adults.

Want To Save
On Better Sleep?

See our latest sales!

Get $300 OFF Mattresses

In the realm of dreams and nightmares, there remains more mystery than fact. It’s an area of neuroscience and psychology that’s hard to study, since each of us experiences a unique dream world that’s inherently subjective and hard to document with reliability.

While a few hypotheses exist, little is confirmed about why we dream, what causes specific dreams, or how it all works. However, there are some interesting theories on nightmares and recent research that offers insight and potential ways to minimize their occurrence and impact. Read on to see what might influence dreams and current opinions on how to cope with the bad ones.

What Is a Nightmare?

Nightmares are defined as dreams that bring out strong feelings of fear, terror, distress or anxiety. They feel more vivid or intense than a bad dream, and nightmares are often differentiated from dreams when they cause the sleeper to actually wake up and experience intense feelings upon waking. People who awake during a nightmare are likely to remember the details of it.

While you are snoozing, your brain is pretty busy during certain times of the night. During

Rapid Eye Movement sleep,

brain waves exhibit activity fairly similar to waking, and your brain is consuming as much if not more energy than when you’re awake. Your eyes move rapidly (hence the name), but your muscles are in a state of paralysis. This temporary paralysis is a good thing, because during REM sleep your brain is still firing off commands in the motor cortex as you move around your dream world.

Nightmares
typically occur

during the REM phases of rest, showing up in the later half of your sleep. Little is known about why we dream in general, but popular theories range from managing subconscious thoughts, to sorting out memories and learned information, to purely random chemical signals. There also isn’t much information on exactly why dreams sometimes turn out to be nightmares, but it’s believed that some daytime factors can play an influential role.

Both children and adults experience nightmares and bad dreams, even though they are primarily associated with childhood. It’s estimated that 10-50% of three to six year olds experience nightmares that affect their sleep, with over 80% of seven to nine year olds occasionally experiencing bad dreams.

While children and teens may have more frequent nightmares, adults can and do still have them as well. A
literature review

found that 85% of adults report at least one nightmare the previous year, 8-29% have monthly nightmares, and 2-6% report weekly nightmares. Older adults are 20-50% less likely to have nightmares compared to younger adults.

Behind the Scenes: The Factors That Influence Dream Content

What was your last bad dream about? Despite our unique lives and experiences, if you asked a group of people this question, you’d likely see a few common themes. In fact, research shows we tend to share quite a bit of subject matter in nightmares.

A 2014 University of Montreal study, analyzed 253 nightmares and 431 bad dreams. They found that physical aggression was the most prevalent theme in nightmares, along with death, health and threats. Men’s nightmares were more likely to involve themes of natural disasters and war, while women showed higher frequency of interpersonal conflicts. While fear was a common emotion evoked by nightmares, a significant portion caused sadness, confusion, fear or disgust as well.

Similar themes were found in a previous
German study,

which identified the five most common nightmare themes as falling, being chased, being paralyzed, being late and death of family or friends.

There’s no direct proof or consensus to exactly what causes nightmares or why we have them, but things like our relationships, daytime activities, certain medications and traumatic events all have important links.

Your Experiences

For most people, dreams tend to incorporate
aspects of our waking lives

in both literal and abstract ways. For example, your dreams may include things like studying, test-taking, a problem you’re dealing with, working, family, or a repetitive action you do during the day. Negative things like stress, fear, worry, arguments, and other aspects of our days could also show up in nightmares.

The most common timeframes for dreams to incorporate episodic events and experiences is after
one to two days or five to seven days.

Dreams also commonly involve past
autobiographical experiences,

our personal experiences, and long-term memories of the self. Research shows these memories are typically experienced selectively and in a fragmented fashion

Anxiety and Stress

Stress and anxiety can come in many forms, from temporary everyday things like moving to a new place, changing roles at school or work, or failing at a task, to more major things like divorce, losing a family member, trauma, or anxiety disorders. Being stressed and feeling anxiety is associated with poor sleep in general, and both may also trigger a nightmare.

Anxiety regarding performance is one a common theme you may have recognized in your own dreams. For example, about 15% of German athletes in
one study

reported distressing dreams before a big event, most often involving athletic failure. Many students also experience bad dreams related to impending tests or finals, sometimes even years after they’ve finished school.

Media

The idea that scary, thrilling, or suspenseful shows or even fear-inducing news broadcasts cause bad dreams is often expressed anecdotally. While difficult to study, many of us can recall a time where visual imagery and situations from media popped up in dream content. Scary media can also cause stress and anxiety for some people (setting the stage for distressing dreams).

An older study of college students found that 90% could recall a frightening TV show or other media experience, and half said it had affected their sleep or eating habits in childhood or adolescence. More surprising is that about one-fourth of the students said they still experienced some residual anxiety. Blood, injury, disturbing sounds, and distorted images were the most prevalent types of phobia-inducing stimuli the researchers identified.

Depression

Severe depression and a negative self attitude were associated with a higher incidence of nightmares in a recent
recent study.

Depression actually proved to be the strongest predictor in their research, with 28% of sufferers reporting frequent nightmares compared to the sample average of 4%.

Personality

One study found adults with personality traits like distrustfulness, alienation, and emotional estrangement were more likely to experience chronic nightmares. Long-time dream researcher Ernest Hartmann proposes that people who have thinner personality boundaries and higher creativity may be more susceptible to nightmares.

Another interesting association is a political ideology. A study of college students found that the conservative participants reported more nightmares and more fearful content than liberals, while the liberals recalled more dreams overall.

Environment

Sleep research has documented that temperature and comfort can affect sleep quality, and the environment may have some impact on dream content as well. Temperatures that are too cold or too hot can lead to less restful sleep and more awakenings (meaning more remembered dreams), as can pain.

Make sure your sleeping on a comfortable mattress, to reduce tossing and turning and interruptions to your nightly sleep cycle.

Scent may also play a role. A German study released the scent of rotten eggs or roses into the rooms of sleepers after they entered REM sleep. Upon being awakened, people smelling roses reported more positive dream content while those smelling rotten eggs reported more negative content.

Traumatic Experiences

Recurring or more frequent nightmares have been linked with traumatic experiences, including events like
relationship violence

and surviving natural disasters, and it’s a defining characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Those with PTSD experience nightmares much more frequently, with research estimating 52% to 96% experience them often, compared to around 3% of the general population. The National Center for PTSD says that nightmares following trauma tend to incorporate similar elements or themes as well as replays of the event.

Medications

Certain types of medications, particularly those that influence neurotransmitters may influence nightmare frequency. These include antidepressants and barbiturates that affect REM sleep. If nightmares start after medication changes, bring it up with your physician.

Eating Before Bed

Snacking too close to bed can cause indigestion, and it may also influence your metabolism and dreams. One study linked junk food with nightmares, while another found that a spicy meal close to bed disturbs sleep, as summarized in a Lifehacker article.

Other Influential Factors

• Sleep Deprivation: Experiencing insomnia and fatigue also increase the chances of frequent nightmares, according to the previously mentioned Finnish study.
• Sleep Disorders: People with sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and other sleep disorders are more likely to experience nightmares.
• Migraines:
  Migraine headaches

  may be linked with more recurrent dreams and nightmares.

• Pain:
  One study

  showed 39% of people suffering from burn pain experienced pain in their dreams, which was associated with more nightmares and more intense daytime pain.

Minimizing Nightmares and Brushing Off Bad Dreams

Controlling nightmares remains largely uncharted territory, though there are few different schools of thought when it comes to managing bad dreams. For many people nightmares aren’t really a major nuisance, but if they do wake you up more than you’d like or you have trouble settling down afterwards, here are couple of potential ways to go about preventing them or reducing their severity.

Practice Good Sleep Hygiene

It’s not always possible to completely prevent bad dreams, but setting the stage for good sleep can help ensure you snooze more soundly and feel better rested.
Sleep hygiene

involves ensuring both your habits and sleep environment are ideal for quality rest.

Your sleep space can have some bearing on your resting state. Ideally, bedrooms should be cool, dark and quiet. Temperatures in the 60s to low 70s are considered best. Remove or turn off light sources like TVs, VCRs, and alarm clocks, and consider light blocking shades if you live in an urban area or sleep past sunrise. Earplugs can be helpful for drowning out bothersome noise.

In terms of habits, keeping a regular bedtime and waketime throughout the week is a key part of supporting your internal clock, as is daily moderate exercise, daily sunlight exposure and a regular evening relaxation routine.

Caffeine and other stimulants can all affect sleep in different ways, and are best avoided the hours before bedtime. Keeping bedtime snacks light and avoiding spicy foods or those that cause indigestion is also recommended.

Talk or Write It Out

Some psychologists believe talking about dreams and getting social support to put them in perspective is key to reducing anxiety following nightmares. This might take the form of talking out dreams with a therapist, discussing them with a partner or in a group setting, or via independent journaling.

If you wake up shaken from a nightmare and can’t get back to sleep right away, it could be helpful to get out of bed and write the dream down, and even change its course.

Image Rehearsal Therapy is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that involves recalling the nightmare and then writing out a new, more positive version and rehearsing this new scenario daily to displace the original nightmare theme. IRT is a well-researched type of therapy, and is a treatment
recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

for chronic idiopathic nightmares and PTSD-related nightmares.

Deal with Daytime Stressors

Other approaches can focus on routines or working on areas of your life that could be contributing to stress or fear. The
American Psychological Association’s

2013 Stress in America poll found that stress was associated with poorer sleep, and that poorer sleep was also associated with higher stress

When you’ve had a tough day, take a few minutes to de-stress before bed. Try a warm bath or other techniques to see what helps you most.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation is another method recommended by AASM for nightmares. It involves gradually tensing and relaxing different groups of muscles all over the body to reduce stress and tension. It can be done in a clinical setting, or at home via a guided audio track.

Avoid watching or reading things comprised of common nightmare fodder close to bed. That scary movie, suspenseful book or unsettling news broadcast could wind up in your midnight playlist.

Better choices for winding down if you are looking for more peaceful sleep are lighthearted shows, coloring/sketching, or neutral reading on subjects like self-improvement or hobbies. Remember, electronics like TVs and tablets steal sleep, so it’s best to turn them off at least 30 minutes before bed.

Get Help If Needed

Sometimes, nightmares can become more than just occasional disruptions, becoming a significant source of sleep anxiety. If you feel anxious around bedtime, speaking with a professional can help you resume your normal life.

Nightmare disorder

is a clinically recognized sleep disorder, classified by frequent and persistent nightmares that regularly disrupt sleep, cause bedtime anxiety and affect daytime behavior. They can also be a symptom of PTSD, which can have a dramatic effect on quality of life.

If you feel like nightmares are making it difficult to get a good night’s sleep often or feel anxiety around falling asleep due to bad dreams, it is worthwhile to discuss it with your doctor and/or a psychologist. They can assess if there are underlying conditions to resolve and prescribe the right treatments and medications when applicable.

Most importantly, don’t feel embarrassed to bring the issue up — nightmares aren’t childish. They can have a significant impact on your waking life, and social support along with healthy lifestyle habits can play an important role in minimizing their impact.

How often do you experience bad dreams? What seems to help you calm down or what encourages more positive dreams for you?

10 Common Creepy Dreams We’ve All Had At Least Once & What They Mean

Sleep is supposed to a be a restorative time that allows our bodies and minds to recharge from day-to-day happenings. But having a nightmare changes all of that. Dreams involving scary, stressful, or triggering scenarios can leave us gasping for air upon waking up — which is obviously upsetting. But dreams are simply a manifestation of our subconscious minds, so understanding the meaning of the most common nightmares is important.

In most cases, common nightmare meanings relate to fears that we experience in our waking lives, both symbolically and directly. While some night frights are simply the result of watching too many horror movies before bed, many can actually be used as a subconscious compass that’ll point us toward areas of our lives that need some attention or healing. Discovering the meaning of your nightmares can help to illuminate your repressed or unchecked fears — and once you figure out the meaning of a bad dream and address the underlying issue, you’re less likely to experience it again.

“Nightmares are actually the most important dreams of all, as they’re caused by our most difficult and uncomfortable real-life issues,” Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, professional dream analyst and author of Dream On It, tells Bustle. “They’re shining a light on something your subconscious wants you to correct — so instead of fearing nightmares, look at them as a brutally honest best friend who may be telling you something you don’t want to hear, but is [ultimately] for your benefit.”

Next time you wake up from a creepy dream, channel the stress into a subconscious study by writing down the details and doing some DIY dream interpretation work. Read on to find out the most common nightmare meanings and what they’re trying to tell you about your waking life.

Feeling Like You’re Falling

Almost all of us have been abruptly woken from sleep with the visceral (and heart-pounding) sensation that we’re falling into a bottomless void. Dreams about falling often correspond with situations in which we feel unsupported or like we’re floundering. “This indicates that something in real life is bringing you down — perhaps plans fell through, someone disappointed you, or a relationship ended,” Loewenberg says. “Whatever the case, it’s a cry from your subconscious to find a way to turn these free-falling emotions around.”

Not Being Able To Speak

Being unable to speak in a dream or scream for help is often a nightmarish metaphor for feeling helpless or silenced about something in your waking life. “You are either not being heard in real life or you simply aren’t speaking up,” Loewenberg says. “Where in your life does it feel like you have no say in the matter? Your subconscious wants you to find your voice, speak your truth, and be heard. ”

Having Your Teeth Fall Out

If you’ve ever had a nightmare about your teeth falling out, getting knocked loose, or being missing, it could indicate that you’re feeling vulnerable about sharing a little too much information about something private. “Dreams that involve any part of the mouth (teeth being the most common) are usually connected to communication issues,” Loewenberg says. “Teeth are meant to remain fixed in our mouth, so when they fall out in a dream, it is often a side effect of loose speech in real life — meaning we may have allowed something out of our mouth that should have stayed put!” If you’re feeling insecure about any recent conversations, do your best to clear the air.

Being Chased

If there’s something important that you’re scared to deal with or a pressing issue that you’re repressing, it might manifest as a nightmare about being chased. “Running from something or someone in a dream is directly connected to avoidance in real life,” Loewenberg says. “What difficult issue are you running from? Is there something from your past you are trying to get away from? The way to make this dream stop is to face the issue.” Mustering up the courage to face the situation will likely cause the bad dreams to let up.

Dying Or Dealing With Death

Having a nightmare about your own death or the death of a loved one can be unsettling, but dreaming about dying usually just means you’re undergoing some sort of personal transformation. “To the dreaming mind, death is the end of life as you now know it, so it means something in your life is changing or coming to an end,” Loewenberg says. “These dreams allow us to recognize the changes so that we can let go of what is no longer needed and embrace what is to come.” Change, like death, is inevitable — and these nightmares can help us to better accept that.

Being Naked In Public

Realizing you’ve left the house without any pants on would be panic-inducing in more ways than one — and if this happens in a dream, it likely means you’re feeling self-conscious or over-exposed about something in your waking life. “Any sort of real-life situation that causes you to feel judged and scrutinized seems to be the main reason people dream of being naked in public,” Loewenberg says. “Pay close attention to the other people in your naked dream — you may find that no one else seems to notice or care, which is a reminder that you are giving way too much thought and energy to how others perceive you.”

Seeing A Dead Person

Whether it’s a nightmare about a ghost, a dead body, or a loved one who has passed on in real life, having a Sixth Sense-esque “I see dead people” moment in a dream is super creepy — and it can mean different things, depending on the context. “A corpse in a dream would symbolize something in your life that is now over and done with, that you can now bury and move on from,” Loewenberg says. “If you dream of a person you know who has died, then it could either be part of your grief process or that person could represent some quality that you identify with. ” You’ll have to analyze your own dream symbols to figure out what your subconscious is telling you.

Creepy Clowns

Coulrophobia (aka the fear of clowns) is very real — but whether or not their painted-on grins and ominous cheer give you the heebie-jeebies in real life, a nightmare about clowns can help you get more serious about life. “Clowns in dreams usually represent a part of yourself or someone you’re currently dealing with that isn’t taking something seriously enough,” Loewenberg says. “Ask yourself where in your life you need to buckle down and be more disciplined.”

Being In A Car Crash

Most of us have to drive everyday to get to work, run errands, and live life — but dreaming about a car crash or being at the whim of an out-of-control driver can make the mundane feel morbid. “This kind of dream can be caused by feeling like you have no control over something in waking life,” Loewenberg says. “What situation, behavior, or relationship is not going in the direction you want it to? Time to figure out if you need to change tactics or just let go. ”

Creepy Crawlers

Dreaming about spiders, snakes, or other creepy crawlers is really common. Whether you’re being bitten, chased, or crawled on, these insect- and animal-laden nightmares often represent a human being — likely someone that has a negative or threatening energy. “Both spiders and snakes are common symbols for a toxic person in your life,” Loewenberg says. Think through your relationships and the context of the dream and figure out if there’s something in your life who’s making you feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or like you’re crawling in your skin.

9 Common Bad Dreams And What They Mean

Even the most well-adjusted people have frightening or distressing dreams now and again. Sometimes, you might find yourself having unusually frequent nightmares or even repeatedly experience the same awful dream. In the worst cases, you can end up with disturbed sleep and images from your nightmares may haunt you for the rest of the day. But can you learn anything about yourself by thinking about the themes of these sorts of dreams? Sleep studies and psychological research suggest that you can and that your nightmares may, in fact, be a very useful guide to unmet needs and unresolved issues in your life.

If you’ve ever asked yourself “what do my dreams mean?”, this beginner’s guide will help you get a handle on any underlying messages from your subconscious. We’ll explore the nature of nightmares, and then look at what an expert dream analyzer would say about nine of the most common.

The Definition Of Nightmares

Not all negative dreams qualify as nightmares. To be nightmares, bad dreams need to be vivid experiences that make you feel sad or scared. Nightmares take place during the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of sleep, usually after you’ve been asleep for several hours. Often, it will feel like nightmares last for a particularly long time, and it’s common to remember many of the details when you wake.

Nightmares are common in both childhood and adult life. You may experience more of them (or have nightmares that have a greater level of intensity) when you’re facing a time of high stress.

If you have a nightmare disorder, you can end up avoiding sleep in order to escape these types of dreams, and you may begin to suffer from chronic exhaustion. If you’re worried about the frequency or nature of your dreams, talk to your doctor; sleep specialists and therapists may be able to help with nightmare disorder treatment.

9 Nightmares And What They Mean

Nightmares come in thousands of different forms, and no two are entirely alike. When it comes to meanings, nightmares are often easier to analyze if you look at the key themes or events taking place.

However, a dream’s meaning isn’t always as obvious as you might think. As we go through nine of the most common bad dreams meanings, think about when you last had a dream like this (and what was going on in your life at the time). In retrospect, you’ll likely be able to see connections between your nightmares and the things that were most troubling to you at the time.

1. Seeing The Dead

When you first start experimenting with an interpretation of your dreams, you are likely to think that seeing the dead is about missing a specific person or fearing for your own safety.

In some cases (e.g. when you dream about an uncle you lost in the last year), your mind really is just trying to process your grief. At other times (e.g. when you’re waiting on the results of important medical tests), you might be struggling with an increased awareness of your own mortality.

However, it’s also wise to look beyond the surface here. For example, dream specialists say that seeing dead people in your dreams can indicate a general difficulty with letting something go; that could be anything from a job to a relationship or a house.

So, if there is no particularly emotionally evocative content to your dream, think instead about something from which you might be afraid to move on.

2. Teeth Falling Out

When nightmares are explained, their meanings can sound baffling at first. Dreams about losing your teeth are a good example. A shockingly large number of people have had at least one nightmare in which their teeth began to fall out or were forcibly removed. Most of the research around this type of dream suggests that it relates to some type of underlying insecurity or anxiety. For example, perhaps you’re about to leave your comfort zone for some reason. Or, maybe, you’re feeling like you’re falling short of expectations in some important part of your life.

On the other hand, nightmares about losing teeth can also be linked to insecurities about physical appearance. Perhaps you might have recently felt unattractive, or maybe you’re having difficulty with the way you’re changing as you get older.

Ask yourself what might be making you insecure, and come up with 3-5 things you can do to tackle this anxiety.

3. Partner Leaving

If you’re in a generally happy relationship, the idea of your partner leaving might be one of the very worst things you imagine.

First, it’s important to look at your relationship and consider what might be making you feel less secure. In some cases, the origin of your fears will be obvious (e. g. worries about infidelity). At other times, it might only be on reflection that you realize your fear you’re not good enough for your partner. If the latter is the case, consider where these negative messages might be coming from in your past.

If you’re not in a relationship but you dream that you are with a partner and are subsequently left, this can indicate that you’re anxious about the possibility of never meeting the right person. However, there’s always room to be proactive in looking for love; you just have to be willing to take a few calculated risks!

4. Getting Injured

There are lots of different ways you can be wounded in a dream. Your nightmare might involve anything from a painful cut to a disfiguring accident or to major burns. In all cases, the prevailing theory is that dreams about injuries are usually connected to feeling weak or powerless in some aspect of your life. This is particularly likely if you dream about having a broken leg or another major fracture.

Ask yourself where you might be feeling weak, and why. If you work on the source of weakness, you’re less likely to have this nightmare again in the future.

As with nightmares about teeth, dreaming that you’re injured in a way that has a huge impact on your looks can also signal insecurities about your appearance. For example, perhaps you are worried that someone only values you for your looks (and that if you didn’t have them, you would not be worthy of love).

5. Being Trapped

If you have a phobia of being trapped, you’re not alone. As well as being a common fear, this is also a frequent nightmare for many people, and it can mean a variety of different things. Sometimes, it merely reflects your phobia, in the same way, that dreaming of spiders might relate to your irrational fear of these insects.

(Do you have a phobia? Click here to read our 6 top tips on overcoming an irrational fear.)

That being said, nightmares about being physically trapped can also be a sign that you feel psychologically trapped in some way.

You might feel trapped in an unfulfilling relationship, or you may feel hemmed in by debt, limited at work, or stuck in a particular location. As with the above nightmares, addressing the “stuckness” in your waking life can stop the dreams.

And if you can’t change your circumstances, perhaps changing your perspective on them might be enough. Challenge yourself to think of 5 good things about the place you’re currently at in life.

6. Falling

Just as dreaming about flying is one of the most commonly reported positive dreams, many people experience awful nightmares about falling. Whether you fall down from something, fall out of a plane or just find yourself falling with no explanation, you can wake up with a racing heart and a deep feeling of helplessness.

Often, the sources of these nightmares will be a degree of anxiety you feel in your waking life; worries about being out of control in some way, with an underlying feeling that a negative outcome is inevitable.

Just remember that no matter what your circumstances, there’s always room to exercise your agency and work towards something better. When you’ve figured out what makes you feel out of control, look for at least one thing you can control. And if there truly is nothing you can change, consciously turn your energy towards a different area of your life; one you can influence.

7. Being Chased or Attacked

If you speak to psychologists who specialize in dreams, they’ll tell you that the most frequently reported nightmares involved being chased or attacked. You might be running from monsters, hurt by people you know, or in peril due to the actions of strangers.

In all such cases, the underlying theme is most likely to be fear; often of confrontation, and what it could mean.

This could be a highly personal type of confrontation (e.g. one with a partner), a professional confrontation with high stakes (e.g. one with a boss), or it might even be that you’re scared of any and all forms of conflict.

When you’re being chased, what this tells you is that you’re trying to evade conflict, but that deep down you know it’s likely something you have to face. The key is to face it on your own terms and to give some serious thought to the main points you want to make to the other person.

If your sleep is affected by this, why not consider a self-hypnosis to improve sleeping.

8. Nudity

The classic nudity dream involves suddenly finding yourself naked in front of your old high school class, or during a work presentation. This is a nightmare that can sound funny in the abstract, but when experienced, is very humiliating and degrading. The message from these sorts of dreams is that you’re afraid of being judged (whether by one person or more broadly).

And if you have this nightmare on a regular basis, it could be that fear of judgment is actually holding you back.

It is only when you learn to live in an authentic way that you can truly find and follow your purpose. If you spend all your time trying to please others, you lose sight of what you really want. It can be helpful to consider that you likely give a great deal more thought to the question of how people see you than these people themselves actually give to judging you!

9. Missing Important Events

Finally, missing important events is common nightmare fuel. It could be an exam, your wedding, a job interview, a medical appointment or anything else that matters a great deal to you.

Regardless of what the event is, the nightmare will likely revolve around you feeling stressed, mortified, and sad. Unsurprisingly, the theme here is about expectations and your worries that you might not be able to live up to some such expectations.

If you frequently dream about missing important events, ask yourself what expectations make you feel anxious.

Are they personal or professional? Life-long or recent? Answering these questions will give you a clue as to whether you need to do some self-reflective work on your early life or rather just need to take a critical look at the present. It can also be useful to think about the contrast between expectations and reality. Do you think you have realistic expectations of yourself, or are you a perfectionist?

Adult Nightmares: Causes and Treatments

When you wake up terrified from a disturbing nightmare, you might think you’re the only adult who has them. After all, aren’t adults supposed to outgrow nightmares?

While it’s true nightmares are more common among children, one out of every two adults has nightmares on occasion. And between 2% and 8% of the adult population is plagued by nightmares.

Are your nightmares causing you significant distress? Are they interrupting your sleep on a regular basis? If so, it’s important to determine what’s causing your adult nightmares. Then you can make changes to reduce their occurrence.

What Are Nightmares?

Nightmares are vividly realistic, disturbing dreams that rattle you awake from a deep sleep. They often set your heart pounding from fear. Nightmares tend to occur most often during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when most dreaming takes place. Because periods of REM sleep become progressively longer as the night progresses, you may find you experience nightmares most often in the early morning hours.

The subjects of nightmares vary from person to person. There are, though, some common nightmares that many people experience. For example, a lot of adults have nightmares about not being able to run fast enough to escape danger or about falling from a great height. If you’ve gone through a traumatic event, such as an attack or accident, you may have recurrent nightmares about your experience.

Although nightmares and night terrors both cause people to awake in great fear, they are different. Night terrors typically occur in the first few hours after falling asleep. They are experienced as feelings, not dreams, so people do not recall why they are terrified upon awakening.

What Causes Nightmares in Adults?

Nightmares in adults are often spontaneous. But they can also be caused by a variety of factors and underlying disorders.

Some people have nightmares after having a late-night snack, which can increase metabolism and signal the brain to be more active. A number of medications also are known to contribute to nightmare frequency. Drugs that act on chemicals in the brain, such as antidepressants and narcotics, are often associated with nightmares. Non-psychological medications, including some blood pressure medications, can also cause nightmares in adults.

Withdrawal from medications and substances, including alcohol and tranquilizers, may trigger nightmares. If you notice a difference in your nightmare frequency after a change in medication, talk with your doctor.

Sleep deprivation may contribute to adult nightmares, which themselves often cause people to lose additional sleep. Though it’s possible, it has not been confirmed whether this cycle could lead to nightmare disorder.

There can be a number of psychological triggers that cause nightmares in adults. For example, anxiety and depression can cause adult nightmares. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also commonly causes people to experience chronic, recurrent nightmares.

Nightmares in adults can be caused by certain sleep disorders. These include sleep apnea and restless legs syndrome. If no other cause can be determined, chronic nightmares may be a distinct sleep disorder. People who have relatives with nightmare disorder may be more likely to have the condition themselves.

What Are the Health Effects of Nightmares in Adults?

Nightmares become much more than bad dreams when they have a significant effect on your health and well-being. Among people who experience nightmares, those who are anxious or depressed are more likely to be distressed about the experience and suffer even more psychological ill effects. Although the relationship is not understood, nightmares have been associated with suicide. Because nightmares may have a significant impact on your quality of life, it’s important to consult a medical professional if you experience them regularly.

Sleep deprivation, which can be caused by nightmares, can cause a host of medical conditions, including heart disease, depression, and obesity.

If nightmares in adults are a symptom of untreated sleep apnea or post-traumatic stress disorder, the underlying disorders can also have significant negative effects on physical and mental health.

Treatments for Nightmares in Adults

Fortunately, there are steps you and your doctor can take to lessen the frequency of your nightmares and the effect they are having on your life. First, if your nightmares are the result of a particular medication, you may be able to change your dosage or prescription to eliminate this unwanted side effect.

For people whose nightmares are caused by conditions such as sleep apnea or restless legs syndrome, treating the underlying disorder may help alleviate symptoms.

If your nightmares aren’t illness- or medication-related, don’t despair. Behavioral changes have proven effective for 70% of adults who suffer from nightmares, including those caused by anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Imagery rehearsal treatment is a promising cognitive behavioral therapy for recurrent nightmares and nightmares caused by PTSD. The technique helps chronic sufferers change their nightmares by rehearsing how they would like them to transpire. In some cases, medications may be used in conjunction with therapy to treat PTSD-related nightmares, though their efficacy has not been demonstrated as clearly as that of imagery rehearsal treatment.

There are a number of other steps you can take on your own that may help reduce your nightmare frequency. Keeping a regular wake-sleep schedule is important. So is engaging in regular exercise, which will help alleviate nightmare-causing anxiety and stress. You may find that yoga and meditation are also helpful.

Remember to practice good sleep hygiene, which will help prevent the sleep deprivation that can bring on nightmares in adults. Make your bedroom a relaxing, tranquil place that is reserved for sleep and sex, so that you don’t associate it with stressful activities. Also, be cautious about the use of alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, which can remain in your system for more than 12 hours and often disrupt sleep patterns.

Nightmares: Symptoms, Causes, & Treatment

Dreaming is one of the most complicated and mysterious aspects of sleep. While dreams can include visions of grandeur and bliss, they can also be scary, threatening, or stressful.

When a bad dream causes you to wake up, it’s known as a nightmare. It’s normal to occasionally have a nightmare or bad dream, but for some people, they recur frequently, disrupting sleep and negatively impacting their waking life as well.

Knowing the differences between bad dreams, nightmares, and nightmare disorder is a first step to addressing the causes of nightmares, starting appropriate treatment, and getting better sleep.

What Are Nightmares?

In sleep medicine, nightmares have a more strict definition than in everyday language. This definition helps distinguish nightmares from bad dreams: while both involve disturbing dream content, only a nightmare causes you to wake up from sleep.

Nightmares are vivid dreams that may be threatening, upsetting, bizarre, or otherwise bothersome. They occur more often during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep associated with intense dreaming. Nightmares arise more frequently in the second half of the night when more time is spent in REM sleep.

Upon waking up from a nightmare, it’s normal to be acutely aware of what happened in the dream, and many people find themselves feeling upset or anxious. Physical symptoms like heart rate changes or sweating may be detected after waking up as well.

What Is Nightmare Disorder?

While most people have nightmares from time to time, nightmare disorder occurs when a person has frequent nightmares that interfere with their sleep, mood, and/or daytime functioning. It is a sleep disorder known as a parasomnia. Parasomnias include numerous types of abnormal behaviors during sleep.

People who have occasional nightmares don’t have nightmare disorder. Instead, nightmare disorder involves recurring nightmares that bring about notable distress in their daily life.

Are Nightmares Normal?

It’s normal for both children and adults to have bad dreams and nightmares every now and again. For example, a study found that 47% of college students had at least one nightmare in the past two weeks.

Nightmare disorder, though, is far less common. Research studies estimate that about 2-8% of adults have problems with nightmares.

Frequent nightmares are more common in children than in adults. Nightmares in children are most prevalent between the ages of three and six and tend to occur less often as children get older. In some cases, though, nightmares persist into adolescence and adulthood.

Nightmares affect males and females, although women are generally more likely to report having nightmares, especially during adolescence through middle age.

Why Do We Have Nightmares?

There is no consensus explanation for why we have nightmares. In fact, there is an ongoing debate in sleep medicine and neuroscience about why we dream at all. Many experts believe that dreaming is part of the mind’s methods for processing emotion and consolidating memory. Bad dreams, then, may be a component of the emotional response to fear and trauma, but more research is needed to definitively explain why nightmares occur.

How Are Nightmares Different From Sleep Terrors?

Sleep terrors, sometimes called night terrors, are another type of parasomnia in which a sleeper appears agitated and frightened during sleep. Nightmares and sleep terrors have several distinguishing characteristics:

• Nightmares happen during REM sleep while sleep terrors happen during non-REM (NREM) sleep.
• Sleep terrors don’t involve a full awakening; instead, a person remains mostly asleep and difficult to awaken. If awakened, they likely will be disoriented. In contrast, when a person wakes up from a nightmare, they tend to be alert and aware of what was happening in their dream.
• The following day, a person with nightmares usually has a clear memory of the dream. People with sleep terrors very rarely have any awareness of the episode.
• Nightmares are more common in the second half of the night while sleep terrors happen more often in the first half.

What Causes Nightmares?

Many different factors can contribute to a higher risk of nightmares:

• Stress and anxiety: Sad, traumatic, or worrisome situations that induce stress and fear may provoke nightmares. People with chronic stress and anxiety may be more likely to develop nightmare disorder.
• Mental health conditions: Nightmares are often reported at much higher rates by people with mental health disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, general anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. People with PTSD often have frequent, intense nightmares in which they relive traumatic events, worsening symptoms of PTSD, and often contributing to insomnia.
• Certain drugs and medications: Using some types of illicit substances or prescription medications that affect the nervous system is associated with a higher risk of nightmares.
• Withdrawal from some medications: Some medications suppress REM sleep, so when a person stops taking those medications, there is a short-term rebound effect of more REM sleep accompanied by more nightmares.
• Sleep deprivation: After a period of insufficient sleep, a person often experiences a REM rebound, that can trigger vivid dreams and nightmares.
• Personal history of nightmares: In adults, a risk factor for nightmare disorder is a history of having had recurring nightmares during childhood and adolescence.

Though not fully understood, a genetic predisposition may exist that makes it more likely for frequent nightmares to run in a family. This association may be driven by genetic risk factors for mental health conditions that are tied to nightmares.

Some evidence indicates that people who have nightmares may have altered sleep architecture, meaning that they progress abnormally through sleep stages. Some studies have also found a correlation between nightmares and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a breathing disorder that causes fragmented sleep, although further research is needed to clarify this association.

Are Nightmares Connected To Waking Activity?

Nightmares can have a clear connection to things that happen while you’re awake. Nightmares tied to anxiety and stress, especially PTSD, may involve flashbacks or imagery that is directly linked to traumatic events.

However, not all nightmares have an easily identified relationship to waking activity. Nightmares can have bizarre or bewildering content that is difficult to trace to any specific circumstances in a person’s life.

Can Nightmares Affect Sleep?

Nightmares, especially recurrent nightmares, can have a significant impact on a person’s sleep. People with nightmare disorder are more likely to suffer from decreases in both sleep quantity and quality.

Sleep problems can be induced by nightmares in several ways. People who have nighttime disruptions from nightmares may wake up feeling anxious, making it hard to relax their mind and get back to sleep. Fear of nightmares may cause sleep avoidance and less time allocated to sleep.

Unfortunately, these steps can make nightmares worse. Sleep avoidance can cause sleep deprivation, which can provoke a REM sleep rebound with even more intense dreams and nightmares. This often leads to further sleep avoidance, giving rise to a pattern of disturbed sleep that culminates in insomnia.

Nightmares may exacerbate mental health conditions that can worsen sleep, and insufficient sleep can give rise to more pronounced symptoms of conditions like depression and anxiety.

Insufficient sleep connected to nightmares and nightmare disorder can cause excessive daytime sleepiness, mood changes, and worsened cognitive function, all of which can have a substantial negative impact on a person’s daytime activities and quality of life.

When Should You See a Doctor About Nightmares?

Because it’s common to have an occasional nightmare, some people may find it hard to know when nightmares are a cause for concern. You should talk to your doctor about nightmares if:

• Nightmares happen more than once a week
• Nightmares affect your sleep, mood, and/or daily activity
• Nightmares begin at the same time that you start a new medication

To help your doctor understand how nightmares are affecting you, you can keep a sleep diary that tracks your total sleep and sleep disruptions, including nightmares.

How Is Nightmare Disorder Treated?

Infrequent nightmares don’t normally need any treatment, but both psychotherapy and medications can help people who have nightmare disorder. By reducing nightmares, treatments can promote better sleep and overall health.

Treatment for nightmares should always be overseen by a health professional who can identify the most appropriate therapy based on a patient’s overall health and the underlying cause of their nightmares.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy, also known as talk therapy, is a category of treatment that works to understand and reorient negative thinking. Talk therapy has broad applications in addressing mental health disorders and sleeping problems like insomnia.

Many types of psychotherapy fall under the umbrella of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), including a specialized form of CBT for insomnia (CBT-I) that may be used to treat nightmares. A central component of CBT is reorienting negative thoughts and feelings and modifying detrimental patterns of behavior.

There are numerous types of talk therapy and CBT that may help reduce nightmares:

• Image Rehearsal Therapy: This approach involves rewriting a recurring nightmare into a script that is rewritten and then rehearsed when awake in order to change how it unfolds and impacts the sleeper.
• Lucid Dreaming Therapy: In a lucid dream, a person is actively aware that they are dreaming. Lucid dreaming therapy seizes on this idea to give a person the ability to positively modify the content of a nightmare through their awareness of it in the moment.
• Exposure and Desensitization Therapies: Because many nightmares are driven by fears, a number of approaches utilize controlled exposure to that fear to reduce the emotional reaction to it. Examples of these techniques to “face your fears” include self-exposure therapy and systematic desensitization.
• Hypnosis: This approach creates a relaxed, trance-like mental state in which a person can more easily take in positive thoughts to combat stress.
• Progressive deep muscle relaxation: While not a direct form of talk therapy, progressive deep muscle relaxation is a technique for calming the mind and body. It involves deep breathing and a sequence of tension and release in muscles throughout the body. Relaxation methods like this are a tool developed in talk therapy to counteract stress buildup.

Behavioral recommendations associated with talk therapy frequently involve changes to sleep hygiene. This includes making the bedroom more conducive to sleep as well as cultivating daily routines and habits that facilitate consistent sleep.

Many psychotherapies for nightmares involve a combination of methods. Examples include CBT-I, Sleep Dynamic Therapy and Exposure, Relaxation, and Rescripting Therapy (ERRT). Mental health professionals can tailor talk therapy for nightmares to fit a patient, including, when appropriate, account for a coexisting mental health disorder.

Medication

Several types of prescription medications may be used to treat nightmare disorder. Most often, these are medications that affect the nervous system such as anti-anxiety, antidepressant, or antipsychotic drugs. Different medications may be used for people who have nightmares associated with PTSD.

Medications benefit some patients, but they can also come with side effects. For that reason, it is important to talk with a doctor who can describe the potential benefits and downsides of prescription drugs for nightmare disorder.

How Can You Help Stop Nightmares and Get Better Sleep?

If you have nightmares that interfere with your sleep or daily life, the first step is to talk with your doctor. Identifying and addressing an underlying cause can help make nightmares less frequent and less bothersome.

Whether nightmares are common or occasional, you may get relief from improving sleep hygiene. Building better sleep habits is a component of many therapies for nightmare disorder and can pave the way for high-quality sleep on a regular basis.

There are many elements of sleep hygiene, but some of the most important ones, especially in the context of nightmares, include:

• Following a consistent sleep schedule: Having a set bedtime and sleep schedule helps keep your sleep stable, preventing sleep avoidance and nightmare-inducing REM rebound after sleep deprivation.
• Utilizing relaxation methods: Finding ways to wind down, even basic deep breathing, can help decrease the stress and worry that give rise to nightmares.
• Avoiding caffeine and alcohol: Caffeine can stimulate your mind, which makes it harder to relax and fall asleep. Drinking alcohol close to bedtime can induce a REM rebound in the second half of the night that may worsen nightmares. As much as possible, it’s best to avoid alcohol and caffeine in the evening.
• Reducing screen time before bed: Using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop before bed can amp up your brain activity and make it difficult to fall asleep. If the screen time involves negative or worrying imagery, it may make nightmares more likely. To avoid this, create a bedtime routine with no screen time for an hour or more before going to sleep.
• Creating a comforting sleep environment: Your bedroom should promote a sense of calm with as few distractions or disruptions as possible. Set a comfortable temperature, block out excess light and sound, and set up your bed and bedding to be supportive and inviting.

• Was this article helpful?
• YesNo

Nightmares (for Kids) – Nemours KidsHealth

What Is a Nightmare?

A nightmare is a bad dream. Almost everyone gets them once in a while — adults and kids. It can may make you feel scared, anxious, or upset. But nightmares are not real and can’t harm you.

Why Do I Get Nightmares?

Stressful things that happen during the day can turn dreams into nightmares. Nightmares may be a way to relieve the pressures of the day. This usually means dealing with things most kids have to face at one time or another: problems at home, problems at school, and stress from sports or schoolwork. Sometimes major changes, such as moving or the illness or death of a loved one, can cause stress that leads to nightmares.

Another thing that may cause nightmares is watching scary movies or reading scary books, especially before you go to bed.

Sometimes if you are sick, especially with a high fever, you may have nightmares. Some medicines also can cause nightmares. Let your parents and doctor know if you notice you are having more nightmares around the time you started a new medicine.

But sometimes you might have a nightmare for no reason at all.

How Can I Prevent Nightmares?

Here are some tips you can try to get nightmares under control.

Get into a healthy sleep routine. Try to go to bed about the same time and wake up at the same time every day. Unless you’re sick or didn’t get enough sleep the night before, avoid naps during the day. Avoid eating or exercising just before bedtime. Avoid scary books or movies before bedtime.

Sleep with a stuffed toy or favorite blanket. This helps some kids feel more secure.

Use a nightlight. Even if you gave up yours up years ago, you might want to turn it back on. With a nightlight, if you awake from a nightmare, you’ll be able to see familiar things and remember where you are.

Keep your door open. This will help you remember that your family is close by. If you are scared, get up and find someone for reassurance. You’re never too old for a hug!

Page 2

What if the Nightmares Don’t Go Away?

Most of the time, nightmares are not a big problem. It often helps to tell a trusted adult about your bad dreams. Just talking about what happened might make you feel better. If something has been troubling you during the day, talking about those feelings also may help.

Some kids “rewrite” their nightmares by giving them happier outcomes. Another trick is to draw a picture of the bad dream and then rip it up!

Sometimes it helps to keep a dream journal, a notebook in which you describe the dreams you can recall. Tracking your dreams — good and bad — and how you felt before you went to sleep can give you a better sense of how your mind works at night.

If you have nightmares a lot, you and your parent might want to see a counselor or a psychologist to help you deal with your bad dreams. It will give you a chance to talk about some of the things bothering you that may be related to your nightmares.

Rarely, kids with frequent nightmares may need to visit a doctor who can see if the nightmares are because of a physical condition.

Remember, nightmares are not real and they can’t hurt you. Dreaming about something scary does not mean it will happen in real life. And it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person who wants to do mean or scary things. Everyone has nightmares now and then.

You aren’t a baby if you feel afraid after a nightmare. If you need to snuggle with a parent or even a sister or brother, that’s all right. Sometimes just talking to a parent or grabbing a quick hug may be all you need.

Nightmares may be scary for a little bit, but now you know what to do. Sweet dreams!

Nightmare disorder – Symptoms and causes

Overview

A nightmare is a disturbing dream associated with negative feelings, such as anxiety or fear that awakens you. Nightmares are common in children but can happen at any age. Occasional nightmares usually are nothing to worry about.

Nightmares may begin in children between 3 and 6 years old and tend to decrease after the age of 10. During the teen and young adult years, girls appear to have nightmares more often than boys do. Some people have them as adults or throughout their lives.

Although nightmares are common, nightmare disorder is relatively rare. Nightmare disorder is when nightmares happen often, cause distress, disrupt sleep, cause problems with daytime functioning or create fear of going to sleep.

Symptoms

You’re more likely to have a nightmare in the second half of your night. Nightmares may occur rarely or more frequently, even several times a night. Episodes are generally brief, but they cause you to awaken, and returning to sleep can be difficult.

A nightmare may involve these features:

• Your dream seems vivid and real and is very upsetting, often becoming more disturbing as the dream unfolds.
• Your dream storyline is usually related to threats to safety or survival, but it can have other disturbing themes.
• Your dream awakens you.
• You feel scared, anxious, angry, sad or disgusted as a result of your dream.
• You feel sweaty or have a pounding heartbeat while in bed.
• You can think clearly upon awakening and can recall details of your dream.
• Your dream causes distress that keeps you from falling back to sleep easily.

Nightmares are only considered a disorder if you experience:

• Frequent occurrences
• Major distress or impairment during the day, such as anxiety or persistent fear, or bedtime anxiety about having another nightmare
• Problems with concentration or memory, or you can’t stop thinking about images from your dreams
• Daytime sleepiness, fatigue or low energy
• Problems functioning at work or school or in social situations
• Behavior problems related to bedtime or fear of the dark

Having a child with nightmare disorder can cause significant sleep disturbance and distress for parents or caregivers.

When to see a doctor

Occasional nightmares aren’t usually a cause for concern. If your child has nightmares, you can simply mention them at a routine well-child exam. However, consult your doctor if nightmares:

• Occur frequently and persist over time
• Routinely disrupt sleep
• Cause fear of going to sleep
• Cause daytime behavior problems or difficulty functioning

Causes

Nightmare disorder is referred to by doctors as a parasomnia — a type of sleep disorder that involves undesirable experiences that occur while you’re falling asleep, during sleep or when you’re waking up. Nightmares usually occur during the stage of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The exact cause of nightmares is not known.

Nightmares can be triggered by many factors, including:

• Stress or anxiety. Sometimes the ordinary stresses of daily life, such as a problem at home or school, trigger nightmares. A major change, such as a move or the death of a loved one, can have the same effect. Experiencing anxiety is associated with a greater risk of nightmares.
• Trauma. Nightmares are common after an accident, injury, physical or sexual abuse, or other traumatic event. Nightmares are common in people who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• Sleep deprivation. Changes in your schedule that cause irregular sleeping and waking times or that interrupt or reduce the amount of sleep you get can increase your risk of having nightmares. Insomnia is associated with an increased risk of nightmares.
• Medications. Some drugs — including certain antidepressants, blood pressure medications, beta blockers, and drugs used to treat Parkinson’s disease or to help stop smoking — can trigger nightmares.
• Substance misuse. Alcohol and recreational drug use or withdrawal can trigger nightmares.
• Other disorders. Depression and other mental health disorders may be linked to nightmares. Nightmares can happen along with some medical conditions, such as heart disease or cancer. Having other sleep disorders that interfere with adequate sleep can be associated with having nightmares.
• Scary books and movies. For some people, reading scary books or watching frightening movies, especially before bed, can be associated with nightmares.

Risk factors

Nightmares are more common when family members have a history of nightmares or other sleep parasomnias, such as talking during sleep.

Complications

Nightmare disorder may cause:

• Excessive daytime sleepiness, which can lead to difficulties at school or work, or problems with everyday tasks, such as driving and concentrating
• Problems with mood, such as depression or anxiety from dreams that continue to bother you
• Resistance to going to bed or to sleep for fear you’ll have another bad dream
• Suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts

90,000 Scientists told why they have nightmares – Rossiyskaya Gazeta

Why do they have nightmares? What biological function do they perform? Swiss and American scientists in the course of the study found the answer to this question: it is a kind of training of the nervous system that helps a person to cope with negative emotions in everyday life.

In an article published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, scientists from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and their colleagues from the University of Wisconsin (USA) write that “the emotions experienced during sleep help to resolve emotional stress and prepare for future affective reactions.”

In the experiment of Virginia Sterpenich, the head of the study, 18 people participated. Using an electroencephalogram (EEG), scientists studied the activity of various parts of the brain during sleep. In addition, the volunteers were woken up several times during the night and asked what dreams they had and whether they were scary.

Through the participants’ responses and analysis of brain activity, the researchers identified two areas of the brain that are responsible for the occurrence of nightmares during sleep. “This is the insular lobe and cingulate cortex,” says Lampros Perogamvros, co-author of the work.

Fun fact: both of these areas of the brain are also activated in situations where a person is anxious or frightened in real life. Thus, the insular lobe is responsible for assessing emotions and is triggered automatically as soon as a person feels anxiety. The cingulate cortex, in turn, prepares for an adequate response in a situation of a threat. It controls how a person behaves in the face of danger. “For the first time, we show that similar areas are activated when fear occurs during sleep and while awake,” says Perogamvros.

But what is the relationship between fear in sleep and emotions upon awakening? To answer this question, the researchers conducted a second experiment. They asked 89 volunteers to keep a dream diary for a week. Every morning, immediately after waking up, the participants in the experiment wrote whether they could remember the dream, and, if so, what emotions they experienced after it. At the end of the test week, each participant was examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The scientists then showed subjects both neutral and disturbing images such as robbery. The result, according to the researchers, was startling: those who had nightmares longer and more often reacted less emotionally to these negative images. “They had less activated insula, cingulate cortex and amygdala when viewing negative images,” Sterpenich said.

In addition, it turned out that the prefrontal cortex was more active, and this is the area of ​​the brain that can suppress the activity of the amygdala in anxiety situations and, thus, ensure that we are not paralyzed by fear and can act, “- said Sterpenich …

According to the researchers, the results indicate that there is a strong connection between fear in dreams and in reality. At the same time, the emotions that arise during sleep serve as a kind of training: they help us in reality to better respond in dangerous situations. “Dreams can be a preparation for our future reactions to real threats and dangers,” says Perogamvros.

Scientists hope that the findings will form the basis for new approaches in the treatment of anxiety disorders. However, in their opinion, “the healing power of nightmares may have a limit” when it comes to the worst nightmares. “We believe that if a dream has a too high level of anxiety and a person experiences excessive fear, such a dream loses its function of an emotional regulator,” concludes Perogamvros.

Scientists have found out which people have nightmares more often

Neurotic and Elderly People: German scientists have conducted a study and found out who is more likely to have nightmares.

German scientists have identified the reasons for the frequent occurrence of nightmares in some people, which sometimes take a lot of physical and mental strength.

The diagnosis of “nightmares” is characterized by frequent waking up, usually in the rapid eye movement (REM) phase, accompanied by a feeling of fear, as well as other emotions such as anger, disgust, grief, etc.

Although nightmares are occasionally experienced by a large percentage of the population, this diagnosis is made only in cases where the illness causes prolonged suffering.

The third edition of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders describes several possible ways in which nightmares affect a person’s daily life. These are unpleasant memories, “flashbacks” that roll over during working hours, the fear of falling asleep out of fear of having a nightmare, and mood disturbances.

To understand the nature of nightmares, scientists led by Michael Schroedl of the Central Institute for Mental Health (Germany) drew attention to a number of concomitant factors.

“The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of socio-demographic parameters, the frequency of occurrence of nightmares and neuroses to the global harm from nightmares,” write the authors of the work published in the journal Sleep Science .

In a study of 2,492 men and women between the ages of 17 and 93 were asked to complete a special questionnaire to assess the suffering that causes nightmares, as well as the frequency of their occurrence in adulthood and childhood. At the same time, the questionnaire gave the following definition for nightmares: “Dreams with strongly negative emotions that lead to awakening.The plot of the dream can be restored quickly after waking up. ”

With the help of another questionnaire, in parallel, the severity of five personality traits was revealed – neuroticism, benevolence, extraversion, openness to new experience, conscientiousness (conscientiousness).

Analysis of the results showed that about 9% of respondents see nightmares about once a week, and 18% experienced them with such frequency in childhood. Moreover, more than a quarter (27%) of those who suffer from nightmares reported seeing recurring nightmares, the plot of which is related to events in real life.

Neuroticism was found to be most associated with both high frequency of nightmares and recurrent nightmares, while openness to new experiences and conscientiousness showed the least correlation.

Neuroticism is a personality trait characterized by emotional instability, anxiety, low self-esteem and high feelings of guilt, sometimes autonomic disorders. Neuroticism is a tendency to negative experiences, to falling into inappropriate situations and a lack of an adaptive character.The three main empirically derived components of neuroticism are irritability, insecurity, and emotionality. Neuroticism is the strongest predictor of the development of all common mental disorders.

On average, women suffer from nightmares more often than men, scientists have also found that the frequency of nightmares increases with age. Scientists have proposed a possible explanation for this phenomenon, referring to previous research, which showed that people of the older generation who found the Second World War more often dream on military topics.

“Overall, the results of this study clearly show that suffering from nightmares is associated not only with their frequency, but also with other factors, such as neuroticism, repetition of nightmares, age and gender,” the scientists write in their study.

In the self-isolation mode, in which residents of many countries are found due to the coronavirus pandemic, people are more likely to have nightmares, scientists observe.

People often have vivid, strange and often terrible dreams, in which there is anxiety about the life of loved ones.In dreams, people often experience anxiety, leaving their homes and finding themselves on deserted streets, closed shops, meeting with potentially infected people.

“In my dream, I called Uber, and a hearse came instead,” Sara Shashner tweeted with the hashtag #pandemicdreams, with whom people from different countries share unusual dreams.

90,000 Nightmares Dreaming to Help Us

Fear Hit Parade

From the hundreds of stories Toby Nathan has heard from his patients, we have identified three frequently recurring big nightmarish themes.

1. Paralysis . The plane falls on his head, and his feet seem to be glued to the ground. We want to call for help, but we cannot make a sound. We are in danger or we have a presentiment of it, we try to act, but we can not do anything. These scenarios may indicate a certain situation of aggression, which we more or less passively experience in our lives: we are in danger, we must be vigilant.

Scientifically speaking, this disturbing inability to defend reflects a physiological reality: when we sleep, motor functions are blocked and the body is indeed constrained.And it’s good that this is so, otherwise we would all turn into a somnambulist.

For the same reason, the blockage of motor function in nightmares, we do not react in any way to the danger that threatens us. Or, in erotic dreams, we almost always take a passive position, obeying the will of another. In our dreams, physiological reality and imagination are confused.

2. Falling into emptiness. In the house where we are, the ceiling collapses, the floor collapses, and we find ourselves in a pitch void.Such bad dreams are associated with the experience of abandonment, real or imagined. They express fear of losing control, letting go of the reins, relaxing.

And also, according to Toby Nathan, such dreams warn that someone has betrayed us or is about to do it. Beware of deception: if we do not pay attention to this, we risk falling from a height … or by another person, at first glance, too nice to really be sincere, too polite to be honest.

3. Meeting people wearing masks, grimacing or strangely dressed. Meanwhile, these characters only warn us that some kind of unspokenness is in the air. For example, a person who pretends to be a friend is actually cheating on us.

Or maybe a romantic option: a person from our environment is in love with us, but hesitates to admit it. Here, too, there is no clairvoyance, only our sensitivity, which is exacerbated by the state of sleep.

Scary dreams (too) are useful

Dreaming protects the sleep that our body needs to rest and recuperate. Everything that can interfere with our sleep (for example, sounds or sensations), the dream inscribes in its plot in such a way as to prevent us from waking up.

It can turn the ringing of an alarm clock into ringing of bells, and a person who is thirsty due to the fact that dinner was too salty, a dream can show how he drinks clean water from a mountain stream.But sometimes we have terrible dreams – and we, on the contrary, wake up in the middle of the night and sometimes even jump out of bed. Why is this happening? What are scary dreams for?

To manifest the “forgotten”

In addition to the obligation to maintain a state of sleep, a dream has another task. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious.” He found out that with their help our unconscious communicates with us, and dream images are the original words of his language.But can’t you just “show” some interesting, memorable dream?

“Frightening dreams, nightmares are something that cannot be ignored,” explains the Jungian psychoanalyst Vsevolod Kalinenko. – This is what shocks us and makes us think. We see nightmares if our “I” ignores what the unconscious is trying to communicate. ” Our consciousness is, in a sense, one-sided: it seeks to “forget” everything that is incompatible with our beliefs and causes psychological discomfort.But in certain circumstances, the “forgotten” can be exactly what we can no longer do without.

What makes a dream a nightmare

It happens that unexpected turns of events or threatening characters in a dream cause us only bewilderment, curiosity or even excitement. And in other cases, a seemingly harmless plot makes you feel anxiety and even fear. What’s the matter here?

“It is not the unconscious, but our consciousness that evaluates the dream as a nightmare and makes us wake up,” explains psychoanalyst Norbert Chatillon.One of his patients, shortly after the New York disaster of September 11, 2001, dreamed that a supersonic plane was flying over city blocks. Its engines are working at full power, but instead of gaining altitude, the plane suddenly begins to back off, as if it is being pulled back to the residential buildings.

“The plane could still gain speed and altitude,” the psychoanalyst specifies, but the patient could not get rid of a strong anxiety. Norbert Chatillon believes that this plane symbolizes the dreamer himself, and the dream indicates that it is difficult for him to escape from the family circle (residential buildings), which does not allow to take off, pulls back.

“My patient is an active and creative person, but his family life does not give him strength, but takes them away. And the unconscious through a dream warns: “You are using your energy against yourself. You can either change course or leave it as it is. The choice is yours”. This realization caused anxiety in my patient, and he woke up in fright. ”

If we carefully and calmly examine the message that is contained in the dream, then the fear caused by it at first will diminish.

“But you shouldn’t analyze your dream if you wake up terrified in the middle of the night,” says Vsevolod Kalinenko.- It is best to write it down, try to calm down and sleep. And then, already in the morning, in a calm state, return to this plot and carefully examine its images. ”

Everyone has their own code

Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, found that the same symbols and plots are repeated in the dreams of different people.

Long or sharp objects (such as umbrellas, airplanes, knives …) are symbols of male sexuality, and objects that delimit the hollow space (for example, bags, bottles…), – symbols of the feminine principle.

Corridors or labyrinths often indicate confusing situations and the search for a way out of them. However, each plot has several reading options, and it can only be correctly understood in the context of life events and the dreamer’s personal associations.

So, both 36-year-old Daria and 27-year-old Alla often dream of men chasing them with daggers or saws. Daria’s childhood passed in an incomplete family: she was raised by her mother, who was offended by her father who left them.

Over time, Daria began to adhere to radical feminist views. Analyzing her dream, she suddenly realized that she was afraid of men and did not trust them. And her radicalism is more the result of this deep mistrust than of her firm convictions. Alla, on the other hand, grew up in a family of strict rules. Her dreams speak of a conflict between the attraction she feels for men and the judgments that come from her father.

“Any symbols in a dream are very individual. If we try to bind a specific image to a specific meaning, we greatly simplify the situation, and this simplification is often unjustified, ”warns Vsevolod Kalinenko.

Why do we have nightmares and various schizophrenic dreams / AdMe

A person spends a third of his life in a dream. A huge part, won’t you agree? And although sleep and its possibilities have been of interest to mankind for a long time, science has not advanced much in the study of this topic and obtaining accurate data. With the development of technology, it has become possible to study the activity of the brain during a dream, and scientists and psychologists around the world share their results, opening the curtain of an unidentified but such an interesting area in small steps.

We are at Bright Side and you probably also had a dream at least once in your life that was remembered for a long time, but its meaning may not have been revealed. Today we will share what has been learned about the nightmares and strange dreams we see.

Why do we have strange dreams?

Surely everyone has a story about a dream in which the devil happened, and when we woke up, it seemed just complete nonsense. And if you were interested in the question of why this is happening, then here are some explanations.

Everyone has their own unique dreams, because during the day, week, month, people experience a variety of emotions and experiences. When we fall asleep, our brains continue to work hard, distributing memories into short-term and long-term memory. He compares events that happened recently with those that happened a long time ago. Therefore, you may dream of your childhood pet playing with you in the new apartment in which you are now.

All this occurs in the REM sleep stage, which lasts 10–20 minutes and is repeated several times during the night.This phase is also known as “paradoxical sleep”, which got its name from its physiological similarity with the waking state of a person. It is in this phase that all areas of the brain become active, except for the area responsible for logic. In addition, during sleep, the concentration of serotonin and norepinephrine decreases – neurotransmitters that are also responsible for logic and attention. Therefore, it is not surprising that our dreams lose all common sense and normalcy. Only after waking up and turning on logic, we understand that everything we saw happened in a dream.

Why do we have nightmares?

What about nightmares? Why do we dream of apocalypses, the dead, chases and other not the most pleasant dreams? Swiss and American scientists conducted a study in which they found the answer to this question. In their opinion, this is a kind of training for the nervous system, which helps a person to cope with negative emotions in real life. In their article, scientists write that the emotions that we experience in sleep help resolve emotional stress and prepare a person for future possible stresses.

Using an electroencephalogram, scientists have studied the activity of various parts of the brain during sleep. Eighteen volunteers were woken up several times a night and asked what dreams they had and whether they were scary. Through their responses and analysis of brain activity, the researchers identified two areas of the brain that are responsible for the occurrence of nightmares. This is the insular lobe and the cingulate cortex of the brain.

The most interesting thing is that both of these areas of the brain are activated in the same situations when a person is worried or frightened in real life.The insular lobe is responsible for evaluating emotions and starts automatically as soon as a person feels anxiety. And the cingulate cortex prepares for an adequate response during a threat and controls how a person behaves in the face of danger. In further research, the researchers found that those who had nightmares longer and more often reacted less emotionally to negative images in real life.

So far, it becomes clear that this is how our subconscious communicates with us and helps to resolve issues of concern.For example, psychologists often associate chase in a dream with unresolved problems of a person in real life. But, as mentioned above, dreams are still extremely insufficiently studied and many interesting discoveries are just ahead.

Some More Facts About Sleep You May Not Know

• Newly acquired skills and knowledge, such as playing the piano, for example, are placed on the necessary “shelves” of the brain when you sleep. This makes them easier to remember in the future. Whether you’re studying for an exam or just want to memorize your to-do list for tomorrow, a good night’s sleep will help with that.
• Without sleep, a person will live less than without food. The record number of days spent without sleep is 11. But we do not recommend repeating such an experience, since, in addition to serious mental problems, this can be fatal.
• Up to 15% of the world’s population are people who are called sleepwalkers. They can not only sit on the bed or roam the rooms, but also leave the house and even travel long distances. And it’s a myth that sleepwalkers don’t need to be woken up. In many cases, this is even necessary.
• People who neglect sleep and sleep little sleep are more likely to have higher appetite because their leptin (a hormone that regulates appetite) falls.
• Within 5 minutes after waking up, we forget 50% of our dreams, and after another 5 minutes we forget almost everything that we dreamed. Sigmund Freud believed that in this way the brain tries to quickly erase everything from memory, because dreams are our hidden thoughts. But in the modern world there is another hypothesis, according to which in the morning we simply turn on the brain to the fullest and, as a result of its vigorous activity, we forget dreams.

Did you have an unusual dream that you remember and, most likely, will never forget?

90,000 I had a bad dream: how your bad dreams can be useful

Each of us has both good and bad dreams – and this is normal. But if after the first we wake up with a smile, then the second make us suffer. Attempts to analyze and interpret dreams are not new, but a recent study from the University of Geneva proved for the first time that negative dreams can be great for us in real life.Moreover, scientists have suggested that in the future they will become a way to treat anxiety disorders.

“We were able to track the changes that occur to neurons when a person experiences fear in a dream: it turned out that the same areas of the brain are activated as when fear is felt in a state of alertness,” explains researcher Lampros Perogamvros. Using electroencephalography (EEG) techniques to study brain activity during different sleep phases, scientists have found that bad dreams – but not nightmares – involve a specific part of the brain in participants in the experiment.So, after a negative dream, the participants were better prepared for their life problems than people who did not have such a dream. The thing is that unpleasant dreams trigger those parts of our brain that are associated with the perception and response to fear. All study participants kept a dream diary – thanks to this, scientists studied how emotions experienced during sleep were associated with feelings that arise during wakefulness. “Dreams serve as a kind of rehearsal for how we react to a real danger, and can potentially prepare for it,” says Perogamvros.

But does this explain why we have negative dreams? “Dreams show us our blind spots: they make us pay attention to things that we, for some reason, avoid or do not highlight in real life,” replies Alice Robb, author of Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey … “They allow us to look at our problems from a different angle. According to the hypothesis, we dream of dreams to teach us how to cope with potentially possible stressful situations.Take the typical “exam dream” where you find yourself unprepared or completely naked at an important event for you. Even if in a dream you fail miserably, in reality this event will already seem familiar to you – this illusion of an already experienced moment can become an advantage. ”

The interpretation of dreams still resembles a minefield, and scientists have not yet come to a consensus. “There are three points of view that explain why we still dream,” says Mark Blagrove, professor of psychology at the British University of Swansea.“They help lessen our fears — nightmares come when the fear is too great. Imagine that you are very afraid of your job, and when you are in the workplace, you are constantly worried. According to this theory, you will dream of your place of work in an unusual and even strange context. For example, in the middle of a beach or in the midst of a party – not so scary, right? But if you are afraid too much, then the dream will simply not fulfill this function of “softening” the experiences and will develop into a nightmare, after which you will wake up in even greater panic. “

Another theory is that negative dreams are similar to virtual reality. We simulate real threats in our dreams and practice how to deal with them in life – just like in computer games. Thus, bad dreams become useful, despite the fact that during them a person experiences great stress.

Proponents of the third opinion completely deny any purpose or usefulness of such dreams, saying that they bring nothing but anxiety.

As it turns out, most dreams can be considered bad.“The most common feelings in a dream are anxiety, fear, guilt and helplessness,” says Robb.

• “There is a difference between ordinary bad dreams, which can help us prepare for difficult situations in life and desensitize our fears, and nightmares, which can not only disrupt sleep, but also trigger a real stress response in the body.”

If you, like the study participants, begin to keep a dream journal, it will be helpful, especially if your sleep is not restful.“Keeping a dream diary is the easiest way to remember and understand your dreams,” says Robb, adding that there is no universal guide to interpreting them: each of us can decipher them as soon as we want.

Susan Devaney / Vogue.co.uk

Coronavirus: the Covid-19 pandemic has affected our dreams

• Puyia Chabria
• BBC

April 28, 2020 9000 photo Deshpande / BBC

Photo caption,

After the outbreak of the pandemic, many talk about their unusually memorable dreams

Around the third week of quarantine, 19-year-old Elisha Angeles from the Philippines began to have memorable dreams.

“I ended up in the hospital in the middle of the night, the doctor operated on my arm,” she said.

“Soon I left the building, but I had only one arm left. I saw the doctor walking around and playing with my amputated arm. He even started to open it, and I felt so lost.”

Then on other nights she dreamed that she was losing something all the time: “It could have been money or a computer.”

To view this content, you need to enable JavaScript or use another browser

Video caption,

Strange dreams in quarantine: why nightmares during a pandemic

But Elleisha is not the only one who has strange dreams.

The world is changing dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic, and dreams are changing with it.

Many people say that after the virus spread to 175 countries and the general quarantine began, they began to have richer vivid dreams.

Anxiety and stress

Deirdre Barrett has been collecting descriptions of these dreams since March to understand how they might have changed since the beginning of the pandemic. She is a senior lecturer in psychology at Harvard University. Barrett is the author of The Sleep Committee.

“Any significant factor that causes stress leads to vivid anxiety dreams. In my research, there are many such examples,” she said.

Some of the respondents said that they had literally tangible dreams associated with a psychological experience.

“After watching the film Infection, I had a dream that I was sick with Covid-19. I physically felt that I was suffocating and in pain, my eyes became dark. I knew that I was dying. Then I was given an injection to relieve symptoms and, possibly, getting rid of the disease, but I’m not sure whether it helped or not, “- said one of the respondents.

Deirdre has previously studied the psychological impact of shocking events on people: Americans after the September 11 attacks, Kuwaitis immediately after the occupation of their country by Iraq and the British military who were captured by the Nazis.

She found that wars are associated with vivid visual images that appear in dreams, but the current pandemic is different in this sense.

Invisible enemy

“It’s an invisible enemy, and more often people have associations with it,” she said.“We have been told by many about dreams with huge flocks of insects, tsunamis, storms, tornadoes and earthquakes.”

Charlie seems to be confronted with his worst fears in his dreams. spiders.

“Once I dreamed that a huge spider climbed onto my bed. He was the size of a cat, pale in color, and had thick legs that resembled branches. I ran out of the room and called for help.Mom was able to catch him in a garbage bag and put him outside, where he fumbled in the bag, and then I woke up, “he said.

Spiders are different in size and appearance, but Charlie sees them every time in his house.

Photo author, Nikita Deshpande / BBC

Caption,

A resident of England said that he began to dream of his biggest fears

“This happens in a place where I feel safe, for example, in my bed, because of making dreams seem even more realistic! “

According to Deirdre, the situation when people are forced to be at home leads people to remember their dreams in detail.Perhaps one of the reasons is that people sleep longer and often do not set their alarms.

“Many people who did not get enough sleep because of a long day at work or an active social life are now getting enough sleep.”

Another person who shared with her the content of his dreams told how one day a dream about a sunny day turned into a nightmare.

“I was sitting on a bench and talking with friends. Suddenly we heard a noise and saw a huge revolver in the sky, which was quickly flying over us.He quickly changed direction and fired at people, creating explosions that killed them. Then he pointed the muzzle at us and I ran to find shelter, “he said.

Dreams are the product of a mysterious brain, they are still a strange, poorly explained phenomenon. But every night they are seen by billions of people.

Italian scientist Luigi de Gennaro, who studies the dreams of his compatriots during the quarantine, found that the number of dreams that people remember after waking up has noticeably increased.

REM sleep

This may be due to the fact that people sleep worse due to anxiety.

Because of this, people are more likely to wake up during the night or are in REM sleep for longer.

This condition is characterized by rapid movement of the eyeballs, changes in respiratory and heart rate. During this time, large muscle groups are in a relaxed state. REM sleep phases last about 90 minutes, and it is at this time that a person sees dreams.

If a person wakes up during REM sleep, it is easier for him to remember the details of his dream.

“Dreams are also our emotional response to the pandemic,” he said.

Dublin resident Niev Deveru said that one day she dreamed that she came to visit and saw a naked ghost in the garden of her house.

“A horrible naked ghost flew around us, and there were also sheep scampering everywhere,” said a 28-year-old girl.

“I was scared. No one paid the slightest attention to them, but I was afraid, especially the ghosts.It was an elderly man. “

Experts agree that our day-to-day wakefulness directly affects our dreams. The more emotionally charged it is, the more likely it is to dream.

This makes combatants more susceptible to nightmares.

Photo by Nikita Deshpande / BBC

Caption,

An Italian woman dreamed of a GPS button on her forehead

An application capable of tracking contacts was recently approved in Italy.It is called Immuni, that is, immune, and its main task is to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

A local woman named Carlotta found out about the app development from the TV news, and then it became part of her dream.

“I dreamed that I woke up and felt something strange on my forehead. I went into the toilet and stood in front of the mirror. I brushed my hair off my forehead and saw that there were three buttons on it. Two were burning red and one was green Someone told me that green is responsible for the GPS navigation system, which monitors people’s activities.I don’t know what the red buttons meant, but I pressed green and woke up, “she said.

Dreamcatcher

She posted a description of her home to idreamofcovid (” I dream of Covid “), discovered by Erin Gravely from California .

She is not a scientist or researcher. The idea for the site came to her after she had an ordinary dream in which people observed social distancing.

“People were standing two meters from each other, did not shake hands and T.I wondered if the dream crisis has changed other people, “she told the BBC in an email.

Before publishing the dreams, her sister illustrates every story.

Erin hopes that her project will find common patterns in dreams as the course of the pandemic changes: “It will help you understand how dreams change as the world changes.”

Photo by Nikita Deshpande / BBC

Photo caption,

Residents of New York State could share their examples for the site, where, according to the latest data, more cases of coronavirus infection were recorded than in any country other than the United States.

One of the residents of the state told in detail about one of the dreams: “I was floating in a canoe on the lake, and a huge wave similar to a tsunami began to approach me. She caught me and carried me towards the coast. I saw that there were many rocks. Then I woke up. ”

And, it seems, the withdrawn images echoed with reality.

“I was left with the impression that the first wave meant Covid-19, and the second – climate change, and I did not know how this would affect me personally.”

Happy dreams

It might seem like everyone is having bad dreams now, but they are not.

“It may sound surprising, but there is a large segment of people who have good dreams,” said Deirdre Barrett. “Some people see a future in which there will be no current pollution, or someone will come up with a cure for the virus.”

Photo author, Nikita Deshpande / BBC

Photo caption,

Some have happy dreams

One of these lucky ones is Niru Malhotra, who lives in the Indian capital of Delhi.

“When the quarantine began, I started dreaming about luxurious hotel rooms. I had only seen such luxury on TV before!” She says. “The rooms have huge windows overlooking the sea and sometimes huge green fields. the strongest joy. As a rule, there are practically no people there. ”

If you are wondering how to have restful, good dreams, the experts have advice.

“There is a practice called sleep incubation.”When you go to sleep, you can set yourself up about the dreams you want to see, “- said Deirdre Barrett.

” Imagine a loved one, a place, or imagine that you are flying. Or replay your favorite dream in full detail in your head.