Whether you sleep comfortably or restlessly, it is likely that you woke up one night with a sweat and your heart trembled in fear, and did not breathe a sigh of relief until you realized that the person who was chasing you in a dark alley was part of an annoying nightmare.

In her report, published by the American "Medium" website, author Tessa Love said that it is common to make disturbing dreams wake up from your sleep while you feel fear. The American Sleep Medicine Association confirmed that about 85% of adults see nightmares from time to time, which are dreams Strong and annoying that raises feelings of threat, anxiety, fear or other negative feelings.

Nightmares are a natural manifestation of sleep, although they cause terror in our souls a little, but their spread raises an important question: Is there a reason why our minds put us in these frightening scenarios?

The author reports that experts believe nightmares perform a specific goal. Although there is no single and unified theory determining what this goal is, research has increasingly shown that nightmares can help people improve their lives when they are awake.

In the face of this, Deirdre Barrett, an American psychologist and professor at Harvard University and author of the book "Sleeping Committee": "The content of the dream enters into repeated circles in the same way that our mindful thinking works. Everything you think or struggle for while awakening tends to Appear in this case more figuratively, and be more visual and less oral. "

Barrett added that nightmares are the way of the mind to "anticipate bad things in a worrying way and try to think about what to do."

reaction
On the other hand, many experts - including Barrett - believe that nightmares have evolved as a nervous response to the threats posed by life and social order.

Barrett explained that "seeing a nightmare repeated to shock what helps to keep you ready, but in today's society this is not the case, but we still have that instinctive mechanism."

The writer indicated that this instinct may be responsible for the type of nightmares that have minimal harm, that is, those caused by PTSD. Unlike normal nightmares, PTSD nightmares often occur outside the REM sleep phase, which is the deep sleep condition in which most normal dreams occur.

Although regular nightmares are often complete scenarios and do not affect dreamers' lives when they wake up, people with PTSD are more likely to see very disturbing nightmares, which are a reenactment of a real trauma they have experienced.

The author stated that a variety of nightmares show the potential dangers of a dreamer, and they may or may not have anything to do with what they fear in daily life.

John Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, says that having this dream instinct is still a key aspect of our waking life. In addition, nightmares are tantamount to how humans respond to war or escape in dangerous scenarios in the real world, regardless of the possibility of those events actually occurring.

Although this theory may seem unclear, a recent study has found that nightmares can actually help relieve anxiety about real life situations by working as an emotional exercise.

Modify fear
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Geneva, the University of Wisconsin and university hospitals in Geneva, and they found that feeling fear in dreams can help modify fear in a waking life.

The author noted that this theory is not entirely correct; some studies have concluded that nightmares can fuel anxiety rather than reduce it. For example, a study published in 2009 analyzed dreams and stress levels of 624 high school students, and found that those who reported they were disturbed by their dreams were more likely to report their anxiety.

In another small study published in 2019, researchers found that brain regions associated with negative emotions in dreams were active after viewing disturbing images, indicating that nightmares can actually enhance suffering in everyday life.

Bad dreams can be a way of the mind to express a bad emotional state. Overall, more research is needed on all of these theories in order to specifically understand how nightmares affect our daily lives, and how people can better understand themselves through their darker night visions.