You wake up suddenly during the night trying to catch your breath, sweating like you've been running miles, you were really running in your nightmare, running from something, maybe someone.
You are now awake and safe, but despite your intuitive knowledge that everything that happened in the dream remained there, and you came out of it into your consciousness, the feeling of distress, tension, and fear may still prevent you from returning to sleep.
This nightmare or others may be repeated many times, such as dreaming that you are being chased but you cannot move, or that you are about to die, or other situations that create a negative feeling that goes beyond your dream to extend to your reality.
If mentioning dreams causes you this concern, perhaps you will be interested to continue reading, as we discuss in this article what the science says about dreams: Why do we dream in the first place?
Why do we dream about nightmares?
What triggers bad dreams?
How can we get rid of bad dreams or nightmares?
What you need to know about dreams and nightmares
"A dream can't be any dream, just a dream"
From the movie Eyes wide shut
When we sleep, our brain creates stories and images that we experience during sleep, known as dreams. These stories are sometimes entertaining and interesting, and other times strange or scary.
You may think that you don't dream at all because your memory doesn't recall any dreams you've had, but science tells us that we all dream, but some of us forget them and we all forget many of our dreams right after waking up.
It is important when talking about dreams that we discuss the stages of sleep as an introduction to understanding them, and here it can be said that the stages of our sleep can be divided mainly into two main stages: Non-REM Sleeping, and REM Sleeping, and the last Also known as the deep sleep phase, it is important and essential for many functions related to growth and development in our brains.
While we can experience dreams in both stages, the most vivid and intense dreams are those we experience in deep sleep.
In the context of psychology, the most famous and most important treatment of the phenomenon of dreams are the two doctors, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud tells us that dreams are a gateway to our subconscious, according to him, we are motivated by desires that we do not recognize in our consciousness, such as our aggressive and sexual instincts. Therefore, these desires and ideas can manifest themselves in a dream in a completely different and abstract way.
“My words surround me in a dream, words that I did not say.”
Mahmoud Darwish
On the other hand, Freud disagrees with his other colleague Jung, who believes that not everything we see in a dream has to do with a pent-up desire inside us, but rather forms a bridge between our consciousness and our subconscious, meaning that what we see in our dreams (ie the subconscious) may involve a symbolism that helps us in Solve our everyday problems and crises (consciousness), unlike Freud who attributed all the causes of dreaming to our unconscious desires.
However, although we do not yet know which one is right, and we also do not know a clear reason for sure about why we experience dreams, one of the most important interpretations and approaches about our dreams is that they help us understand and deal with our feelings, where you can consider dreams as night therapy sessions, Through it, the brain processes the situations, events and emotions it encounters during the day, as if it were a period of recovery, but at the level of feelings and emotions.
This dream job may be reminiscent of Teddy's "Shutter Island" dream, where he talks to his dead wife in their old apartment, and then suddenly surrounded by scattered ashes, her body shrivels up in flames in her husband's arms, and the apartment catches fire.
We already know that the hero believes that his wife died in a fire. These memories transcend the space of his dreams and become a representation of the trauma of his wife's death.
A similar dream is also present in the movie "Manchester by the Sea", when the hero has a dream about his daughter who tells him that she is on fire, which reminds him of the incident of losing his sons in their house fire that he caused.
In this context, re-experiencing our negative experiences over and over in dreams may not be in vain, but rather happen for good reason.
Numerous studies have found that people who specifically dream of negative experiences that they have experienced increase their ability to accept and move beyond these experiences[1].
In addition to processing feelings, other reasons thought to underlie our dreams are to remember memories, express our inner desires, and learn to deal with confrontational situations.
Of course, it is important here to differentiate between bad dreams and nightmares. While you may or may not remember your bad dreams when you wake up in the morning, nightmares wake you from your sleep, and also make it more difficult to get back to sleep.
This affects many aspects of life, and is accompanied by physical symptoms, the most important of which is sweating and shortness of breath.
One study found that adult nightmares are very similar. After analyzing nearly 10,000 dreams, researchers concluded that most of them involved physical violence in some form, and illness, death, and a sense of threat were the most frequent characteristics of dreams[2].
Like dreams, these nightmares arise as a result of many reasons, the most important of which are:
１.
Anxiety and stress:
The nightmare test is associated with high levels of anxiety and stress.
In a recent study conducted in the United States with the aim of exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sleep and dreams, researchers noted that those who were experiencing high levels of anxiety as a result of changes imposed by the pandemic, were also more likely to experience nightmares (compared to the rest of the study sample), and they were centered on subjects From disability, war, death and disease to the end of the world![3]
２.
Trauma:
Studies indicate that post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers are more prone to nightmares, which is what we find largely in cases of people who have witnessed war or conflict.
In a study conducted on 300 students in the besieged city of Gaza, which has been affected by continuous wars, the latest of which was last year (2021), the study found that more than half of the students’ sample described their continuous suffering with nightmares[4].
３.
Taking medications:
Taking some types of medications may trigger nightmares as a side effect, such as antidepressants and blood pressure medications, but the severity of these nightmares in particular depends on other factors, such as the presence of psychological and social support, the presence of a healthy and organized sleep pattern, and others.
It is also worth noting here that many people experience nightmares as a result of taking melatonin, which is not classified as a pharmaceutical substance, but rather a type of nutritional supplement that contributes to improving sleep quality, and the test does not directly cause nightmares, but rather prolongs the duration of sleep the deep sleep mentioned earlier, in which we experience the most vivid dreams;
This explains why some people experience nightmares when eating it.
Why is it important to know how to get rid of bad dreams and nightmares?
Frequent awakenings during the night as a result of disturbing dreams affect the quality of your sleep, and therefore activity and productivity levels during the day, in addition to insomnia caused by not being able to return to sleep after a nightmare wakes you in the middle of the night, for example, or excessive sleep during the day to compensate for what you lost at night You may also, consciously or unconsciously, resist sleeping during the evening;
This is because sleep is associated with a negative emotion test.
Repeated experience of nightmares is associated with many psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression, and studies even find that it increases the risk of suicide [5].
One of the most important sleep disorders defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is Nightmare Disorder, a condition in which an individual suffers from persistent, intense nightmares that last for a long time, and remember them so well that they disrupt daily life in many cases. often [5].
It is important to note here that experiencing nightmares does not necessarily mean that you suffer from this disorder, as you must meet the diagnostic criteria evaluated by a specialized doctor, including that nightmares occur frequently and can be well remembered - which is terrifying for the individual, of course - in addition It is also important for a proper diagnosis to be made that the causes of these nightmares are not attributed to external physiological influences, such as nightmares caused by certain medications that may affect mood, or those caused by other mood disorders.
How do I get rid of nightmares or bad dreams?
１. Do not avoid sleep, but arrange your sleep schedule and practice healthy sleep habits (Sleep Hygiene):
Setting a regular sleep schedule helps you maintain your sleep stability, and preparing the environment around you before bed can help you avoid nightmares. That the concentration of stimuli persists for a long time in your body and affects the quality of sleep even if you can fall asleep easily.
Also try to get rid of stressors, especially before bed, such as the next day's tasks from work or study problems or family responsibilities, here the practice of meditation can help you in removing stress and arranging your thoughts.
These small steps may seem counterintuitive and ineffective, but trust that it is the accumulation and perseverance of them that makes the difference.
２. Try to understand the reasons why you are experiencing these dreams:
As soon as you wake up from a nightmare, try to remember its events and details, for example you can write them on your smartphone notes, or on a notebook that you keep by your bed.
In addition, one of the exercises that is used to influence nightmares and bad dreams is to try to put an alternate ending to what happens during the dream.
This method is used in a scientific context under the name of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy, which is a form of behavioral therapy, which involves imagining and practicing another end to the nightmare, until you achieve it in your dream.
3 .
Seek competent help:
There are many treatment methods that have proven effective in detecting and treating nightmares, for example, psychoanalysis can help you understand and eliminate the reasons why you are experiencing disturbing nightmares, and exposure therapy is also used to treat anxiety disorders. Shock;
Which may lead to get rid of the nightmares accompanying them.
There are many other treatments that can be used, such as the lucid dreaming intervention, which aims to redraw the course of the dream by making you aware that you are dreaming during the dream itself, but this intervention is still under study and research for the lack of sufficient results. .
It also uses the technique of (Systematic Desensitization), or what is known as the systematic elimination of allergies [6].
In addition to psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy can be helpful in some cases of nightmares or nightmare disorder [5], but the focus on other treatments remains more dominant in this regard.
Utilities
１.
Self-exam: How do I diagnose nightmares?
[7]
You can use the following test if you suspect you may have a nightmare disorder. Ask yourself the following questions:
Do you wake up a lot because of a bad dream?
Do these dreams trigger negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger?
Can you think with a clear mind when you wake up?
Can you remember the events and details of those disturbing dreams clearly?
Do you often have nightmares late in the day, such as in the early morning or dawn hours?
Do you find it difficult to go back to sleep after those dreams wake you up?
If you answered “yes” to all of the previous questions or to four or more of them, it is best to consult a specialist doctor, who can diagnose the causes and the condition you are going through.
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Sources:
[1] “(16) Why we dream during sleep |
Matt Walker and Lex Fridman – YouTube.”
[2] “Thematic and Content Analysis of Idiopathic Nightmares and Bad Dreams” 2014.
[3] “Nightmare content during the COVID-19 pandemic: Influence of COVID-related stress and sleep disruption in the United States,” 2022.
[4] “Prevalence and Characteristics of Posttraumatic Nightmares in War- and Conflict-Affected Students” 2021.
[5] “Aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder: State of the art and future perspectives” 2019.
[6] “Pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for nightmare disorder.”
2014.
[7] “Nightmares - Sleep Education by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.”