Why do adults often have nightmares? The appearance of nightmares in childhood

Nightmares have an extremely negative impact on our lives. They cause fear and anxiety, which subsequently affects the quality of your sleep. Waking up from a nightmare in a cold sweat, we then cannot fall asleep for a long time, which ultimately leads to physical fatigue and stress. However, it is very important to find the reason why you have nightmares before you start getting rid of them.

Who suffers from nightmares

There is a widespread belief that nightmares are a purely childhood problem. But statistics show that at least 10% of people have woken up from a nightmare at least once in their lives, and from 2% to 8% of the adult population suffer from chronic or recurring nightmares.

What are nightmares in essence?

Nightmares usually occur during REM sleep, so we most often experience them in the morning. At its core, a nightmare is a very vivid and detailed dream that lasts from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. A person often remembers such a dream in every detail. At the moment of sleep, nightmares can be so realistic that even after waking up, it seems to a person for some time that the events from the nightmare actually happened. Images that arise during a nightmare can remain in memory for a long time; they can be quite difficult to get out of your head.

What do you most often see in nightmares?

The content of dreams is different for each person and depends on many factors: age, culture, type of activity, etc. However, most often, after waking up, people remember how in a nightmare they fell or how someone was chasing them, which may be due to the more intense emotional experiences compared to other types of nightmares. People who have experienced a traumatic event tend to see it in their nightmares.

Over the entire period of studying the problem, many studies have been conducted to find out which nightmares are the most common. One of the most recent surveys was conducted in 2010 by psychologist Michael Schroedl from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. He surveyed more than a thousand people over the age of 16 who had nightmares several times a year, and compiled a list based on the data obtained:

• Fall (40%);
• Harassment (26%);
• (25%);
• Being late for an important event (24%);
• Disappearance or death after confinement in a confined space (21%).

Medical psychologist Antonio Zadra from the University of Montreal did similar work with 10 thousand people and compiled a similar list:

• Physical aggression (48.6%);
• Interpersonal conflicts (21%);
• Paralysis or helplessness (16.2%);
• Health problems or death (9.1%);
• Confinement/anxiety (8.7%).

From these studies we can conclude: there are a number of common fears that are relevant to all people. However, there is currently no scientifically valid way to interpret these data.

Symptoms of nightmares

You can tell that a person is having a nightmare based on the following symptoms:

Moans and screams;

Trembling of limbs;

Hard breath;

Rapid pulse;

Profuse sweating

It is usually difficult for a person to wake up from a nightmare. A transition from a lying to a sitting position is often observed. The person’s pupils dilate, and for some time he does not react to external stimuli.

As we said at the beginning of the article, nightmares affect the quality of our sleep, which can lead to physical fatigue, mental disorders and stress. If you suddenly wake up due to a nightmare, this can affect other aspects of your life, even if you are physically healthy. Therefore, it is important to understand the cause of nightmares and take steps to eliminate them.

Causes of nightmares

Most often, nightmares in adults most often appear spontaneously, without good reason. But they can also be the result of psychological problems such as anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. The latter is especially likely if the person has recently experienced a traumatic or life-altering event, such as the loss of a loved one, a job change or loss, the birth of a child, major surgery or an accident.

The list of factors that can influence the occurrence of nightmares can be supplemented with the following circumstances:

• fever due to infectious diseases (more common in children);
• lack of sleep;
• external factors (light sources, noise in the room);
• full bladder;
• sleeping in an unfamiliar room;
• sleep apnea;
• Availability ;
• taking certain medications;
• genetic factors.

How to get rid of nightmares

You can get rid of nightmares by understanding their cause. There are several ways to eliminate bad dreams:

Treatment of underlying conditions. If the cause of nightmares is snoring, then the cause of snoring should be treated (straightening the nasal septum, etc.). If dreams are a reflection of mental health, then you should look for a solution to the problem in a psychologist’s office.

Improving sleep conditions. Experts believe that the main cause of nightmares is disruption of sleep patterns. No wonder they advise falling asleep and waking up at the same time and sleeping at least 8 hours a day. You will find more tips on how to improve your sleep conditions in the material “”.

Use of medications. This treatment is rarely used, but in some cases benzodiazepines or serotonin inhibitors are necessary.

Treatment of stress. Why do you have nightmares? Perhaps they are consequences? Anti-stress therapy can be a decisive factor if nightmares are caused by stress.

Finally, we want to give some tips to help you avoid nightmares:

1. Don't eat before bed. Especially foods high in sugar.

2. Learn to relax. , meditation, knitting, hot bath, etc.

3. Do more exercise, or at least take a walk in the fresh air before bed.

4.Reduce your intake of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol.

5.Watch something fun or funny before bed, or simply avoid watching violent films.

6.Make sure you sleep comfortably. If the room is too cold or hot, it will lead to internal discomfort, hence nightmares.

Dmitry Belov

During sleep, the body should receive complete rest. But sometimes the whole night is haunted by nightmares, from which a person wakes up in sticky sweat. The next day he feels exhausted and tired. Why do many people have nightmares, why sometimes a child cannot sleep?

Causes

Both adults and children, especially younger ones, have nightmares. Their plots can be very diverse, but usually the sleeper experiences a feeling of anxiety, fear and hopelessness. Scientists believe that scary dreams arise as a result of brain activity, and their causes may be as follows.

• A nightmare can occur after a holiday party, when a person experiences discomfort and pain due to an overloaded stomach. Alcohol may also be a cause.
• A stuffy house, an uncomfortable bed, bright lights or loud music, physical fatigue - all these factors can become a source of nightmares.
• Scary dreams can be triggered by severe nervous tension caused by a personal tragedy or extreme situation.
• Smoking also affects dreams. The human nervous system is very delicately structured and a substance such as nicotine, which is inherently a poisonous stimulant, destroys the nervous system. And the quality of sleep directly depends on the state of our nervous system.
• High temperature during a cold can also cause such a dream.
• Some professions involve dealing with blood, death, and violent scenes that can cause nightmares. For example, doctors and military personnel suffer from this.
• Representatives have a rich imagination; nightmare visions at night are not uncommon for them.
• A nightmare may be evidence of some problem that needs to be solved, but the person is not yet able to make a choice.
• A scary dream can haunt you if some kind of insult or trauma was caused in childhood. It seems to a person that it has long been forgotten, but on a subconscious level it worries him.
• Scientists have proven that electromagnetic pulses from numerous household appliances can have a negative effect on the brain of a sleeping person and provoke bad dreams.

Kids are vulnerable and impressionable, so nightmares are a common occurrence in childhood. Scary dreams can be a manifestation of stress resulting from:

• family scandal;
• punishment for misconduct;
• accidental fright;
• frequent viewing of horror films.

What to do if you have nightmares every day

To get rid of regular nightmares, you need to eliminate those factors that interfere with restful, sound sleep:

• do not eat heavy food at night, but be content with a light dinner 3 hours before bedtime;
• in the evening before going to bed, a quiet walk in the fresh air is useful - it should become a daily habit, a necessity;
• a pleasant, relaxing bath before bed will ensure good rest;
• if you smoke, then try not to smoke at least a couple of hours before bedtime, or better yet, completely abandon this harmful activity. In the 21st century, there are quick and highly effective ways to quit smoking. Find out more about this;
• a cup of herbal tea will calm the nervous system;
• Good music is also soothing;
• You need to remove all objects that irritate or distract attention from the bedroom;
• Before going to bed, you should regularly ventilate the bedroom;
• For good sleep, silence is an important condition, so you need to turn off the TV;
• you need to stop watching scary films: even if you like them, fear and a sense of danger are still deposited in your brain.

What to do if a comfortable sleeping environment has been created, but he still remains anxious? Why do I have nightmares every night, despite creating favorable conditions for rest? In this case, you should check your health.

Nightmares can warn of the onset of a serious illness that does not yet produce obvious symptoms. A recurring dream sometimes even suggests where exactly the pathology develops. It is necessary to be examined to find out the presence or absence of a problem and methods of treatment.

It happens that frequent nightmares can be a manifestation of side effects of medications or bad habits. You need to get rid of them, change medications or stop taking them.

What does this all mean?

Dreams have always been a mystery. Until now, psychoanalysts, starting with Freud, have put forward various hypotheses explaining their mechanism. Many of them believe that nightmares help regulate internal conflicts of consciousness. However, their mechanism is not fully understood. Modern researchers distinguish two types of dreams that occur at different stages of rest.

• The first type is characterized by a rich plot; such a dream begins to occur several hours after the person falls asleep. When he wakes up, he immediately realizes that he saw an illusion.
• Another type of dreams develops in the first hour or two and is characterized by involuntary screams and human movements. After suddenly waking up, he does not immediately understand where he is.

In any case, dreams have some kind of secret meaning that a person cannot yet unravel. Nightmares warn of some upcoming events, subtle signs of which are not seen by the conscious mind, but are noted by the person’s subconscious.

Getting rid of intrusive dreams

Some techniques allow you to completely get rid of bad dreams. If a person often sees nightmares, he needs to try to reprogram his consciousness and predict a successful ending to the vision.

A nightmare often accompanies turning points in life, which are associated with certain obstacles. You can try to analyze the stages of your activity to find out why you have terrible dreams:

• on a separate piece of paper you need to write down all the problems that cause anxiety;
• it is necessary to analyze them and outline possible solutions;
• you need to convince yourself that there are no problems that have no solution;
• Next, you need to burn the piece of paper and begin specific actions to eliminate the identified problem.

There is no need to be afraid to act. Fear will pass because it arises from uncertainty. Once the problem is solved, the nightmares will disappear.

Psychologists advise writing down dreams, of course, if you remember them. Then you need to carefully analyze all the details and images. We need to tell as many people as possible about what we saw. A dream spoken out loud will stop frightening you, and someone close to you may notice a detail that will help clarify the problem.

Drawing gives good results. Creative people can easily depict on paper the plot and details of a dream. The process of drawing itself also has a calming effect on the psyche.

Regular exercise is a great way to bring your emotional state into balance and get rid of bad dreams.

Often nightmares are beneficial, as they contribute to emotional relief, the release of negative feelings after severe stress. But if the dreams do not stop and do not lead to balance, you need to contact a specialist.

If a child has nightmares, parents should keep a diary and track their frequency and possible connection with external events. You should explain to the baby that he will definitely defeat all the enemies in his nightmare, that mom and dad will definitely protect him. It is important to create a safe atmosphere for him at home.

Whatever the nightmare, it is not a real event and should not complicate a person's life. And if a dream reveals problems that have not yet been resolved, you just need to eliminate them in time. And then the nightmares will be replaced by pleasant color visions.

The content of the article:

A nightmare is a rather significant problem that prevents a person from fully resting after the waking phase. If such a fact is not regularly repeated, then there is no need to worry about it. In case of systematic nightmares, it is necessary to urgently get rid of the problem that negatively affects the people’s psyche.

What is a nightmare

Dream transformation is a branch of the study of psychology that examines the motivation for the emergence of frightening images in the subconscious. In some cases, experts consider this concept to be a symptom of restless legs syndrome and apnea (stopping breathing movements).

Some people confuse nightmares in sleep with horrors that arise in the human mind. The second aspect is formed during a deep immersion in the kingdom of Morpheus. It occurs during the first hours of falling asleep and in most cases is not recorded by people’s minds. With a strong feeling of fear, a superficial analysis of a dangerous situation occurs without transforming vivid pictures and images in the imagination.

Unlike horror, nightmares usually form during REM sleep, which lasts about 20 minutes. Such manifestations are dangerous because during this period the subject feels like a real participant in the events. When waking up, people clearly remember what they saw in a dream, and this often becomes a psychologically traumatic factor for them.

Causes of nightmares during sleep

The origins of this problem have been well studied by psychologists and psychiatrists. Experts advise looking for the causes of nightmares at night in the following life situations:

• Psychological trauma. An offensive word from loved ones or an insult from strangers often causes a significant blow to a person’s self-esteem. During the daytime, he may not think about the conflict that happened, but during sleep, the unpleasant moments he experienced may return in the form of a nightmare.
• Physical trauma. After suffering an injury, many people in their dreams replay a similar situation that happened to them. This could be a fall from a height, a water accident, a car accident, or aggression from an inappropriate person.
• Familiarization with media data. Television quite often notifies the population about tragic events that occur in the world. Cinema also tries to impress people, after watching which some viewers (especially children) have nightmares.
• Phobia. Suspiciousness, which has become a neurosis, often leads to the fact that a person cannot sleep peacefully. The fear he has formed is transformed at night into frightening images.
• Wrong lifestyle. Overeating at night, nicotine and alcohol abuse often provoke nightmares. This is also facilitated by a disruption in the daily routine, when the waking phase significantly exceeds the sleep period.

Note! The stated reasons for the occurrence of nightmares clearly depend on the person himself. It is he who is the main scriptwriter of what is formed in his mind during this period of time.

Ways to deal with nightmares

In order to eliminate the factor that interferes with the full functioning of a person, it is necessary to seek advice from a specialist. Each situation is an individual case, so it is a professional who can understand its origins and consequences.

Drug treatment for nightmares

After a visit to the doctor, you can use the following remedies to get rid of this problem:

1. Medications. Prazosin is very often prescribed to people with restless sleep after examining their physical and mental condition. It is worth remembering that it is antidepressants and drugs for regulating blood pressure that can provoke the appearance of nightmares.
2. ethnoscience. For periodically recurring bad dreams, it is necessary to use drugs or tinctures based on medicinal herbs. In this case, a decoction of hawthorn, rose hips, St. John's wort, chamomile and motherwort will help. For the greatest effect, experts recommend using a collection of all the listed plants and berries. Valerian root, known in medicine, can be replaced with blue cyanosis, which as a sedative is 10 times more effective than known sedatives. Herbal medicines after cryotreatment in the form of “Nervo-Vita” and “St. John’s wort P” will also help with the occurrence of night mosquitoes.

Nutritional tips to avoid nightmares

In any case, experts do not recommend eating after seven o'clock in the evening, because it does not have time to be absorbed by the human body. To prevent people from having nightmares, they must adhere to the following rules:

• Eating fruits and vegetables. It is undesirable to eat after 19.00, but it is not necessary to deny yourself literally everything if you feel hungry. Eating a fruit (banana, citrus fruits, apple) or vegetable (cabbage, carrots, beets) will not allow the stomach to become so full that it will cause problems in the future. The exception is avocado, which is high in calories and fat, which makes eating this fruit at night undesirable.
• Careful selection of drinks. A glass of warm milk or mint decoction will make a person's sleep deep and restful. At the same time, if you want to relax, you should not drink coffee, strong tea, energy drinks and carbonated drinks, which additionally stimulate people’s brain activity.
• Avoiding heavy foods. Meat, except rabbit, chicken and turkey, takes a long time to be absorbed by the human digestive system. Therefore, it is not recommended to eat pork, lamb and beef at night. If you want to enjoy a salad, it is better to season it with yogurt rather than sour cream or mayonnaise.
• Avoidance of foods containing sucrose. Nutritionists insist that eating such food before bed can trigger nightmares. The use of foods such as chocolate, candy, smoothies and oatmeal should be kept to a minimum.
• Limiting the consumption of pickled and smoked foods. Typically, preserved and specially processed meat causes increased thirst, which then makes it impossible to rest peacefully at night. Interrupted sleep often causes nightmares, which, with such gastronomic addictions, will be repeated day after day.
• Refusal of flour and confectionery products. This recommendation should be followed not only by those people who are watching their weight. Such products take a long time to digest, so they become dead weight for the stomach. As a result, the person sleeps lightly and experiences nightmares during the rapid phase of night rest.
• Quitting alcohol. There is a misconception among people that strong drinks promote good sleep. In fact, when using them, a person quickly relaxes, but in most cases he is guaranteed to have nightmares. This happens due to inhibition of the metabolic process in the brain with obvious oxygen starvation.

Important! Adults should avoid eating five hours before bedtime to avoid nightmares when their stomach is full. If the meal has already been completed, then nutritionists advise drinking a glass of still mineral water, adding a couple of drops of lemon juice to it prematurely.

Psychotherapy to eliminate nightmares during sleep

Experts recommend that their patients use the following methods of dealing with ghostly phenomena during rest:

1. Elimination of external irritants. For some people, even dim lights make it difficult to relax at night. At the same time, a leaking faucet and loud music from neighbors can drive anyone crazy. Against the background of such aggressive sounds for hearing, nightmares often arise. If it is not possible to protect yourself from noise, you can purchase earplugs (special earplugs) at the pharmacy.
2. Walk before bed. Some people prefer to devote their evening leisure time to watching movies that do not always have a positive storyline. It is better to replace such a pastime with a walk in the park or simply in the immediate surroundings.
3. Working on stress resistance. If you want to normalize your internal state during sleep, you need to train willpower. To do this, it is recommended to face your fears directly in order to develop a neutral attitude towards the situation.
4. Doing something interesting. Before going to bed, it is very useful to knit, embroider, do crosswords or put together puzzles. All these actions help the nervous system calm down, so that after this the person can fully relax without the formation of nightmares in his mind.
5. Meditation and yoga. Such procedures are available even to those people who do not have the skills of these manipulations. Immediately before going to bed, you can start meditation, which should be accompanied by breathing exercises. You need to imagine a vast ocean or an endless field, while sitting in the lotus position (legs crossed, heels placed on opposite thighs).
6. Aromatic treatments. Before going to bed, experts recommend filling the rest room with the scent of lavender or rose using special candles. For complete relaxation, baths with the addition of pine needles, sea salt or a medicinal mixture of chamomile, mint, yarrow, linden blossom, arnica and blackthorn flowers will not hurt.
7. Relaxation music. If you want to spend a night without nightmares, you can try to immerse yourself in the kingdom of Morpheus to your favorite melody. However, it should not contain aggressive notes. The Internet is replete with offers to download melodies that calm the human psyche.
8. Method of analyzing someone else's example. In the legendary film Gone with the Wind, brave Scarlett O'Hara suffered from the same nightmare that came to her at night. The horrors stopped when the heroine understood the reason for their occurrence.
9. Bedroom improvement. First of all, you should take care of the thermal conditions in the rest room. Any temperature fluctuations in the sleeping area can cause a person a significant feeling of discomfort. You should also remember the fact that you should not organize a recreation area where the office is located.
10. Physical exercise. When asked what to do about nightmares in your sleep, you need to start working on improving your body. However, experts do not recommend performing such exercises immediately before the resting phase, because the body will be overexcited. In this case, it won’t hurt to visit the swimming pool three hours before you want to go to bed.
11. Mental image rehearsal method. Every bad dream very often ends at the climax, because the person wakes up. In this case, it is necessary to play associations during the daytime, coming up with a happy ending to the nightmare.
12. Self-hypnosis method. Before falling asleep, you need to concentrate your attention on the most pleasant episodes of the past day. At the same time, it is recommended to clearly focus your thoughts on the most pleasant things, in order to then program them for your dreams.
13. Watching comedies. Such a pastime can literally completely change a person’s well-being. You can try re-watching your favorite childhood cartoons to go to bed on a positive note.
14. Purchasing an amulet of dreams. Some people believe in such things, so they willingly buy all kinds of talismans. An amulet, which can be purchased at any antique store, will help a person spend a peaceful night without any discomfort.

How to deal with nightmares - watch the video:

People often wonder how to get rid of nightmares in their sleep because they themselves are unable to control their subconscious. In this case, it is realistic to cope with the problem on your own. In particularly difficult situations, it is recommended to seek help from specialists.

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Dreams, including scary ones, always tell us something. They reflect our connection to the past, present and future. With the help of dreams, our body tries to convey to us the information that we “can’t hear” behind the noise of everyday worries and thoughts. There are no empty dreams, there is always meaning. But this meaning does not always correspond to what is seen. Sometimes it corresponds completely, sometimes it is completely opposite. But more often than not, certain dream symbols directly speak of specific events that have already begun. So why do we have scary dreams?

If we compare our brain to a universal computer, then sleep is a reboot that allows us to clear our memory of everything negative that can undermine our health. Scary dreams, therefore, can be considered as a release of consciousness that is overloaded with problems and experiences during the day. Scary dreams that make you afraid and experience negative emotions are good for health: they neutralize negative emotions and allow you to balance positive and negative experiences. As a result, the psyche comes into order.

Scary dreams as a hint

The routine of life distracts a person from those important things that need to be done first. Nightmares can indicate this, remind you of the importance and significance of certain tasks. They act as a warning and encourage you to focus on a certain aspect of your life.

Sometimes a person does not understand the meaning of nightmares, which can be repeated in various variations, causing insomnia and anxiety. It is very important to understand the reasons for this condition, since such terrible dreams often indicate physical problems with the body, as well as events that are coming.

Children's nightmares

Children rarely have scary dreams. But if such dreams become more frequent, parents should think about it. Often the cause of children's nightmares is quarrels between parents. Children should not hear the “showdowns” of adults; this is very difficult for the fragile psyche to perceive.

The cause of nightmares in childhood can also be aggressive actions towards a child by peers in kindergarten or at school, frequent physical punishment, and deception. In this case, emotional traumas transform into nightmares.

Depression as a source of nightmares

People who are depressed often have nightmares. When a person is stressed, the brain works day and night, trying to find a way out of the situation. Hence the frightening dreams.

The causes of terrible dreams can be incidents seen - road traffic accidents, violence against people, the death of loved ones. Dreams can become a continuation of these experiences. Post-traumatic syndrome in people returning from hot spots can also be attributed to this category of nightmares.

Very impressionable people can get stress and nightmares after watching horror and action films.

How to get rid of nightmares

Nightmares stop when a person has found answers to his questions and solved the problem. But if everything is not so simple, you should resort to the following techniques:

• stop eating before bed;
• give up meat and fatty foods at night;
• go to bed before 10 pm;
• have a comfortable place to sleep and well ventilated.

Walking before bed, tea with mint or milk with honey, and light exercise also help.

Psychological attitude

Doctors advise talking through a bad dream with loved ones, “washing it off” with cool water after waking up, and strengthening self-esteem.

It is also worth taking care of external provocative moments. In the room where you sleep, you need to eliminate stuffiness, loud, frightening sounds, and unpleasant odors. In addition, you can change your occupation if stressful situations are frequent at work.

Dream theme:

Dreams allow you to reveal your fears, desires and hopes. And most of all, our fears are reflected in nightmares.

An impressive number of times in a lifetime a person wakes up in a cold sweat and does not understand where he is, what is happening to him, feels himself and comes to balance, realizing with relief that it was just a dream. Adults are especially concerned not about why they themselves have nightmares, but why their child has nightmares and what his disturbing dream means. After all, children do not yet know how to correctly express what worries them, analyze their activities well and talk with their parents about it.

To find out the cause of a nightmare in both adults and children, you should remember well all the details of the dream, and ask the child leading questions so that he tells exactly what kind of dream he had. If you have a nightmare, you need to pay more attention to the events that happened the day before, the frequency of such a plot and the emotional experiences of the dreamer.

A nightmare is an expression of intense daytime experiences and fears or unacceptable desires that are repressed and manifest in dreams as an experience of horror. There are many reasons why you have nightmares.

Most often, stories that horrify a person are formed due to the fact that in life he experiences some kind of guilt for his actions. In order to rid a person of accumulated negative experiences, nightmares occur, which helps stabilize the dreamer’s inner life. But the reasons for the plots terrifying the dreamer are not limited to this.

External factors leading to bad dreams

To find out why an adult might have a nightmare, you need to pay attention to the features of his life.

1. A hearty dinner before bed.

The causes of nightmares traditionally include overeating before bed, because the body cannot cope with the load, which is reflected in nightmare scenes or overly intense dreams. The dream book recommends not overeating at night, but rather, having dinner 3-4 hours before bedtime.

2. Sleep on your left side.

This reason is related to the heart. When a person sleeps on the side to which the heart is displaced, it begins to beat intermittently, which causes unpleasant sensations that adapt dreams to oneself.

Discomfort, heaviness in the chest (which very often characterizes experiences and sadness) leads to the fact that a person experiences those emotions that are characteristic of a given physical state, and this manifests itself very acutely in dreams. If you constantly have nightmares when you sleep on your left side, you should immediately check your cardiovascular system.

3. Malfunction of the body (single or permanent).

Due to the specific work of the neurohumoral system, our emotions have a special influence on our physical state and its perception, which also works in the opposite direction, i.e. if a person suddenly perceives some state of his body, he can feel very specific sensations and emotions , which have previously been associated with this condition.

If you have no obvious health problems and still often have nightmares, you should consult a therapist to check the condition of your body. Just in case, it won’t hurt and will help stop almost any deviation from normal operation in the bud.

4. Stress.

Nowadays, human life is very tense, constant competition creates a not very pleasant emotional background. Experiences associated with difficulties at work, at home or with friends can result in creepy or disturbing dreams.

If you see a familiar face in the role of a negative character in a nightmare, you should think about your relationship with this person. Perhaps, deep down, you have already assessed the interaction with him as negative for you.

It is worth taking breaks in the endless race for success for proper rest. At night, the dream book advises ventilating the room, turning off all irritating equipment (computer, TV, telephone) at least half an hour before bedtime, and not lying in bed before going to bed.

5. Very exciting fears.

The possibility of losing a job, money, a loved one or even a loved one leads to the fact that tension needs to be expressed either in real life or in the form of dream plots.

It is in this case that the main thing is to analyze the components of the dream. As a result of competently carried out work to restore all its episodes, it is possible not only to realize your fears, but even to find a solution for them or ways to mitigate the circumstances of life in reality. You need to pay very close attention to the method of behavior that the dreamer chose in the fight against the problems encountered in the dream. In this case, the Dream Book recommends turning to close people, not making mountains out of molehills, and learning to cope with stress factors by carefully analyzing your situation.

In a dream, a nightmare can reflect the playing out of punishment for something for which a person blames himself in reality, while he blames himself not with his mind, but in his subconscious. Therefore, the dreamer should remember his recent actions and decisions, analyze whether they could bring harm to someone. If an action is identified that carries a feeling of guilt, you need to either try to atone for it, or explain it to the person, or, as a last resort, change your vision of the situation

7. Sexual problems.

Nightmares can occur almost constantly if the dreamer experiences difficulties in the sexual sphere of life. In this case, you should contact a specialist.

Very often, the causes of a nightmare are intertwined in such a way that it is difficult to separate one from the other, so it is quite normal if several at once served as the foundation for restless sleep. It is useful to familiarize yourself with the interpretations that the dream book gives for certain actions and objects of dreams. It is the details that can not only serve as a guide for determining the causes, but also make solving problems in reality much easier.

Pregnancy and childhood dreams

During pregnancy, nightmares do not portend anything bad, but serve as a signal for a woman to monitor the state of her emotional sphere. Worries about the fate of your unborn child, worries about events in the world and worries about your financial situation lead to serious disharmony, which is why you have disturbing dreams.

If during pregnancy you have the same nightmare every day, you should pay attention to whether the pregnant woman has enough vitamins in her diet and physical activity. In addition, if every day the same plot is repeated for a long time and causes great anxiety in a pregnant woman, then it’s time to turn to a specialist or loved ones to relieve stress and put thoughts in order.

The reasons why a child has an anxious dream are almost the same as those given above, but with some additions. To understand why he has a restless dream, it is worth taking into account the age and characteristics of the child.

During sensitive periods of development, nightmares can occur almost constantly, due to a sharp change in the perception of the environment, causing severe anxiety and a lot of impressions that the brain may not always process correctly. Therefore, the dream book recommends giving warmth and support to the child, discussing with him his problems, fears and desires, and also unobtrusively talking with caregivers or teachers about his behavior outside the walls of the house and his relationships with others.

To normalize his condition, it would not be superfluous to review everything that happened during the day, to sort out his dreams and their implementation at night. In this way, it is quite possible to achieve stabilization of the emotional state, putting in order the experience that he received during the day, and dreams will no longer be filled with anxiety and fear.

• If you dream of the same scary or disturbing story every night, it means that there is some factor that worries a person, which occupies his thoughts for a long period and influences his life.
• When the same restless dream occurs periodically, you need to remember exactly in what periods this happened before, how they are related to each other, thanks to which you can isolate in real life what is disturbing the dreamer.

Ways to get rid of sleep anxiety from your head

1. Tell the nightmare to someone who can discuss with the dreamer what happened in the dream, talk about the problems of the person who had the dream, look for ways out of the circumstances that could cause the disturbing plot of the dream.

2. Draw or describe in words your dream, the fears and emotions associated with it on paper as accurately as possible, try to do this in as much detail as possible, even if you don’t want to remember what happened in the dream, and then tear it into small pieces and burn or throw away the remaining sheets of paper.

3. Try to imagine your fear as something that happened in reality, to feel your emotions about it. After this, analyze the terrible scenario from the inside, look for ways out, to change for the better the situation that has developed as a result of the nightmare coming true. As soon as at least a satisfactory plan has been drawn up, you can leave the work with the nightmare; it is unlikely that it will bother you any more.

A nightmare in a dream usually means an attempt by the subconscious to cope with an unstable situation, which causes a conflict in the psyche. During the day we encounter a huge number of external and internal problems that are deposited in the subconscious. Anxious dreams free the psyche and can have a harmonizing effect on the emotional state if a person approaches them reasonably enough and does not exaggerate their meaning.