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Many of us have woken up in the middle of the night at least once in our lives. Cold sweat, palpitations, it is difficult to breathe – again I had a terrible dream. Science still doesn’t know why we have nightmares, but it does know a lot more.
1. Nobody hears you scream
You cannot scream or move when you have a nightmare. Hollywood films sin against the truth by showing actors thrashing about in bed and waking up screaming.
“When we dream during REM sleep, all of our muscles, with the exception of the eyes and those involved in the breathing process, are paralyzed,” says sleep medicine specialist Anisa Das.
“If you sit on the bed and scream, it means that you are no longer sleeping. That’s why we remember nightmares better than other dreams – we wake up in the midst of a nightmare, ”she emphasizes.
2. It’s a cipher
Most of these dreams are caused by anxiety and high stress levels. But it is extremely rare for us to dream exactly what we are afraid of.
Tufts University researchers analyzed the dreams of Americans after the 11/XNUMX attacks. Although the number of nightmares increased significantly, no one dreamed of falling “twin towers”, planes or simply collapsing buildings, despite the endless broadcasts of the terrorist attack on TV.
3. Nightmares prepare us for real life.
While there are many theories as to why we dream, the most popular is that nightmares help us solve problems or experience strong emotions. “A nightmare can be a way to prepare for a scary situation,” says Beacon College psychologist AJ Marsden.
Pregnant women and mothers of newborns often dream about babies, and mothers of older children often dream that something has happened to them.
“These dreams help women be more attentive and responsible,” Marsden comments. In addition, nightmares can be associated with severe sleep disturbance, which is not uncommon for new parents.
4. You can control your nightmares.
Lucid dreaming assumes that in a dream you realize that you are dreaming, and in this way you can change the content of the dream. “But it takes practice. The main problem is that when you become aware that you are dreaming, you wake up,” says Marsden.
Lucid dreaming is now being studied by hundreds of scientists around the world. People with PTSD suffer from nightmares especially often, and the technique of controlling dreams is taught to war veterans and victims of natural disasters.
5. Have worse dreams
Children’s night terrors scare adults even more than the children themselves. The child wakes up with a loud cry or shakes, he abruptly gets out of bed with his eyes wide open, but he does not see or hear anyone. In a few minutes he will fall asleep and in the morning he will not remember anything.
At this point, the main thing is not to scare him even more by trying to wake him up.
Marsden explains that nightmare and night terror visit us at different stages of sleep. Horrors occur during the deepest, fourth phase during the transition to REM sleep: this mechanism has not yet been debugged in some children. Fortunately, night terrors are completely harmless and do not require treatment.
6. It’s a source of inspiration
But sometimes dreams serve as a source of inspiration. The plot of the most famous gothic novel, Dracula, was dreamed about by Bram Stoker after he ate too much at night.
Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, who suffered from tormenting nightmares, Jack Kerouac, who wrote The Book of Dreams, Stephen King, and even Twilight bestselling author Stephanie Myers, have based their books on images from nightmares.