We run away from a maniac, or we crash on a plane, or we cannot find a way out of a mirror maze … Everyone dreams of nightmares. They disturb us, frighten us, paralyze us. But why do we need them?
“I once dreamed that I was walking along a narrow track and a huge lead ball was rolling right at me,” says 37-year-old Irina. “I can’t turn anywhere or run away from him, he’s about to crush me.” Six months have passed, but I still remember this dream in the smallest detail and experience horror when I think about it.
Nightmares, the appearance of which our ancestors attributed to demons, remained unexplored for a long time. Ancient interpreters were wary of revealing their essence, preferring to offer those who saw them a series of rituals to get rid of them. Nightmares have not yet been fully studied, but still modern scientists have a number of hypotheses why they come to us.
1. Training
Often, during nightmares, our hearts pound wildly, we suffocate and wake up in a cold sweat. “Perhaps this ability to put all the senses into a state of alarm is inherited from our ancestors, who, having no weapons against predators, were forced to constantly be on the alert in order to survive,” argues Deirdre Barrett, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. – Nightmares appeared to warn us of potential dangers, and were simply necessary for humanity to survive. Even the post-traumatic nightmares that a hunter had after being attacked by a wild animal were useful – after all, the animal could attack again, and one had to be prepared for this.
Nightmares are one of our responses to stress.
But are these alarms useful in today’s world, in which there are so many dangers that we feel stress just learning about them – there was another fire, there was a bridge collapsed, there was a terrorist attack? Do we need to experience additional stress in our sleep as well?
“Nightmares are one of our reactions to stress,” says psychotherapist, somnologist Alexander Polyakov, head of the Sleep Laboratory of the National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Neurology named after A.I. V.M. Bekhtereva.- These dreams help to rethink, experience traumatic events, process unpleasant information. And if they come a couple of times a year, there’s nothing to worry about. But if nightmares become obsessive, interfere with life, you should definitely consult a specialist.
2. Mirror of life
People who are haunted by nightmares, who are afraid to fall asleep because they are afraid to see the “horror movie” again, according to various sources, from 2 to 8%. Among them are many patients with post-traumatic disorders, participants in wars or survivors of a terrorist attack.
“Heavy dreams are also haunted by clinical depression: these people generally see more dreams, their brain processes negative information at night, which it cannot cope with during the day,” says Alexander Polyakov. – Nightmares are repeated in hyperthyroidism and other thyroid diseases, epilepsy, hormonal changes, for example, during menopause – in a word, collecting an anamnesis, I must not only find out what stresses a person has experienced, remember Freud and his “road to the unconscious”, but also measure the patient’s blood pressure, blood sugar, take an encephalogram. Often the cause of nightmares is health problems.
The client, together with the therapist, rewrites the script of the nightmare
Sometimes a nightmare can be a dream because we … ate herring at night or went over with alcohol, Alexander Polyakov adds: “Peppered, salty, spicy foods and alcohol affect the functioning of neurons. Nightmares can be dreamed after overeating, after taking certain medications. Sleep is a mirror of life, and it is impossible to analyze it based only on knowledge of psychology.
American somnologist Carol Wasserman recalls how one day a woman came to her appointment, who had been haunted by nightmares for a year. She lost sleep and appetite, tried to work with a psychotherapist, but she continued to dream of horror films. It turned out that the cause of the nightmares was … a hidden allergy to peach ice cream, which the patient was very fond of. Once she stopped eating it, the bad dreams were gone! Wasserman herself says that it would never have occurred to her to test a woman for allergies if it weren’t for her own shrimp allergy: “You won’t believe it, but she also kept me awake for a whole year. I ate shrimp at night, and then I had bad dreams. Who would have thought!”
3. Warning
And what about those who do not have allergies, problems with hormones, who do not like sauerkraut, but still see bad dreams? Look for hidden meanings in them. If properly interpreted, a nightmare “will allow us to perceive some truth about us that we vaguely feel, but do not want or cannot know,” psychologist Vladislava Ladmari points out. – If we are now having nightmares, it means that something unpleasant is happening in life, but we are not aware of it. And then it makes sense to work with this material, to understand what is going wrong.”
Sometimes nightmares warn against rash actions. Vladislava Ladmari says: “My client began to have bad dreams when she was about to buy a room in an old house. She soon discovered that there was a brothel above the apartment she wanted to purchase. The brain of my client collected a lot of indirect signs that the apartment was “bad”, but did not let this information into her consciousness. And the unconscious literally screamed: “Do not buy!” As soon as the truth came out and she decided not to buy an apartment, the nightmares were gone.”
Owls are not what they seem
Nightmares are more common among women than men, say psychologists Genevieve Robert and Antonio Sadra of the University of Montreal. And the most common theme of a nightmare is physical aggression. They asked 572 people to write down their dreams for 5 weeks. The result was 10 reports, of which 000 were reports of nightmares and 253 were reports of bad dreams. In addition to violence, study participants dreamed of death, health problems, and threats. “But it would be wrong to think that people wake up in a cold sweat just from this,” says Dr. Robert. “I remember the story of one man who just saw an owl in a dream … and experienced real horror.”
4. Growing pains
Oddly enough, most of all terrible dreams are not for adults, but for children aged 3-10 years. They are associated with all sorts of childhood fears – to be alone, to lose the love of adults significant to them, to part with them. “Children are more vulnerable than adults. And nightmares partly reflect this vulnerability,” notes Deirdre Barrett. The psychologist believes that in most cases we are talking about the norm. “As a rule, it is enough to listen to the child, talk to him about the content of the dream, hug him – and he will calm down,” she continues. – Nightmares are useful – they unload the psyche of the child, release his anxieties and fears. And it is enough for parents to share his feelings with the child, to support him, so that the feeling of security returns, and bad dreams are no longer repeated.
And what do adults do with their nightmares? Analyze. And if they interfere with life, seek help from a somnologist and psychotherapist. You can get rid of nightmares. Back in World War II, American psychologists developed a technique that increased the number of nightmares to heal soldiers with psychological trauma. And then, as time passed, the military had a final dream with a happy ending, after which the nightmares never returned.
Now there are more gentle techniques that bring “happy” dreams closer. For example, when a client, together with a psychotherapist, mentally rewrites the script of an obsessive nightmare. By bringing in the most pleasing images and details, the patient constructs a more happy ending to the story, and the traumatic nightmare dissipates. Healing usually occurs within 1-2 months.