Why do you have nightmares and what to do if they don’t go away

No one is immune from nightmares. They can torment adults and children, men and women, people of various professions, both with large and small incomes. In order not to jump up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, you first need to understand why you have nightmares. There are a number of reasons. Some of them are very easy to deal with.

Why do you have nightmares

Poor sleep is the result physical discomfort: stuffiness, uncomfortable bed, loud music, bright light, overeating (especially in combination with alcohol), overwork.

Heat during illness can also provoke terrible dreams. In this case, the only thing left is to wait for recovery.

If you are in severe stress (due to a personal drama or an extreme situation), you can’t solve a problem or forget a psychological trauma that has long been inflicted, the subconscious mind will actively signal this to you at night.

Leaves an imprint and profession – both people who are faced with blood, death, cruelty (doctors, military men), and representatives of creative professions because of their rich imagination can suffer from nightmares, which is why nightmares can occur.

Nightmares: what to do

Regular “watching” of horror movies in your sleep is a reason to adjust your habits and lifestyle. First of all, create a comfortable environment for a sound, restful sleep:

• take a walk in the fresh air in the evening;
• well ventilate the room in which you rest;
• do not overeat at night and do not drink alcohol (at least three hours before bedtime), it is better to drink herbal tea to calm the nervous system;
• take relaxing baths;
• turn off the TV and turn on pleasant, calm music;
• do not watch horror films, fear and a sense of danger are deposited on the subconscious;
• remove objects from the room that distract you or annoy you.

But if these methods do not work in your case, take care of your health. First, drugs can provoke bad dreams. Talk to your doctor about whether to continue drinking them or whether you need to change the dosage, the drugs themselves. Secondly, the cause of nightmares are serious diseases that do not yet manifest themselves. Sometimes in a dream you can see exactly where the disease has settled. But it is better not to engage in fortune-telling by dreams, but to undergo an examination.

If a child has nightmares

Studies have shown that women have scary dreams almost 2 times more often than men, and are much more imaginative and twisted in plot. Scientists explain this by the fact that women more emotionally perceive everything that happened to them during the day. Even turning attention to other things, distraction, alas, is not always possible.

In children, the psyche is also very receptive. At the age of 3 to 7 years, children begin a new, more adult and independent life. New knowledge brings new fears. What if someone lives under the bed, what if something happens to mom or dad? Therefore, during this period (but sometimes even earlier – from a year) monsters begin to creep into children’s dreams. It is generally accepted that they dream after the corresponding computer games or cartoons. But in fact, this reason is very rare. If a child suffers from aggression, feels threatened (it can come from anyone – family members, friends, nanny), then, since he still cannot express his feelings, his fantasy embodies these fears in the form of monsters.

Try to find a pattern, after which the baby sees terrible dreams: after watching TV or talking with some person, and then protect him from the source of negativity.

A variant of dreams about monsters – dreams about how they trying to eat scary animals. They can come into a child’s life from a zoo, a wildlife movie, a computer game. Or maybe a huge dog really lives next door, and that’s why you have nightmares.

There are two ways to help: either eliminate the cause of his anxiety from the child’s life, or explain, show that the animal is actually not fearful, that it will not cause harm.

Flight in a dream is a bright and pleasant event, only if it is not flying down from a rooftop, stairs, window, or even a crib. Such nightmares have two causes: physiological (a number of diseases, for example, sluggish otitis media, provoke problems with the vestibular apparatus and a sense of balance, which is reflected in a dream) and psychological (loss of control due to a sudden change, feeling that mom and dad are no longer are a solid foundation).

The doctor will help to cope with the first reason, but the second is in the hands of the parents. Try to make the changes in family life smooth. If you have to move, introduce the baby to this place, first play there for several hours, then you can sometimes stay overnight. Similarly, you need to gradually get used to kindergarten, a couple of days is not enough for this.

So called dreams-chases, in which the baby ran away from persecution, got lost, got lost, are a reflection of the experience of a difficult, incomprehensible situation in which nothing depends on him, for example, the divorce of his parents, a serious illness of one of the relatives.

It is important not to hush up problems, not to try to completely protect the child from them. When he does not know the situation, does not know about its consequences, he becomes even more afraid. Choose the right words for the baby.

Another type of dream cannot be called a nightmare, but it also causes great discomfort to the child – dreams in which he sees himself naked or dressed funny in front of other people. Sexual overtones are not to be found here. This is how anxiety manifests itself before a public performance or a new team – in a kindergarten, a music school, a sports section, especially if before that the baby already had a negative experience (he was promised that he would play with other children in the kindergarten, and make friends there managed).

Do not promise your child in advance what may not happen – that everyone will make friends with him, that he will become an excellent musician, win medals. If something doesn’t work out for him, then his hands may drop altogether.

Popular questions and answers

We talked about nightmares as a mental symptom, when to see a doctor for this problem, and self-treatment options with psychotherapist Alexander Pyatnitsky.