What is the cause of a nightmare and what does an anxious dream say?

A night­mare is an indi­ca­tor of a per­son­’s emo­tion­al state. More­over, in this case, emo­tions are far from pos­i­tive. The rea­sons for such a dream can be fears, anx­i­eties, resent­ments, doubts, anger. Per­haps a per­son con­stant­ly thinks about some unpleas­ant events — a quar­rel, ill­ness, breakup. Or maybe he is expe­ri­enc­ing some kind of men­tal trau­ma or just feels unhap­py or unsat­is­fied.

Nightmare: negative emotions during sleep

It is known that pain indi­cates the appear­ance of prob­lems in the body. And a night­mare of a per­son is no excep­tion. If you often have to wake up in the mid­dle of the night in a cold sweat with the thought: “Thank God, this is just a dream,” you should sort out your own anx­i­eties and expe­ri­ences.

In the first moments after wak­ing up, the con­tent of the dream is fright­en­ing and caus­es a feel­ing of an approach­ing cat­a­stro­phe. How­ev­er, do not imme­di­ate­ly ana­lyze its con­tent, it is bet­ter to do it with a fresh head. In the mean­time, you can take a piece of paper and write down your dream in all its details — not only thoughts, but also feel­ings — awk­ward­ness, fear, sad­ness, resent­ment.

A dis­turb­ing dream can speak vol­umes. For exam­ple, about fears — a per­son does not admit that he feels unhap­py. And then, dur­ing sleep, he wan­ders through end­less labyrinths or climbs stairs lead­ing to nowhere.

A per­son­’s dream can warn of upcom­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. For exam­ple, a preg­nant woman dreams that she is giv­ing birth and then can­not find her child. It can be assumed that in this way the brain gives the expec­tant moth­er a sig­nal that she should be more atten­tive to the child.

The so-called “prophet­ic dreams-warn­ings” are also noth­ing more than the result of an analy­sis of the events that have occurred. For exam­ple, a friend dreams of tak­ing her hus­band away. Per­haps this very friend real­ly “has her eye” on a strange man, she just does not show it. Nev­er­the­less, the brain notices some lit­tle things — looks, into­na­tions, and, per­haps, at the sub­con­scious lev­el, it issues such a warn­ing.

You can try to ana­lyze the behav­ior of the main char­ac­ters of the dream. For exam­ple, if you often dream of a teacher scold­ing for unfin­ished home­work, then you should think about who he can be asso­ci­at­ed with? Maybe with a boss? Then the cause of the night­mare should be sought at work. Or maybe a dis­turb­ing dream is a con­se­quence of dis­agree­ments with strict par­ents who are still try­ing to man­age the life of a long-grown up child. Although in some cas­es the cause is in the per­son him­self, expe­ri­enc­ing a night­mare dur­ing sleep. Rather, in his exces­sive and, of course, not always fair self-crit­i­cism.

Human sleep: “popular” nightmares

Some are afraid of Babay­ka, oth­ers are afraid of rats and snakes. How­ev­er, there is also a gen­er­al list of night­mares, which includes:

• prob­lems at work;
• mak­ing fatal mis­takes;
• cat­a­stro­phes and wars;
• appear­ance in an inde­cent form in a pub­lic place;
• falling from height;
• snakes, rats and oth­er unpleas­ant crea­tures;
• plane crash­es and car acci­dents;
• chas­es and attempts to hide;
• threat to the lives of rel­a­tives and friends;
• failed exams;
• futile attempts to reach a very impor­tant num­ber.

By the way, psy­chol­o­gists have noticed that men often see adven­ture sto­ries — dis­as­ters, chas­es, and so on, while women see psy­cho­log­i­cal ones — quar­rels, insults, part­ings.

As we have already said, it is impos­si­ble to unam­bigu­ous­ly deci­pher a person’s dream. Much depends both on the gen­er­al con­text and on his per­son­al­i­ty. Nev­er­the­less, some direc­tions can be assumed. In any case, this will be clos­er to the truth than the inter­pre­ta­tion of dreams from a dream book.

For exam­ple, there is an opin­ion that:

• an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion in a dream may indi­cate increased anx­i­ety and per­fec­tion­ism;
• paral­y­sis and inac­tion (when, for exam­ple, you need to run) speaks of exter­nal aggres­sion that a per­son is afraid of or unable to cope with;
• falling from a height — such a dream can evoke a feel­ing of lone­li­ness and aban­don­ment, a warn­ing of immi­nent dan­ger, and some­times just severe fatigue, when a per­son lit­er­al­ly “falls” into sleep;
• chas­es dur­ing sleep may indi­cate that a per­son is try­ing to hide from those fea­tures of his own char­ac­ter that he him­self is afraid of or care­ful­ly hides. For exam­ple — covert aggres­sion;
• unpleas­ant crea­tures may be dreamed of due to severe emo­tion­al over­load and increased anx­i­ety;
• exam — too many com­mit­ments;
• falling out teeth or hair can sig­nal a person’s fear of “los­ing his tem­per” and say­ing too much.

Do not rush to write down the inter­pre­ta­tion of these dreams. They have no sci­en­tif­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, this is just one of the pos­si­ble ver­sions. In any case, the rela­tion­ship between the psy­cho­log­i­cal state and dreams is indi­vid­ual for each per­son.

Anxious sleep: when is it time to see a doctor?

Where dreams come from and why they are need­ed is not com­plete­ly known. The most com­mon the­o­ry is the rela­tion­ship between human expe­ri­ence and sim­u­lat­ed sit­u­a­tions. In sim­ple terms, the brain sim­ply repro­duces frag­ments of past events, mix­ing them up and cre­at­ing new sto­ries. Ask: “Why is this nec­es­sary?” Per­haps in order to bet­ter assim­i­late cer­tain moments in life. And also test new behav­iors in oth­er sit­u­a­tions.

Frankly speak­ing, these mod­els are not always ide­al and do not require con­scious mem­o­riza­tion. On the con­trary, wak­ing up, a per­son with great dif­fi­cul­ty recalls the dream plot. How­ev­er, some pas­sages still remain in mem­o­ry. And not because they can be impor­tant and use­ful. In most cas­es, the episodes clos­est to awak­en­ing are remem­bered. And peo­ple who say they don’t see dreams just don’t remem­ber them.

Is it pos­si­ble to make sure that only pleas­ant dreams are dreamed? Pro­grammed sleep is very tempt­ing. In fact, there are many tech­niques and cours­es for obtain­ing lucid dreams. How­ev­er, the influ­ence of this phe­nom­e­non on the psy­che has been poor­ly stud­ied, so it is hard­ly worth get­ting car­ried away with it. More­over, some experts argue that lucid dreams can neg­a­tive­ly affect the psy­cho­log­i­cal state of a per­son.

And if we are talk­ing about night­mares that wors­en the qual­i­ty of sleep, you should con­sult a sleep doc­tor for cog­ni­tive-behav­ioral ther­a­py. In com­bi­na­tion with the res­o­lu­tion of dis­turb­ing sit­u­a­tions and the use of tech­niques that reduce anx­i­ety, such treat­ment will help to learn how to con­trol such dreams.