Most people have nightmares, but some people have the same nightmare repeatedly over a period of time, leaving them restless for most of the day. Recurring nightmares can trigger anxiety at the thought of sleeping the next night. For many, nightmares are of little importance: after childhood, the anxiety caused by bad dreams is no more than a minor inconvenience; But frequent and deeply distressing nightmares are a very serious thing, so intense and disturbing that they can paralyze the individual. With this Psychology-Online article we will try to understand why do we have recurring nightmares and what we can do about it when we suffer them.
Types of nightmares
The nightmares in adults they are dreams of terrifying content accompanied by feelings such as fear, anxiety, but also anger, sadness, disgust and other unpleasant emotions (dysphoric), which wake up the subject, thus disturbing sleep.
Nightmares tend to appear in the early hours of dawn and are characterized by full consciousness upon awakening and for him vivid memory of the content of the terrifying experience. The duration of the event is usually short, 4-15 minutes, but often after the episode the subject may have difficulty returning to sleep. In general terms, we can distinguish two categories of nightmares:
- ordinary nightmares: they are those that develop a terrifying story, sometimes influenced by watching movies or readings; They are often linked to the and waking up from these dreams brings remarkable relief and the feeling of being safe in reality.
- Post-traumatic nightmares: is the category of those who have suffered terrible events, episodes of violence, etc. Victims of similar events tend, in fact, to have recurring dreams, in which they often relive the event suffered in reality (with some dream distortion), which often re-traumatizes the dreamer; The horror experienced is the same as that experienced in reality, even after years. They can occur in any phase of sleep (not just REM) and even appear as flashbacks during wakefulness. These types of nightmares in adults are a symptom of .
Why do we have recurring nightmares?
What are the causes of nightmares according to psychology? Most children experience nightmares that they then forget during the day; Childhood nightmares, especially those that manifest themselves in younger children, do not have a pathological meaning. The adult nightmareshowever, are often characterized by links with realityand although they have a tendency to have psychopathological disorders, there is no unanimous consensus among sleep experts on what the psychopathology in question is.
Vivid, recurring nightmares sometimes precede the onset of a psychosis. Recurrent nightmares also occur in the setting of other psychiatric problems, particularly anxiety and the posttraumatic stress. However, most nightmares in adults may be an expected – and therefore normal – reaction to stressand some doctors believe they help people work through their traumatic experiences.
What do recurring nightmares mean?
The recurring nightmares can be recognized as a form of psychiatric illness and the criteria for the diagnosis of nightmare disorder are established by both the APA and the WHO: When someone has long, frightening dreams of this type, or suffers from daytime sleepiness, irritability, or loss of concentration, a diagnosis of nightmare disorder may be warranted. Nightmares generally have to do with something that threatens our security and self-esteem, but to better understand their meaning, we first have to make a distinction:
- Isolated nightmare: often expresses the unconscious elaboration of a discomfort, an event or a recent situation.
- recurring nightmare: expresses a psyche blocked in a strong danger or in deep, but disturbing, transformation.
The most recognized psychological hypothesis for the explanation of nightmares is that through dreams the unconscious tries to bring out contents that rational consciousness does not want to see or denies it altogether. To do so, it uses a symbolic language with strong overtones that does not allow us to continue with the usual apparent indifference, “attacking” us just when we are at maximum abandonment, that is, during sleep.
In fact, for analytical psychology, nightmares are important dreams that seem to contain messages to be understood: they tend to transmit a message to the dreamer, the need to change the conscious attitude or to grow something new in one’s own life experience; Sometimes, they can warn of a workplace, a relationship, or a person to avoid. You can see more information on the subject in this article about .
Relationship between anxiety and dreams
Especially in childhood, nightmares can reflect anxiety and insecurity: in addition to being very frequent, it is known that in children there is a association between bad dreams and anxiety disorderswhich is why nightmares are often called sleep anxiety dreams or sleep anxiety attacks.
Haynes and Mooney (1975) offered the intriguing theory that nightmares, especially recurring nightmares, play a anxiety reduction function, since this decrease is due to repeated cognitive exposure to fear-producing stimuli. However, based on a series of studies, they concluded that their data had been very sparingly explained by considering nightmares simply as a manifestation and related to anxiety.
On the other hand, in a recent 2018 publication, researchers from the Universities of Turku and Skövde noted that calmer people in the waking state may have more positive dreams, while Those who live with more anxiety process more negative dreams. In fact, it was detected that people with higher rates of mental tranquility reported more positive dream emotions, while people with higher levels of anxiety talked about (unpleasant) dreams.
How to eliminate recurring nightmares? To sleep peacefully it would be necessary to abandon this state of continuous tension. In this article you will find, among which mindfulness and relaxation techniques stand out. You can start practicing them with the following video.
We recommend going to a psychologist to evaluate your case and determine if you have nightmare disorder in adults. In which case, the professional will accompany you with a personalized treatment.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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