Most often, nightmares are experienced by children between the ages of six and ten. Growing up, 80% of them remember what tormented them in childhood. But adults also suffer from unpleasant dreams: one in twentieth sees terrible dreams.

Few people know there is a medical condition besides nightmares. « night fear» , which often accompanies sleepwalking. With night fear, a person wakes up screaming about half an hour after falling asleep. Often he is in a state between sleep and wakefulness, so the next morning he may not remember anything.

Unlike nighttime fear, nightmares occur in the second half of sleep, in the rapid phase. If a person is woken up at this moment, then he almost always remembers all the details of the dream, and can describe them very clearly.

WHY NIGHTMARS ARE DREAMED

About why nightmares dream, whether they harm a person or, on the contrary, are beneficial, for several centuries.

Today science is inclined to believe that sometimes having bad dreams is even beneficial, since it is a product of our brain that allows us to fight stress. Bad dreams can distract from experiences, defuse consciousness and thereby lead to psychological relief.

In addition, sometimes nightmares can indicate a real problem in life that we often do not notice or do not want to notice.

However, if nightmares become a constant phenomenon, then there is no need to talk about their positive effect on the human body.

A study by German scientists showed that among adults falling into emptiness leads, followed by chase, followed by being late.

Weak mentality in children

Children often have bad dreams, since they have a low threshold of sensitivity. The reasons can be quarrels with parents, especially in the evening, lack of friends or poor peer relationships. Physical punishment can also cause nightmares.

Stress / Depression

Psychologists believe that nightmares and stress are directly related to each other. When the human brain is under stress, the subconscious mind cannot switch to rest mode and continues to look for a way out of the situation even in a dream. Severe emotional distress can also lead to nightmares.

Experts identify the term "post-traumatic stress disorder", which is most often characteristic of people who were in a combat zone. But in especially impressionable people, it is observed even after watching horror films.

Overwork

Physical or emotional fatigue can lead to nightmares. The fact is that a person mentally returns to the same problem even during sleep in order to solve it. The risk group includes doctors, employees of the rescue services and law enforcement agencies.

Diseases

In addition to psychological problems, nightmares can be indicative of various physical illnesses. For example, there is a high probability of seeing a nightmare if you have a fever or migraine.

However, sometimes nightmares indicate serious illnesses, for example, cancer. And even breathing problems and snoring can be the cause of bad dreams.

Uncomfortable sleep

Bad dreams can occur when external stimuli are present, such as bright lights, noise, loud music, or lack of air. Therefore, before going to bed, you need to make sure that nothing will bother you.

Even the wrong position of the bed can cause nightmares.

Overeating

Overeating at night can also cause bad dreams. The fact is that a heavy meal before bedtime leads to disruption of organs, as a result of which - to overexcitation and bad dreams.

Fatty and spicy foods raise your body temperature, speed up your metabolism, and therefore lead to nightmares.

Creative person

Creative people see nightmares more often than others. Psychologists believe that it is creative people who can sometimes have "prophetic" dreams, including nightmares, which serve as a warning.

Causative agents

These include nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol. Instead of resting during sleep, the body has to work to flush out foreign substances.

Various medications can also cause nightmares, especially at the beginning of their use.

If you are tired of nightmares, MIR 24 offers five ways to help you cope with them.

MAKE SLEEP MORE COMFORTABLE

It sounds corny, but improving the atmosphere in the bedroom will help to cope with nightmares. It should be well-groomed, with a comfortable temperature and without too much light.

To get rid of unpleasant sounds, you can use a noise generator. It is also worth limiting the blue light that comes from computers, smartphones and tablets. It prevents the body from producing the "sleep hormone" melanin. Therefore, do not use gadgets at least two hours before bedtime.

SPORT AND HOT BATH

You will sleep best if you exercise during the day. Exercise fatigue is one way to improve sleep quality. It can be aerobics, fitness, dancing, the main thing is not to train right before bed, as then your body will be tense and will not be able to calm down to fall asleep.

Take a hot bath right before bed. A sharp drop in temperature afterward will signal to the brain that it's time to go to bed. And don't eat before bed.

MEDICATION TREATMENT

If the cause of your unpleasant dreams is stress or depression, then you need to see a doctor. Often people belonging to this risk group are prescribed the drug "Prazosin".

It is also worth talking to your doctor about any medications you are already taking, as medications that alter your blood pressure can cause nightmares.

In addition, bad dreams can occur if the dosage of the medication taken has been changed. In this case, they will disappear when the body adapts to the changes.

PROMOTION OF PLEASANT DREAMS

To get rid of nightmares, you need to encourage good dreams. To do this, first imagine the place in which you would like to be. After that, slowly falling asleep, start thinking about pleasant events for you. You can imagine an imaginary interlocutor to whom you tell about your dreams, as well as nightmares tormenting you.

But if you still had a bad dream again, try to manage the events that occur in it. By learning to control your dreams, you will be able to regulate what you dreamed yourself.

Ekaterina Degtereva

Suddenly appearing, nightmares envelop the soul of a person with nets of fear. Immediately after sleep, the sleeper cannot recover for 2-4 minutes, thinking "Where is the dream, and where is reality?" This problem is irrelevant if horror is rare. But when terrible dreams are constant, a person begins to think "How to get rid of nightmares?"

Most often, horrible pictures appear during REM sleep. This phase lasts from 2 minutes to 30 minutes and usually ends with the person waking up. At first he is frightened, his eyes are wide open, his body is covered with sweat, his heart is beating wildly. A person experiences, which gradually returns to normal. Scary pictures do not remain in memory, but a feeling of horror and painful fear is fixed for a long time. How to get rid of this problem and when should you see a doctor? We will try to find the answers.

Who has nightmares?

Many people think that nightmares are the prerogative of children. Statistics prove what adolescent children and adults experience. Moreover, 50% of adults visit terrible visions during sleep. It is estimated that 2 to 8 percent of adults suffer from recurrent nightmares. For some, this has passed over chronic pathology.

During night vision, a person is visited by terrible pictures, he experiences strong emotions that make the heart work 2-3 times faster. Sometimes the pictures are so vivid and real that a person wakes up and does not understand where the dream is and where the reality is. Images remain in memory for a long time, making a person shudder every time they remember.

This leads to mental breakdowns, stress, physical fatigue.

Differences between nightmares and horrors

Nightmares have been compared to horror, although there are 2 types of stimuli.

Horrors are visions characteristic of the deep sleep phase. Night terrors occur during the first 120 minutes of sleep. A person experiences an indescribable feeling of fear at this time. Some horrors are characterized by movement. A person's arm or leg may twitch, all muscles may tremble. awaken and force a person in reality to experience a strong shock.
Nightmares occur during REM sleep, closer to morning. A person does not know how to get rid of nightmares, because these are disturbing dreams with terrible pictures. They differ in the reality of what is happening. Each person sees their own images, but most often these are traumatic events that happened in real life.

Sources of Night Terror Appearance

In adults, terrifying dreams are more likely to appear spontaneously. But often they are the result of psychological trauma (depression, or anxiety).

Remember what negative moments you experienced. Maybe you have lost your job, a child or a loved one is sick, or an operation is ahead. If such events have taken place in your life, then you should not think about how to get rid of nightmares in a dream. They will go away with the traumatic situation.

In such cases, it is necessary to consult a doctor.

Other sources of nightmares:

Overeating before bed. The modern man's routine suggests that dinner is the only complete meal. The person after work is so hungry that he is ready to take a double dose before bed. During sleep, the body digests food, it becomes difficult to breathe, the heartbeat increases, which causes terrible visions. How to get rid of nightmares in a dream in this case is up to you. Eat earlier or take a walk before going to bed.

Internal anxiety and worries. Try keeping a diary of nightmares and prior events. Establish the relationship of events. To understand what is scary in a dream, sketch images and think about what it looks like. Write down all events, regardless of their importance. Reread the list and highlight the points that really bother you. This will help you understand what causes anxiety not only during the day but also at night.

Some of these experiences cause occurrences that negatively affect the quality of sleep. Try to get distracted from problems and rest. Eat on time, go to bed, moderate your labor impulse. Take away, gymnastics, introduce new foods into the diet. After all, even the strongest organism needs rest and variety.

In part, they remain in the subconscious, even if you do not think about them. At that moment, when a person is as relaxed as possible, they make themselves known. To drown them, try to remember the pleasant moments before going to bed, scroll them in your head and fall asleep in a favorable mood.

Sometimes, in order to understand how to get rid of night fears, you need to think about your own secret desires. You drown out and suppress, but dissatisfaction manifests itself in the nightmares that come in dreams. Do not force yourself to do something that you absolutely do not like.

How to rid yourself of nightmares?

Night fears and terrible pictures knock a person out of a working state and do not give a full rest. If you see them regularly, find a way to escape. In cases where nightmares in your sleep are the result of restless legs syndrome or holding your breath (apnea), you need to get qualified help. Medication and therapy can also help you get rid of nightmares - the result of depression, stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The doctor will individually prescribe treatment that will eliminate anxiety and panic disorder.

Try to identify the causes of the nightmares and fix them. Eat no later than 2 hours before bedtime. Eating food is able to speed up metabolism by sending signals to the brain, forcing it to activate. Please note that food with a lot of sugar affects the subconscious mind more intensely.

If during the day you have experienced a strong shock, try some relaxation exercises before bed:

Reading pleasant literature, knitting are simple activities that perfectly calm the nervous system.
- Calm exercises help to clear thoughts, etc. Practice at home in the evening. A few minutes are enough to relax.
Hot salt bath - after a physically and mentally hard day, hot water is perfect for relaxing. Feel how the negative emotions of the past day are washed away, and your mind is filled with calm thoughts.

Nightmares can result from drug therapy. Check with your doctor if you think this is the source.

Reducing the dose or discontinuing the drug may cause nightmares to appear. The horror will disappear as soon as the body gets used to new changes.

Medications for hypotension or hypertension, antidepressants can also cause nightmares. Consult a doctor who will switch the drug to another drug.

Relaxing atmosphere for restful sleep

Lack of healthy sleep can cause depression and that leads to nightmares. It turns out to be a vicious circle. Try to break the chain by creating a healthy sleep environment. To do this, create a pleasant aura in the bedroom:

clean things, dust, wipe the floor in time;
ventilate the room before going to bed;
make bed linen feel good;
install a white noise generator to block out unfavorable sounds;
use the bedroom only for relaxation, not for work.

Engage in physical exercise before bed, which will pleasantly fatigue. Just choose an activity that will bring you joy:

dancing;
charging;
exercise with a load;
hiking.

Exercise up to 6 times a week a few hours before bed.

The nicotine, alcoholic, caffeine content excites the brain, interfering with good sleep. Reduce or stop using these substances at least 4 hours before bedtime.

For a better association, try writing a script or drawing a favorable ending to a terrible dream.

Encourage pleasant dreams

Set yourself up before bed. Imagine a place where you were calm: a beach, a forest glade, a summer cottage. Recreate sounds, smells, colors in your thoughts. With every minute, plunging into the abyss of sleep, think about the good. Imagine yourself as a positive hero: princess, super-hero, actor, traveler. Try to focus on your goals. Imagine taking on a long-awaited position, finding a loved one, or acquiring the figure of your own dreams.

In Europe, it is customary to discuss problems with a psychotherapist. In Russia, the best psychologist is a friend or girlfriend. Talk to them about your nightmares and tell them what's scary about them. Keep a diary and write in detail the images that come in a dream. This will help to look at fears from the outside.

Find time to relax during the day. Unload thoughts from negativity, relax to avoid stress.

How to prevent nightmares?

Customize yours: watch comedy, read classic literature. Avoid unpleasant conversations, negative news. Remember the pleasant events of the current day, week. Make plans for the weekend as you meet up with friends or family. Avoid thinking about possible unpleasant experiences that might happen.

Ventilate the area before bed. Excessively hot or cold air creates discomfort and leads to nightmares. Remember, nightmares are not real.

Relax and calm down before bed, discuss with loved ones what torments you. Embrace a loved one will definitely help if you are scared. If you've been following these guidelines for several months and still don't know how to get rid of your nightmares, see your doctor.

Every person dreams. They can be black and white and color, fantastic and realistic, completely meaningless and meaningful. The world of dreams is extremely diverse. Sleep is a distortion of the real world, a reflection of the events of the day, emotions and experiences of a person, his memories and fantasies. In a dream, there is a harmonious interweaving of past, present and future events. According to experts, dreams are the result of the active work of a person's subconscious.

However, dreams can be not only good. Quite often, a person is tormented by nightmares, and he wakes up in a cold sweat. Often, nightmares are dreamed of in childhood, which is a consequence of the child's adaptation to the world around him. At a more mature age, a person has nightmares when he cannot get rid of problems, as a result of negative information received during the day, or due to low self-esteem. Energy debris and corruption can also cause nightmares. In this peculiar way, the human subconscious sends a signal that the body is in danger.

Among all the nightmares, those that occur most often can be distinguished. In such dreams, a person is either persecuted or attacked, the person feels a fall or paralysis, he finds himself in some terrible place without the ability to get out.

If nightmares are the result of the stress of the previous day, certain rituals will help get rid of them.

If a person has nightmares with an enviable frequency, you need to take a silver ribbon and a candle. Before going to bed, you need to wrap the tape around the candle. Then you should light a candle and, holding it in your hand, go to the window, look at the fire, blow it out, remove the tape and tie it around your wrist at night. You need to leave some silver thing and a candle on the windowsill. After waking up, the tape must be removed from the wrist and the decoration and candle left there must be taken from the windowsill. This ritual can be performed several times a week, each time using a new ribbon and a new candle. Only when the nightmares cease to haunt, the used tapes should be thrown as far from home as possible.

There is another interesting and effective ritual - the so-called nightmare catcher. To perform this ritual. You must first buy a small box, a candle of blue color, rock crystal or selenite, take the herb of yarrow, calendula and wormwood in a 1: 2: 1 ratio and salt. For the ritual to be effective, it should be performed on 15-17 lunar days. Directly for the ritual, you need to take a small piece of plain fabric (it is important that its color inspires calmness in a person). You need to cover the table with this cloth at dawn, put a candle in the center and light it, pronouncing certain words. Then you need to take a glass of water, add a pinch of salt there, equal to the number of years of a person. When pouring salt into water, you need to imagine that the water in the glass boils and glows in the same color as the fabric. Throwing every pinch into a glass, you need to pronounce the words of the conspiracy. Then put a stone and some herbs in the water. A glass of water should be left on the table until the candle has completely burned out.

After that, you need to take the box, write the word "peace" on it, remove the stone from the water and put it inside the box, add the remaining herbs, close everything and put it under the bed, while pronouncing the words of the conspiracy 12 times.

The action of the nightmare catcher lasts exactly one year. After this period, if desired, the ritual can be performed again.

According to people practicing magic, the prayer "Our Father" is considered one of the most effective means of getting rid of nightmares. It must be recited immediately before bedtime three times. Before the icon of the Mother of God, before the start of the prayer, you need to light a candle, and after its end, recite the conspiracy on the pillow three times.

Then you should extinguish the candle without blowing it out. In the morning, put the pillow in a sunlit place and leave it there until the evening. Before you go to bed, you need to put on a poor pillowcase on this pillow and recite the conspiracy in front of the icon three times. The effect of this conspiracy persists until the first wash. Then the ritual can be repeated if necessary.

There is another ritual. Before going to bed, you need to put open scissors under the pillow, having uttered the words of the conspiracy on them in advance. In the morning, you should take these scissors and, making cutting movements in the air, say the words with an appeal to God for protection an odd number of times. This ritual should be performed every evening for a week.

You can also put a necklace woven from onions and garlic under the pillow. Weaving it, you need to read Our Father.

You can take three yellow, red and green leaves and hide them under the mattress. And yet - try not to fall asleep on your back, but lie on your side, twisting the figs on both hands.

And most importantly, for all these rituals to be effective, in no case should you tell anyone about them.

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The nature of human dreams is still not fully understood. Many questions remain unanswered, but nevertheless, parapsychology does not stand still, and some scientists have even proven that dreams can be controlled. Everyone can develop such an ability, thereby relieving themselves of nightmares.

According to many researchers, a person has nightmares at a certain period when he is plagued by problems at work, in his personal life or in relationships with people. All experiences turn into a dream, which is why we are terrified of what we see in a dream. How can you learn to manage your dreams and stop seeing nightmares?

There is a whole methodology that was developed at one of the universities in North Carolina. If nightmares are seen almost every night, then, as a rule, they are all very similar in plot and take place with the participation of the same characters. Try to remember who plays the most important and villainous role in your dreams. Focus on him and mentally try to imagine how you find contact with him. Ask him questions in your mind and imagine his answers. Try to find with him mutual language... After that, write down on paper the questions that you asked the hero of your dreams in your thoughts and his approximate answers.

Before going to bed, you must set a clear task for yourself: when meeting with a hero in a dream, control your movements and words, get in touch with him. In a dream, you must make sure that you have everything under control. You will understand this immediately. When you encounter an unpleasant character in your nightmares, do not try to run away from him or do what you did in previous nightmares. Your task is to establish contact with him. Talk to him, encourage him to communicate. When you feel that you have come to some positive result, you can wake up and record this dialogue. This technique will help not only get rid of nightmares, but also find out the reason for their appearance.

In addition to this method, there are several important rules, applying which you can wake up in time before the start of the nightmare or even avoid it. If you dream that someone is running after you, and you are afraid that they are about to catch up with you, stop, no matter how scary you are. Turn to face the impending danger and it will disappear.

Often people dream of a situation when they are not ready for a public speech, speech or exam. Such a dream brings a lot of excitement and unpleasant emotions. To avoid them, you should always be aware in a dream that you can easily fail to show up for a performance or an exam and simply run away.

Another common dream situation is a fall from a great height. Do not be afraid that you will fall and crash, enjoy the flight, because no one has reached the end yet!

If someone wants to attack you, do not try to hide from him. Find contact with the stalker, talk to him and show your friendliness towards him.

Remember that this is just your dream in which you may well become a director!

How to get rid of nightmares?

The fourth stage of sleep is the realm of night fears. These frightening episodes are something completely different from terrible dreams. Scary dreams are just unpleasant dreams that occur during REM sleep. Most people have about 2 scary dreams a month.

Nighttime fears also occur during REM sleep. During Stage 4 nighttime fears, a person is panicked and can project frightening dream images into outer space. Since nighttime fears occur when the body is not immobilized, the person may sit up, scream, get out of bed, or start running back and forth. People with this disorder remember little afterwards. Nighttime fears are most common during childhood, but continue to haunt some adults throughout their lives.

How to get rid of a bad dream?

A scary dream can be worse than any horror movie. We can leave the theater, but often we are not able to get rid of our most eerie dreams. But no matter how unpleasant most nightmares are, you can get rid of them in three simple steps. First, describe your nightmare in detail on a piece of paper. Then make in this dream those corrections that you want to have, not forgetting to indicate the details of the new dream.

The third step is mental repetition, in which you replay the altered dream before falling back into sleep.

Mental repetition can help, because thanks to it, a person becomes acquainted with unpleasant dreams at the moment when he is awake and feels safe. Or it may be that it provides a mental "reprogramming" of the content of future dreams. However, this technique has helped many people.