Nightmares are defined as repeated awakenings from the major sleep period or naps with detailed recall of extended and extremely frightening dreams, usually involving threats to survival, security, or self-esteem. The awakenings generally occur during the second half of the sleep period also know as the REM stage of sleep (Psych Central, 2013). Nightmares affect all ages, but children seem to have such dreams more often. Nightmare disorder should not be confused with night terrors, for they have a different effect on the dreamer. Night terrors are episodes of panic and confusion, with difficulty walking or bringing to awareness, and of which the sufferer has no recollection (Kavanagh, 2010). Major differences between both is that nightmares are vivid images, while night terrors are feelings or emotions that can not be recollected. Also, as stated before, nightmares occur during the REM stage of sleep. In contrast, night terrors occur during the non-REM stage which happens within the first 3-4 hours of sleep. Although both nightmare and night terrors bring great discomfort to the individual, it is important to note that they are different disorders.
There are signs/symptoms that an individual can present that easily help identify a nightmare disorder. The most common sign is seen when an individual repeatedly awakes from his or her sleep, during the second half of his or her sleep. On awakening, the sufferer is usually rapidly orientated and alert. Moaning, moving, talking or flailing to indicate a potentially disturbing dream are also other possible signs of nightmare disorder (Regional Center, 2014). During night terrors, the dreamer has recurrent episodes of intense crying and fear during sleep, in most cases the individual h...
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...he propensity to nightmares. Use of night lights and other strategies may reduce a child's anxiety levels at night. If the nightmares are recurrent then it may help for the parents to talk through the nightmare and imagine a less scary endings. For adults, behavioral approaches in the treatment of nightmares have been successful and can result in short- and long-term reduction of nightmare frequency in more than 70 percent of patients. Such therapy requires only a few group or individual sessions with a psychologist or in a sleep medicine center (Pagel, 2000). Unlike other major disorders, nightmare disorder allows the individual to take personal steps to overcome the disorder before seeking professional help. For many, being able to self treat the disorder gives them greater empowerment and allows the individual to help others who experience the same disorder.
Opening/Attention: Picture this, you just came back home from a long day of work/school. You are exhausted, you walk upstairs, you wash up, you hit your bedroom, you switch off the lights, you call into bed, you start to fall into slumber when suddenly you become distinctly aware that you can’t move a muscle. You panic, you try to use all you’re strength to move, scream for help but you can’t. In fear your eyes dot around the darkness and that’s when you see it. Your worst nightmare, standing across the room and starts to hit towards you. No I’m not telling you a hard story and No I’m not reading you a passage from a Stephen king book. If what I’ve just said resonate of you, then you know very well that I’m talking about Sleep paralysis. Nightmares at it sounds, Sleep paralysis is a very real sleep disorder.
3f. when I have nightmares I tend to dream of person versus supernatural conflict. I have these awful dreams about my great grandmother’s spirit coming after me and attacking me. Sometimes I am so scared to go to bed that I try to force myself to stay
Since stress and sleep apnea are reasons behind sleep terrors, all three of them have similar affects such as daytime tiredness preventing the child from being fully alert during school, and other activities they participate in (“Sleep Terrors,” 2014). There is not a cure for night terrors but things that can be done to reduce them. Making sure the person goes to sleep stress-free will make the night terrors happen less while the person is sleeping. Another way is to make sure the child has a very relaxed routine before going to bed such as reading a book (“Sleep Terrors,”
The discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep suggested that sleep was not, as it was thought to be, a dormant state but rather a mentally dynamic one. Your brain is, in fact, very active in this state, almost to the level at which it is when a person is awake. Yet during this active stage in which most dreams occur, the movements of the rest of the body are completely stilled. To imagine this paralysis during dreams not occurring is a frightful image, since in many cases dreams are violent and active. When the neurotransmitters that control the movement of the body do not work properly the person develops REM sleep behavioral disorder (RBD).
Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep; they can be entertaining, fun, romantic, disturbing, frightening, and sometimes bizarre. Adults mostly concern about frightening dreams and how to avoid them. Nightmares and night terrors are known as the most prominent bad dreams, although nightmares and sleep terrors (night terrors) are more common among children, but adults have them as well. When adults wake up terrified in the middle of the night, they may think they are the only adult who suffer from bad dreams, but they are not. Night terrors and nightmares awaken people scared in the night, and can be caused by several factors and basic disorders. Nightmares in adults may be spontaneous or be triggered by thinking about a difficult issue, having a late-night snack, or an allergy.
According to the history, Sleep Paralysis was classified as nightmare, a term that evolved into our modern definition by Samuel Johnson. It was widely considered to be the work of the demons, which were thought to sit on the chest of the sleeper. Various forms of magic and spiritual possession were also advanced as causes. But Sleep Paralysis can occur in the state between REM sleep, where dreaming occurs, and waking up. During REM sleep, the brain paralyses the body in order to keep us away from carrying out our dream-actions that could harm ourselves somehow. At times, our brain does not put off these dreams or the paralysis that comes along with them, resulting in a potentially terrifying experience. Sleep paralysis had been linked to disorders such as migraines, anxiety disorders, and obstructive sleep apnea. But when linked to another disorder, sleep paralysis commonly occurs together with the neurological sleep disorder called Narcolepsy. David McCarty, a sleep researcher at Louisiana State Health University, explained that in sleep paralysis, two of the key REM sleep components are presen...
...ans after the implementation of imagery rehearsal (Harb et al., 2012). Veterans found it useful to “devise an alternate ending to the dream, using distancing techniques, and transforming weapons into harmless objects” (Harb et al., 2012, p.516). The study also concluded that individuals would experience superior results if they excluded violent details in the rescription of the nightmare, as those might become triggers of trauma related memories (Harb et al., 2012). MHNs need to inform patients about the effectiveness of exposure therapy and imagery rehearsal, which in turn, would minimize the distress experienced, and decrease PTSD symptom severity (Harb et al., 2012). Decreased distress may reduce insomnia and nightmares as well as, the risk of alcohol abuse and suicidal ideations in patients suffering from the distress, anxiety, and stress of PTSD symptoms.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a disorder that is characterized by failure to exhibit muscle paralysis or atonia during REM sleep. Along with lack of muscle atonia, patients with RBD display behaviors of “acting out” their dreams, which can be harmful to themselves or others around them (Gagnon, Postuma, Mazza & Montplaisir, 2006, p. 425). It has been reported that the dreams are usually very vivid nightmares or close to them and are usually violent, which are expressed through running, punching, kicking, and more injurious behavior (Paparrigopoulos, 2005, p. 294). In 1986 Schenck and his colleagues recognized RBD as a clinical disorder and then in 1990 it was included into the “International Classification of Sleep Disorders” (Gagnon et al., 2006, p. 425).
Arousal disorders are the most common type of parasomnia. These disorders include: confusional arousals, sleepwalking, sleep terrors and nightmares. Experts believe that each is related and share some symptoms. Essentially, they occur because a person is in a mixed state of being both asleep and awake, generally coming from the deepest stage of non-dreaming sleep. The individual is awake enough to act out complex behaviors, but asleep enough not to be aware of or remember them.
Night terrors usually happen just before the REM at slow-wave sleep phase, after about one and a half hour after falling asleep, and involve great horror or danger. These terrors can happen in several member of a family, there is a solid family and genetic link. Sleep terrors also can be made of some negative emotional events, which affect your mind greatly. Night terrors also often connected to anxiety and depressive disorders, which cause temporarily unresponsiveness, confusion, disorientation, amnesia, or dreamer may do some dangerous actions. In the worst case, these terrors has serious and even fatal effects. The dreamers try to escape from bed or to fight, which hurt dreamer consequently. These will affect the individual’s relationship with others as well.
How the amount of REM sleep you get can change. It’s the time of night where most likely you would be dreaming. People believe one reason as a child you have a higher amount of dreams as a kid because as a child you get more REM sleep. REM sleep is part of a cycle of how you sleep so say you were woken up in the middle of the night during REM sleep you might ruin that cycle. When we are sleeping and specifically in REM sleep our brains are reorganizing itself and it is also giving itself a deep clean. There are also other things that can affect how you sleep at night like sleep behavior disorder, basically during their dreams when they are supposed to be resting there body and dreaming should be a brain activity. People with the sleep behavior
Usually when you end up drifting off to sleep, you fall into a deep sleep and begin to experience a so called dream.” However, most children, and even some adults, experience some even more terrifying so called dreams. These dreams are called nightmares. Nightmares have been occurring in people’s sleep for hundreds of years. People have been interested in them for centuries and they have quite an interesting past to them.
Anxiety and stress have long been thought to be a primary cause of nightmares. According to The International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) traumatic life events such as major surgery, long term illness, grieving the loss of a loved one, suffering an injury or being involved in or witnessing a major accident can trigger bad dreams. But traumatic experiences are not the cause behind all nightmares. For many people, ordinary stress caused by job or financial anxiety, or major life changes such as moving or divorce, can also trigger disruptions in sleep and bad dreams. Because some nightmares are believed to be a subconscious release of emotions and inner turmoil, feelings of inadequacy, insecurities and fear may also be contributing causes for night terrors in adults and children. (I...
First, let examined the definition of dream according to Sigmund Freud “dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. Dreams are constructed like a neurotic symptom: they are compromises between the demands of a repressed impulse and the resistance of a censoring force in the ego” (Freud, 28). This simple means that all dreams represent the fulfilment of a wish by the dreamer. Dreams are the mind way of keeping an individual asleep and to digest and work out all that we have going on inside our brains, the negative, positive, fear and unclear thoughts and actions. This set the framework for dream work. Freud also stresses that even anxiety dreams and nightmares are expressions of unconscious desire. Freud further went on to say that, “the general function of dreaming is to fending off, by a kind of soothing action, external or internal stimuli which would tend to arose the sleeper, and thus of securing sleep against interpretation” (Freud, 28). With this, it shows that a dreamer can take apart his dream and analysis it, if he or she remembers, once conscious.
As the body sleeps, reality becomes replaced with the dream world, a fanciful place where the innermost being is found cowering like a creature vying to be freed. Some people have vivid dreams that are life-like; others cannot recall having dreamed. One concept is for sure, the dream world is one where the mind runs a free course. Images buried deep inside, thoughts avoided throughout the day, and unrealistic situations take hold. These images may turn into a peaceful dream of amazement and wonder, or they may take a frightening turn, dragging the mind into a state of horror and dread. The situations can become all too real, grasping at the outer edges of the mind, pushing the dream over the boundaries the body normally allows.