Surely everyone can remember a dream that terrified and numb you. From time to time such nightmares visit our consciousness. They relieve stress and help the nervous system prepare a person for real risks while awake. But there are people who have nightmares on a regular basis. Terrible dreams are exhausting and can cause sudden injury. Facebook even has a support group that brings together people suffering from regular nightmares. What to do if sleep does not bring joy and rest – Izvestia sorted it out.
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Horror of the night
“Every night is kind of crazy, which is difficult to cope with. I recently broke several ribs because I jumped off the damn balcony. I hate this. Sleep does not bring me rest ”;
“I often wake up at night and ‘see’ something falling on me from the ceiling. It can be spiders, snakes, rope, even the ceiling itself! ”;
“I always see the same black demon. Many years have passed … so I am no longer afraid. “
Such descriptions are given by people suffering from regular nightmares. As you know, terrible dreams visit us in the third phase of sleep. This is a deep, dreamless sleep that occurs 30-60 minutes after a person falls asleep. The cycles follow each other throughout the night. It is known that N3 phase recurs more frequently in children, which is why nightmares usually occur in adolescence. However, scientists estimate that 2% of the adult population also suffer from regular nightmares.
One of the causes of nightmares in adults is sleep deprivation. When the body is overworked, it sinks faster into the N3 restorative stage and stays there longer.
However, nightmares can have an important protective function.… A 2020 study on this topic was published by neurophysiologists at the University of Geneva. According to threat modeling theory, nightmares allow the nervous system to train behavioral responses by simulating dangerous situations. In other words, nightmares to be removed so that the person is ready for threats while awake.
Scary to sleep
It happens that nightmares are accompanied by intense panic attacks. A person can scream, suffocate, rush while sleeping.… Sometimes such actions frighten the sufferer more than a nightmare.
“Sometimes I find myself screaming horribly in the middle of the night, and I find it hard to believe that I can scream so loudly. The next morning I have a sore throat … I can’t scream like that even in the daytime if I try, ”shares a user named Joshua.
However, screaming is a relatively harmless part of a nightmare. It is much more frightening when the sleeper suddenly begins to behave as if awake. A person can talk, laugh, cry while sleeping, rearrange things on the nightstand, put on and take off shoes.
Doctors call this behavior parasomnia. It is defined as a disorder that causes unusual behavior during sleep. Usually the somnambulist walks, eats or talks with open eyes, but without realizing what is happening.
In the absence of control, parasomnia can be very traumatic. On the social network, a girl under the nickname Jen retells the story in horror: “Yesterday my mother called me. She was taken to the hospital after a nightmare caused her to jump out of bed and hit the wall. Now there are 7 surgical staples in her head! “
“A couple of hours when I’m not afraid”
In an effort to unite people with nightmares, a thematic support group has emerged on Facebook. It has over 500 participants from all over the world. The group provides a safe space for nightmare sufferers – users search for matches in symptoms, share medical prescriptions, and simply blow off steam.
“I am very annoyed by my nightmares. Yesterday I had a dream in which I was suffocating from a heap of coins that got into my throat. That evening I had another nightmare – I was sure that I was suffocating from broken glass, which was once a statuette of a ballerina. Why don’t I just have a normal choking dream associated with food ??? Now I am awake and afraid to fall asleep again, ”writes Mindy.
In the morning, the group members are usually broken and in a bad mood. Some feel ashamed and embarrassed that their screams have lifted the whole house to its feet.
The depressed state affects literally everything.
“I had to quit my job. My nightmares were so terrible that they affected my ability to handle simple tasks, ”says Holly.
“There are only a few hours a day when I’m not afraid,” comments Barbara below.
Users report that nightmares become more frequent during periods of high stress. Loss of a loved one, overwork, neurotic disorders affect the plot of dreams.
Heavy blanket and nice music
One of the main topics in the group is prevention and treatment. Community members can take a survey: “What medications do you take for nightmares?” According to the current result, the majority do not struggle with frightening dreams (216 votes), the rest drink clonazepam (26), prazosin (23), melatonin (17) and practice self-medication (11).
For a neurologist, the choice of such drugs does not seem entirely inappropriate.
– Clonazepam – antiepileptic drug, reduces convulsions, anxiety. Its side effect is drowsiness, which is why patients suffering from nightmares turn to it. But you need to be careful – the medicine is addictive, says neurologist Anna Moskalenko. – Melatonin, rather, is needed to restore the circadian rhythm, that is, sleep-wakefulness. In moderate consumption, it is harmless, non-addictive. Prazosin is commonly used for urination disorders, but its side effect is drowsiness. Still, more often for sleep problems, we will prescribe antidepressants. And for good, in this case, cognitive-behavioral therapy is needed.
If drugs don’t work, users try to find comfort in specific rituals. For example, someone turns on a series about nature at night, others fall asleep to the music of Claude Debussy. Still others cover themselves with a weighted blanket and notice that nightmares are less likely to appear if they roll over on their backs.
A girl named Amber observes another oddity. She has nightmares when she sleeps at home with her young people:
“I usually wake up in a panic when I ‘see’ a shadow-like person sitting on my side of the bed. Last night, the shadow man stood next to me, rubbing his hand … I could not move and was terrified! This moment seemed like an eternity to me, I woke up in a panic. My boyfriend tried to calm me down, I felt that I could not catch my breath, I experienced pure horror … “.
Nightmares scare not only the band members, but also their relatives. The stress is ultimately felt by the whole family. Some admit that they are afraid to harm their soulmates, so they sleep separately.… “I have attacked people in the same bed with me in the past,” writes Kim. “Anything can happen in this state.”