Many times we woke up in the morning or in the middle of the night with a very bad sensation, from sadness to overwhelming or feelings of unreality. What happened? You wonder at that time. You have simply had a nightmare, a bad dream that makes you live your worst fears in the worst possible ways.
These terrifying dreams can manifest in thousands of ways, depending on many factors such as your darkest fears or what you do not even dare to imagine. But if you don’t even think about it during the day, it is when night falls when they can manifest.
What to do not have nightmares? Can they really be avoided or should we always have them? Javier Esteban, dream therapist and psychologist, tells us why these terrible dreams are produced as well as the influence of stress or different psychological problems in them. Don’t lose detail!
More than once you will have wondered why you have nightmares some days when you wake up horrified, even why there are moments of your life in which the same nightmares are repeated again and again. The truth is that the exact reasons are not known, however there are certain things or activities that can cause them more than others, such as being subject to high stress.
Other activities that can produce bad dreams range from dinner a lot or certain foods to see disturbing programs on television before bedtime, not to mention having a discussion with your partner or the multiple concerns you have in your head before putting yourself in bed. In short, the nightmare has an adaptation function to the circumstances and everything will depend on the life you lead or the moment you are so that your subconscious makes you have pleasant dreams or the most terrifying.
Although the nightmares make us go wrong, they are not as harmful as we think … quite the opposite! Moreover, thanks to these dreams we can know in what circumstances we are or how we face life right now. They are small clues or notices that our subconscious gives us to meet us much more.
To understand it better, Javier Esteban gives us a clear example of a patient who always has the same type of nightmares: there is a task, such as collecting the house, making occupies or doing an exam and, then, this dream ends in tragedy. Suspend the exam, he forgot the message … What happens? After doing several studies or treatments, such as sleep induction, the true reason for this recurrent nightmare could be discovered. Apparently, the psychologist warned that the person had a problem that came since a child, because at home he had always received the same mandate: “You do not vouchers.” This was so rooted in his subconscious that he seemed almost impossible to detach himself from him.
The most hidden things, the disorders we have since our childhood, the most traumatic situations we live, are not manifested in the day. During the morning and afternoon we have no problem to cope with all these things as we can. But when the night arrives, rational defenses relax and nightmares appear.
Therefore, we could say that nightmares should not be avoided at all costs. Moreover, they should be taken as a sample of what our subconscious means to us and that, for the day, it seems impossible to realize it. What disturbs you? Thanks to dreams we can discover everything that we can even deny ourselves, everything that is tormenting us without hardly realizing. We can know what is the reason for our suffering and, from there, change our life so as not to have to suffer the same nightmares that you like so little.
A person with anxiety is wrong throughout the day. This psychological problem can manifest in many physical ways, but practically in all cases there are obsessive thoughts, fears that did not exist, tension, pessimism … and a very long etcetera. And all this situation also moves at night, because you sleep much worse, you can have insomnia problems and, of course, nightmares. There are even those who say that people with anxiety have such agitated dreams that they can remember them better and in a more clear way.
As we said before, many times we can be more influenced by stress or anxiety practically without realizing it. Our subconscious then warns us through the nightmares that something is happening in our thoughts or in our brain that is not letting us rest as well as we did before.
As Javier Esteban says, each one dreams what it is. Dreams bring us nothing more and nothing less than to the here and now. For example, Freud said that dreams are the largest or largest street we have to access the unconscious and to meet. Others say not only that, they are also a direct way to understand how our life is present. It is then that we learn the true utility of dreams: realize things. It doesn’t matter so much what it means but what the dream means for you in your life, and how your real life can affect your present.
Actually, there are those who say that nightmares are an adaptation mechanism that serves to release stress or anxiety that we accumulate during the day. Everything that disturbs us during the day has its way of “getting out” to express yourself through bad dreams every night, when we are spending it worse.
And you, do you usually have nightmares? Do you know what you can learn from your own dreams? Tell us!
You can read more articles similar to what to do not have nightmares: can they be avoided?, In the category of meaning of dreams in Diario Female.