Go! Go! Go as fast as you can! Run he's catching up to you! He has a knife in one hand and a hook in the other! My friend Terry yelled from the distance. That moment he pulled his bloody knife up and showed me his hook. I jumped up in fear from this horrible scary dream.
As humans we have emotions and feelings which can sometimes cause us to have dreams. Sometimes we don't always remember our dreams which are perfectly normal but these emotions and feelings can also cause us to have nightmares. When my friend Terry was telling me to run I felt helpless. I felt defeated because I couldn't run any faster, I was unable to fight back. I felt trapped.
A nightmare is not any ordinary dream its a special type of dream. It's an unpleasant dream, one that causes a strong emotional response from the mind usually from fear but also from despair, anxiety and being upset. This dream is filled with terror and can contain situations of discomfort which is something we usually something cannot explain. We often wake in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a small period of time.
Time for the big question. Why do we experience nightmares? We experience nightmares because we have emotions and we have feelings. We may have watched a scary television show (for me the Walking Dead did it), we may have eaten some tasty ice cream and cookies, or we are simply holding in some negative unhealthy thoughts. Nightmares can have physical causes such as sleeping in an uncomfortable and a very awkward position or an unknown place, having a cold, or psychological causes such as stress, anxiety, and could be a side effect of various drugs. Eating before going to sleep, can trigger an increase in the body's metabolism and brain activity, and is a potential stimulus for nightmares. Recurrent nightmares may require medical help, as they can interfere with sleeping patterns and cause insomnia.
In my psychology class my professor told me that nightmares often occurs in the last third of the night when REM sleep is the strongest. Sleep is divided into four stages: stage 1 is sleep onset, stage two is a light sleep and stages 3 and 4 result in a deep sleep. REM sleep occurs every 90 minutes during the night and is associated with high brain activity, rapid eye movements and inhibited voluntary motor activity. How can we avoid nightmares? The truth is, we can not. Nightmares are natural. However, we can control how many nightmares we have by monitoring what we watch before bed, the things we eat and drink, and our emotions towards others.
