Dreams and Nightmares: Where Do They Come From?

Dreaming is yet another state of consciousness. A dream is simply an unfolding episode of mental images that involve characters and events. Dreams usually tend to occur during REM sleep but can occur during NREM sleep as well. We dream on a variety of topics, subjects, and individuals. No dream can be exactly interpreted or defined, therefore people have always been fascinated with what, why, and how we dream. An unpleasant and almost terrifying type of dream is a nightmare. This is a very vivid, almost real

Dreams are something that occur within our mind as we sleep. They play a crucial role in the mood we carry out through the day or the thoughts that we may have, but have you ever stopped to think about how much dreams truly affect you? As of now, our theories of dreams are very different than the first two theories. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, had a theory that "centered around the notion of repressed longing, the idea that dreaming allows us to sort through unresolved, repressed wishing." Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who had a theory that “dreams were a way of communicating and acquainting yourself with the unconscious.” There are many different theories that describe dreams on all sides of the spectrum. They include wish fulfillment, encoding short-term memories into long-term storage, garbage collection, and solidifying what we've learned. Other theories take more imaginative routes of explanation including that of the

Have you ever been terrified to fall asleep at night? Nightmares are frightful dreams in which the dreamer can feel threatened, severe anxiety, and deep distress. Emily Bowen has been experiencing these horrid dreams for the past week. These nightmares can send you into a movie like trance in which you are the star.

Up to 90% of people dream when they fall asleep not only do they dream but also have nightmares. Not all nightmares will wake a person up or even be remembered but if they are remembered it usually strikes fear and worry in the dreamers mind. Nightmares and the level of fear that they possess all depends on the person who is having them because not everyone’s fears are the same thing or are to the same extent. Nevertheless sleep is split into four different stages, stage one being sleep onset, stage 2 light sleep, stage 3 and 4 deep sleep which can also be known as the REM (non-rapid eye movement) stage which is connected to dreaming. There are different aspects within a nightmare such as how nightmares come to be and who they effect.

Dreams come in all shapes and forms. Every dream experience falls into one of the following categories: Prophetic Dreams, Release Dreams, Wish Dreams, Informative and Problem solving dreams, and Astral Visits. So many people take dreams for granted or think they do not mean anything, but they do. Dreams are incredible when you learn what they are, mean and why we dream at all.

The hypothesis of the study is that participants who have at least one nightmare per week will have more negative emotions in their dreams than the ones who have nightmares less than once a month; also, that the nightmare sufferers will have more stress in the morning and evening than the non-nightmare sufferers. An experimental study was performed using participants from a larger Canadian dream study. They selected sixty participants based on the criteria that they either had nightmares at least once a week, or they had nightmares less than once a month. The participants’ ages ranged from 13 to 58. The participants were split into two

Dreams are very unique and many people have theorized about what a dream 's meaning or purpose is, and what affects them. In most present day studies, more vivid dreams have been linked to the stage of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. REM dreams are emotional, bizarre, and sometimes so vivid we may confuse them with reality. Most commonly, a dream’s story line incorporates traces of previous day’s experiences and preoccupations. Unless a person is awakened during REM stage of sleep or the dream is exceedingly vivid or intense, most people don’t remember anything about their dreams during REM sleep. This is likely due to the fact that during REM sleep, our brain essentially turns off the ability to encode,or create, new memories.

What actually causes nightmares is unknown. However, being too tired, not getting enough sleep, having an irregular routine for sleep, and having stress or anxiety may all increase the risk of having nightmares.

Everyone in the world has had at least one dream in their lifetime. Most people don’t think much about the dreams they have, unless they are recurring. Most people today wake up from a dream or nightmare saying, “thank heaven that was a dream,” or “too bad that was just a dream.” Many times these dreams or nightmares have more meaning than we think.

The pure excitement of dreams and even more concentrated terror of nightmares is a gamble that everyone has taken. Whether you like it or not the entire population of people on this earth require sleep in order to fuel themselves in their lives. Dreams no matter how vivid are still just dreams, though, right? Some dreams may be better however this is susceptible to perspective. In other words, maybe you like a scary dream or that violent dream that the average person wouldn't enjoy. Dreams, however, can be so vivid they can appear to transcend the barrier we define as reality and fiction, and these make those kinds of dreams truly terrifying.

However, the true exact meaning of dreaming hasn 't been proven, there has been new ideas, different methods to advances to both a psychological, science understanding of when it began and how it functions. What some of the studies have concluded is that dreams are a certain phase of the brain 's activities, that the mind experiences while you are sleep; sounds, pictures, ideas, and feelings. Both psychologists and scientist have theorized that dreaming is made up of the person’s mind, that ranges from being rare, normal, scary, and ordinary.

As defined in the article “Intensified daydreams and nap dreams in frequent nightmare sufferers”, a nightmare is a terrifying dream that occurs in the REM sleep stage and wakes up the person experiencing the dream. The two types of nightmares that occur are idiopathic and frequent. Idiopathic nightmares only occur occasionally and have no known cause as to why people experience them. Although the cause is unknown, idiopathic nightmares seem to respond to ongoing stress and related concerns. The second type, a frequent nightmare, can occur once a week or more, and is linked with distress and bad psychological health. According to the article, people who experience frequent nightmares are more susceptible to suffer from anxiety and depression

Nightmares are unwanted events or experiences that occur while a person is sleeping or falling asleep. If a person suffers from nightmares, it can cause them to not want to go to sleep resulting in lack of rest which only causes more intense nightmares. Nightmares are usually extremely visual and realistic and tend to get more and more disturbing as they go along. These dreams tend to happen during the REM sleep period. Many people tend to confuse a nightmare with a bad dream. A nightmare is so intense and frightening that it wakes a person up. If a person has a disturbing dream that does not wake them up, then it is simply just a bad dream. Nightmares usually focus on anxieties, fears, terror, anger, sadness, embarrassment, and many real life situations. Most nightmares may just be a normal reaction to stress. Some

Dreams are “hallucinations of the sleeping mind” (Loftus & Ketcham). Dreams can be very vivid, loud, and even emotional. This is why it is easy to confuse them with reality. Dreams are kind of like taking all of a person’s wishes and emotions and putting them all in a little “shadow world” (Bynum) when they go to sleep at night. “What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.” (Freud). A person may be experiencing an emotion or wishing for something without even realizing it at all. Dreams can sometimes show a person how they are truly feeling without even their own awareness of these feelings or wishes. A lot of a person’s reality and emotions are used in their dreams, however, this is not always the case. Dreams can also be extremely bizarre, confusing, and even repetitive. This is where the interpretation of dreams comes into action. Many people find it hard to believe that when they have a dream over and over again that it does not mean anything. These types of dreams are called recurring dreams. Recurring dreams happen

Nightmares are dreams that are scary or disturbing. They cause anxiety and fear, even after you wake up. People of all ages have nightmares, but they are more common in children. Nightmares usually begin before age 10, and girls are more likely to be troubled by them. Although such dreams are part of normal human experience, for some they can be a recurrent and extremely troubling problem. This is particularly so for young children but they can be disruptive to the whole family. Explanation and reassurance are often helpful particularly for parents who can then in turn be more reassuring to the affected child.