Nightmares: What Causes Them?

With frightening and vivid images that seem all too real, nightmares terrorize us in the dead of night, making our hearts pound with fear and our bodies drip with sweat. For kids, it might be terrifying images of monsters or ghosts, while it can be horrifying images of harmful events which can be real or imaginary. For those who have experienced traumatic events, nightmares force them to relive the tragic events they have experienced, such as a car accident, or memories of war, to name a few examples.

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“Occasional nightmares are a normal part of dreaming and can provide valuable insight into our psychological and spiritual lives,” Rubin Naiman, psychologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, writes in the paper “Dreamless: the silent epidemic of REM sleep loss.”

For others, frightening dreams are a chronic condition.

Trauma survivors — specifically those suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — are more likely to experience nightmares. In fact, while only 2.5 to 10 percent of adults experience nightmares, according to the Sleep Health Foundation, up to 90 percent of those with PTSD have reported “disturbing dreams with some degree of resemblance to the actual traumatic event,” according to a report co-authored by Anne Germain, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Sleep and Behavioral Neuroscience Center at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

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(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Source: neatorama

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