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Nightmares can disturb out night's rest and leave us too afraid to go back to sleep.  Why do we have these frightening dreams and what can we do about them?

Nightmares represent our innermost fears.  The monsters and other terrifying images that haunt these frightening dreams are thought to come from a universally shared mythology recognized by all cultures.  The word itself comes from Gaelic mythology - the night "mare" is the horse goddess Rhiannon, connected with dreams and the Moon deity.  She certainly was a nightmarish creature - accused of eathing her own son, Pryderi.

Physical cuases of Nightmares

Bad dreams can have physical causes as well as mental ones.  If your body comes under stress, due to a high temperature for example, it can give rise to hallucinations as you sleep.

Nightmares can even induce sleepwalking by increasing the flow of adrenaline and producing the "fight or flight" response in the sleeper.

Nightmares in Childhood

Nightmares occur commonly in childgood, as children struggle more than adults to deal with powerful emotions, such as rage.  During the night, children's vivid imaginations recreate these feelings as forceful dream images.

Dreams or Reality

Children have diffulcty coping with nightmares, because they have trouble differntiating between dreams and reality.  A child's mind has limited reasoning capacity, as it is still developing.  This affects their perception of the world and can cuase inner conflict.

If left unresolved, these childhood fears can cause very muddled thoughts and feelings that linger into adulthood.  At any time, an incident could trigger this old memory, reeling the psyche of the adult into a nightmare scenario.

To have a nightmare suggests that you have emotional fears that need to be confined.

Disarming Your Nightmares

A nightmare is an expression of extreme anguish that can originate from either a physiological or emotional cause.

Physiological disturbances within the body, or distressed emotional states churning around in the mind, can cause a frightening dream.  Those nightmares caused by physiological disturbances usually occur during the earlier part of your sleep.

Hormonal Causes

In women, hormonal causes fluctuations are thought to be responsible for the panic felt during sleep that produces palpitations, sweating, choking sensations and feelings of suffocation.  Hormonal changes upset the balance of the body's chemistry and in a dream this upheaval is encoded through disturbed scenes.  The severity of a nightmare is often sufficient to wake the sleeper, in a bid to escape from this night terror.

Unresolved Emotions

Some psychologists believe that people who have nightmares have not fully integrated or understood physical sensations in relation to real-life situations.  Teenagers often have intense dreams reflective of the emerging sexual drives they have difficulty translating when awake.

Recurrig nightmares can also be caused by unresolved emotional issues that are deeply entrenched in the sleeper's mind.  An entire dream can recur, which is identical each time or disguised using different dream symbols.  Its purpose is to get your attention.

Unlock The Message

If you can uncover the meaning of such a dream, your reward can be the process of healing - opening doors to your happiness that were previously "locked."  An important step in understanding a recurring dream is to establish when it began.  Then, once you get the message, it usually stops.

Terrifying dream imagery may be rooted in a physical or emotional cause.

Managing Your Nightmares

Nightmares can have a constructive purpose.  From these disturbing dreams you can learn:

* That anyone, at any time, could experience an intellectable trauma, which can resurface without warning.  These could be forgotton childhood traumas reawakening in adulthood.

* That a nightmare's imagery can help you to analyze events that have disturbed you (no matter how long ago) in a bid to integrate the soul.

Your nightmares may point the way toward resolving a difficult situation from your past.

Defeat Night Terrors?

T here are methods you can use to confront your nightmares.  Look at the symbols in your dream and try to examin what, if any, are linked with a childhood situation that caused terror, anguish or just a sense of helplessness.

Your dream could also be caused by a sense of guilt or disgust of being in a situation in which you did not want to participate.  Ask yourself, were you physically, mentally or emotionally terrorized?

Seek professional counseling or therapy to guide and help you to understand the buried causes of your nightmares.

Be Fun In Light & Love -

Oshuyn