Are we affected by nightmares?
Last night I had a bad dream that I was being chased by someone with a gun. I immediately woke up from this dream before anything bad could happen.
This left me with two questions.
a) Why do people tend to wake up when having a nightmare and b) do nightmares have long lasting effects on the minds of those people having them.
One explanation why we wake up in the middle of the nightmare maybe due to an adrenalin rush. The subconscious mind can’t tell the difference from a real event and a vividly imagined one,. I’m sure many of you will have had dreams of one sort or another and they felt at the time as if they were real. Adrenalin is released when we are in a “fight or flight” situation. Among other things, we become more alert.
As far as whether nightmares have long lasting effect, I’m reminded of some recent research http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/173592.php which seems to indicate that if we experience a traumatic experience and then manage to change the perception shortly afterwards then the anxiety caused by the event will be lessened or removed. So perhaps when we wake up from a nightmare and then reassure ourselves “It’s only a bad dream” the mind no longer feels traumatised by the events that took place in the nightmare.
Tags: dreams, hypnotherapy, nightmares
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