Nightmares: what they are and why they appear (causes)
We spend a good part of our lives sleeping, which is not surprising considering the large amount of energy that we must replace to face the day to day. However, there are times when the sleep stage, which we usually associate with calm and well-being, becomes a hell that we desperately try to get out of.
And is that what we know as nightmares has come to exert such a strong impact on humanity that it has long ceased to be a simple unpleasant experience that we experience individually to become a source of all kinds of mythologies or, directly, the definition of what we want to flee from . In fact, we use the word "nightmare" to refer to any highly unpleasant or traumatic experience, equating the real to what only happened in our head.
However… What are nightmares and what produces them? Let's see it
- Related article: "What are the dreams for?"
What are nightmares?
Nightmares are a state of anxiety and agitation that appears at the moment of dreaming , often associated with images and sensations that cause fear, sadness or any other negative emotion, in such an intense way that the interruption of sleep is generated.
So, it is considered that a bad dream does not become a nightmare if not makes us wake up or we reach a state of consciousness between sleep and wakefulness .
This sudden break with sleep occurs easily, since the REM phase, which is what happens while we sleep and dream (that is, when we are at the same time in a state of consciousness directed towards the interior, not towards the exterior), it is the stage of the dream that most resembles the wakefulness attending to the activation patterns of the neurons in that moment. A small "push" can take us back to the real world.
- Related article: "The 5 phases of sleep: from slow waves to REM"
Why does a nightmare appear?
Like everything that surrounds the study of dreams, there is little that is known with certainty about the causes of nightmares. But there are several things on which there is consensus.
The first thing to know is that it is very unlikely that there is a single cause that explains the existence of nightmares. This, which is applicable to practically any psychological process, in the case of nightmares is reflected in the effect that various elements have on the frequency of appearance of these unpleasant experiences. For example, leading a busy lifestyle and stress makes them appear more frequently , and alcohol addiction has a similar effect, making what we dream tend to be more unpleasant and anxious.
On the other hand, there is another sure thing about nightmares: Sigmund Freud was wrong about his origin . For the father of psychoanalysis, the nightmare is what happens when a part of the unconscious emerges into the state of sleep without being able to repress its contents, that for which we have been forced to keep sealed those ideas, memories or beliefs. The state of anxiety caused by the fact of starting to see what we want to continue ignoring causes us to be driven to awaken to make this type of disclosures stop.
Why do we know that this does not happen? Among other things, because the theories on which Sigmund Freud relied to provide this explanation to the phenomenon are not valid, since they are based on speculations on case studies. There are no parts of our mind that try to hide certain contents and prevent them from emerging into consciousness, there are simply contents that at a certain moment are not relevant enough to make our attention reach them.
- Maybe you're interested: "Nightmares and night terrors: differences and similarities"
They are useful?
Keeping in mind that Freudian ideas about nightmares do not serve to understand the nature of this kind of experiences ... What are nightmares for? Some theories suggest that nightmares have no use, and are a consequence of evolution that has not been promoted by natural selection as an advantageous feature; they are simply there, and they are harmless enough so that the genes that make them possible do not disappear with the passage of generations.
Other theories, however, if they attribute a utility to nightmares. Specifically, they point out that your presence on a day-to-day basis can make us prepare for stressful events , maintaining a certain state of anxiety that will be useful in the short term to overcome specific obstacles, and that appear when there is something in our forecasts that concerns us.In this way, the nightmare would be a kind of mental training to get into alertness more easily and, therefore, react quickly.
However, in some cases the possible usefulness of nightmares would not compensate for the damage they produce, so we went into a vicious circle of stress and anxiety that has a negative impact on our health . In any case, most people are not significantly affected by the appearance of nightmares, since they do not usually occur very often and, although in many cases what is seen in them is very disturbing, not it is experienced with the same rawness that would be experienced if it were real.
