Nightmares - Causes, Meaning, Topics and Help

The Apltraum - an alarm siren of the subconscious
A nightmare is an anxiety - often so strong that we wake up to it. The feeling of a nightmare often remains awake for a few minutes, or even marks the day. Dreams can be so bad that people are afraid to fall asleep if they experience them regularly. Besides fear, disgust, grief, and anger are feelings that trigger and involve nightmares.

contents

• When do nightmares occur?
• Demons, the unconscious and the environment
• The shadow
• The monsters of our psyche
• distress
• Nightmares as warning rooms
• distress
• Nightmare disorder
• Typical nightmares
• Come too late
• To be paralyzed
• To be followed
• Death and loss
• Fall
• Mental causes for anxiety dreams
• traumatization
• Nightmares due to stress
• substances
• Cause biology
• Cause medication
• Personal disposition
• Sleep complaints
• dream therapy
• From the victim to the director

When do nightmares occur?

Nightmares (alternative spelling: "nightmares") occur especially at the end of the sleep phase, especially in the Rapid Eye Movement Period. They are therefore particularly vivid and remain in the memory - often down to the last detail.

Nightmares are often so violent that we wake up to it. (Image: lassedesignen / fotolia.com)

Demons, the unconscious and the environment

Albums were in the mythology of the North, the dark siblings of the elves. People believed that such beings sat down on the breasts of the sleeper at night, triggering frightening dreams.

From psychology we know that demons and evil spirits are mostly outsourced to "guilty" for unconscious parts of the personality. However, this is not always the case: Nightmares are common among children and adults alike, from humans and animals, from severe injuries and natural disasters, from falling to the bottomless, from hopeless escapes, from the death of loved ones, or from one's death.

In humans, individual experiences play a much stronger role than in the dreams of animals, and yet in the typical nightmares of the Ark, it is not just personal aspects of their own.

Rather, the themes of the nightmares reflect real dangers that were everyday occurrences for our ancestors, especially children. Wild animals could eat children, strangers abduct them, there were real situations in which people had to flee, and natural disasters, such as a recent hurricane in Texas or forest fires in Greece, are still a threat to naked life today.

The shadow

Carl Gustav Jung called the aspects of our unconscious that we dislike, as shadows, and he considered the themes of our own shadow the core of nightmares. According to this, the nightmare does not tell of external dangers, but of the abysses of the psyche.

These, however, must, according to Jung, necessarily be drawn into the consciousness by the unconscious in order to process them there. This shadow is, according to Jung, the guide for the direction in which a personality matures, or stagnates and ultimately dies. Not external causes, but the dreamer himself would be the cause of the nightmare.

In any case, when interpreting a nightmare, we need to pay close attention to whether its own shadow or real threats play a role. A first clue is our own perception during the dream, also the perception of our own dream.

A dark, mysterious forest can be the symbol of an unexplored world that lies ahead and has many new discoveries. (Image: icephotography / fotolia.com)

Roughly speaking, if a teenager keeps dreaming that he wants to go into a forest, but there is a tiger in front of it blocking the way, today we can rule out that it is a real forest and a real tiger.

Rather, our unconscious operates with images that in our evolution called actual external dangers, like a big cat, but implements them symbolically. So the tiger does not stand for a tiger, but for a symbolic barrier on the way into the forest. The forest, in turn, does not stand for a real forest, but is a symbol of an unexplored world that lies ahead. There is probably a lot to discover in this world, and he expects things that we do not know.

Especially with a teenager, two main topics can be filtered out here: curiosity and fear. The dreaming sees the forest and wants to get in, but the fear of the tiger is stronger, as in a teenager who leaves his childhood, but is afraid to explore the big wide world and the adult.

The tiger could symbolize various obstacles: the parents, who do not want their child to go on a hike, but also the own inhibitions of the adolescent, his fear of the unknown, his fear of change. In rare cases, these are objective obstacles: is the forest perhaps the university, into which the young person can not yet, because his NC does not correspond to his desired subject?

With such objective obstacles, the dream analysis must capture the subjective sensation and the feelings of dreaming. Does the dreamer fear to pass the tiger and does not dare to be near it? Then the topic is probably his own fear: he dares, in the example mentioned, not to ask at the university, the possibilities for him to enroll in his dream subject.

But if he dares, and the tiger attacks every time he approaches, and the dreamer's mood is more angry than anxious, then he might face actual restrictions to get closer to his goal.

Does the forest behind the tiger shine in the most beautiful colors or does it exude a threatening atmosphere? In the second case, the tiger is probably part of fears that the dreaming associates with the unknown experience. In the first case, "the tiger" lies between where the dreaming wants to go and the one he longs for.

The monsters of our psyche

In nightmares, all monsters of the horror movie appear: werewolves, vampires, cannibals or serial killers. We are paralyzed, or we run away from them. They rape or kill us.

The core of nightmares is not the monsters, but the feeling of being at the mercy of them. We experience extreme anxiety and / or fainting and this causes us to wake up. Repeat the same or similar dreams, and increases the fear, then we should definitely visit a therapist.

Whether vampires, werewolves or psychopathic serial killers: in nightmares, the most diverse horror film characters appear. (Image: VRD / fotolia.com)

distress

Nightmares are not just normal but vital. In particular, those who deal with situations that might be real probably evolved as evolutionary training.

In short, our ancestors dreamed of running away from wild animals, hiding from them, or calling for help when strangers crept into the camp to act in an emergency. Even when they woke up sweaty, such dreams were not psychologically unhealthy, but led to heightened vigilance that could save their lives.

Nightmares as warning rooms

In this form nightmares can be warning rooms. You can point out that we weigh ourselves in false security or that we take risks more seriously than before. There are examples of people who quit smoking after dreaming about lung cancer. The dream illustrates a real danger that the smoker has unconsciously repressed.

Some nightmares even lead to concrete actions, such a dream in which a family man dreamed of a fatal car accident, in which he survived, but his children died. The dream did not let him go, and he brought his car to the workshop before a planned vacation in Italy. There it turned out that urgently the brakes had to be renewed.

Our ancestors saw such nightmares as divine warnings and many cultures knew specialists to interpret these "hints of the gods". These are not supernatural inspirations of external forces, but hints of the unconscious, but the character of the interpretations remains the same.

In his unconscious, the father of the family had saved his fear for his children on the one hand and, on the other hand, that he urgently needed to check his car. Maybe a year before, a mechanic had told him he needed to have his brakes checked soon, or he'd had trouble with the brakes already. The dream made him now drastically aware of the possible consequences of negligence. Due to his irresponsibility he would have caused the death of his children in case of a case and could never forgive this. Such nightmares are a hard kick in the butt, but extremely meaningful.

distress

So we all have nightmares, and that's no problem. On the other hand, they become a problem if those affected suffer greatly. We notice that the tormenting dreams and their topics also terrify us during the day, or we are afraid to fall asleep.

Partly the nightmares are so bad that those affected are afraid to fall asleep. (Image: Focus Pocus LTD / fotolia.com)

Nightmare disorder

In nightmares, which take place several times a week, psychologists speak of an anxiety disorder - and this is often associated with another anxiety disorder: people with fear of spiders (spider phobia), for example, have nightmares in which spiders play a role. People with a general anxiety disorder do not come to sleep in their sleep, but flee at night, are paralyzed in the dream, are injured in a dream, etc., while these anxieties during the day ensure that they can hardly leave their homes.

Typical nightmares

As individual as the individual nightmares are, so are the most common scenarios. The five most common nightmare topics are: I fall, I am persecuted, I feel paralyzed, a person close to me dies or disappears.

The dreams are very different even for the same person, but the same person keeps coming up with the same elements, only the context and the sequence change.

It's no coincidence that these five topics keep coming back, because it's the basic situations that make adults afraid, in multiple contexts.

Come too late

To be late in a dream can mean, for example, that a person fears that he did not experience life in his finite life when the time was right: a thirty-year-old who never took off his parents and becomes bitterly aware of it too late for a wild WG life, a young woman who did not dare to reveal her feelings to the man of her heart and watch as he married another.

Also, a specific latecoming can trigger the dream: Our pen pal from America is in the city, and I have forgotten the meeting, in my company is a better vacancy free, for which I would be the right, and last minute, when I apply wants to send, puts out the Internet.

Or it is a general "shadow" of our personality. We are reminded that we are notoriously late because we do not care about the things necessary to organize a fulfilling life. We are delayed in all necessary activities and therefore do not develop further.

In terms of depth psychology, repeated nightmares, being late can point to a general passivity, to regression and an immature personality. Here, however, it depends on the context. Even people who have unattainable goals and are driven by perfectionism to achieve them may suffer from nightmares about being late.

Here, the shadow is not that they actually do not concern in life, and if, then too late, but that they are constantly under pressure to miss anything. You see a documentary about Tibet and are tormenting because you have not become a travel reporter? They feel guilty because they stayed at the amateur level while photographing. That's how they feel about everything. You always see a Hollywood actor, a prime minister, or a pop star who "has gotten ahead" of themselves.

Their problem is not that they are late, but that they do not value who they are and what they themselves have achieved in life. The dream work is about giving that feeling back.

To be paralyzed

The paralysis dreams also represent situations that we are constantly exposed to. It's rarely about paraplegia, but it's about things that are constantly happening in the world that we can not control. The greater our dependence on others, the more we are "paralyzed".

Consequently, paralysis dreams should occur especially for people who live in heavy dependence. On the other hand, as with all dreams and our unconscious in general, what matters is not the objective situation, but the subjective feeling.

In people who are particularly self-confident and carry their independence, but suffer every night from paralysis dreams, the shadow character of the dream becomes obvious. It always depends on the overall setting of the dream. For example, it may be the biggest fear of such people to be unable to act independently. Their vehemently demonstrated independence can even serve to compensate for this fear.

If we are persecuted in a dream, this can mean, in the figurative sense, for example, an unexplained relationship or negative experiences in childhood. (Image: lassedesignen / fotolia.com)

To be followed

Pursuit dreams are also complex. On the one hand, they have a concrete component: to be persecuted by wild animals or people who want to harm us is an equally biological and social experience.

Added to this are the transferred meaning of persecution: unpleasant experiences of childhood haunt us, even if we have long since built up a life structure that has nothing to do with it; unresolved relationships haunt us; the tax office is following us; People are following us with our demands.

A persecution dream then becomes a nightmare when we are the victim and we stay and see no perspective to flee. Dreams in which we turn around, confront or defeat the persecutor, or run away from him, are not nightmares.

The aim of a therapy is to work on the dream in such a way that we recognize, tackle and eliminate the fears expressed in the persecutor.

Death and loss

If we lose loved ones in a dream, then this is also a primeval human experience. We all have to say goodbye because our grandparents and parents are dying. But dying also has a figurative meaning in the dream: Our childhood friends "die" as we grow apart, our ex-partners "die" if they no longer exist in our lives; Wishes die, ideas die, career ideas die when the reality of life evolves differently.

In the dream, death almost always has a symbolic meaning, and the exact event is essential for the interpretation. Is our partner dying? Can it be that our feelings die for them, and we do not want to accept this? Are our children dying? Could it be that we have not contacted each other for months, that we never listened to them? That they grow up and build their own lives? Is an old friend dying? Have we perhaps developed further so that we have nothing more to say to each other? Do I kill someone in a dream? Am I mad at this person? Or is it my mother, my father? Then killing can mean removing myself from attachment to take my life into my own hands.

Nightmares in which close people die can also be warning rooms. A mother who dreams that her children are drowning may have real fears that her children are not up to the demands of the environment, drown in "alcohol", etc.

If the dream of the death of the partner, can, for example, extinguished feelings behind it. (Image: mario_vender / fotolia.com)

Again, these may be their own fears, which have no anchor in reality, so that they can not let go of their problem. Or, they may be real dangers in which the children are.

The mother may be afraid of not living up to her parents' ideal, or the dream expresses hidden tensions between mother and child.
Typical is the dream of a mother suffering from severe depression that alternated with manic phases. In her manic episodes, she not only worked on countless projects, but also arranged the house where she lived with her children to be "perfect", and what "perfect" she chose.

She had nightmares almost every night when her 18- and 19-year-old children were killed in a car accident. A few months later, the daughter moved out first and then the son. At first she fell into a black hole, did not want to live anymore, tore pictures from the walls and blamed her kids for what she had done.

Her son wrote her a letter that she would never have listened to him. She plunged into various projects again. So what did the dream say? Unknowingly, she sensed that her children would turn away from her, collapsing the "perfection" she kept building to contain her own fear of losing control - a helpless endeavor.

Her unconscious warned her that her children would go away if she did not respond to their needs. She did not accept this warning.
If real people in our environment die again and again in the dream, but are there in real life, then this indicates that the dreaming has strong fear of loss. He feels helpless without the support of others.

It is important to strengthen the self-understanding and to work through the natural process of death in a therapy. We can not prevent relationships from ending, friendships and people dying, but we can learn to handle them.

Fall

Dreams of falling almost always have a symbolic meaning. Anyone who has climbed a certain point in life, that is, the mountain peak of his goals closer, can always fall. Here it is necessary to look at the details: If I fall in the dream in the bottomless or I fall in the direction of a hard ground, where I threaten to shatter?

Frequently, people report that they have fallen or fallen in a dream from a great height. (Image: ilcianotico / fotolia.com)

Mental causes for anxiety dreams

Nightmares have on the one hand a phylogenetic basis, on the other hand our own experience plays into it. Often we know very well what the dream expresses, and we are awake in the waking state because (!) We know it, and what scares us helplessly tries to avoid. The dream rubs us then this avoidance behavior under the nose.

traumatization

This applies to "normal neurotic". The nightmares of people with a post-traumatic stress disorder go deeper. On the one hand, they have obsessive flashbacks in the waking state, in which the traumatic experience is reflected, on the other hand, they suffer from recurrent nightmares, in which the topic of traumatization appears.

Traumatized persons react extremely physically to nightmares, their traumatization means that they experience the recurring traumatic experiences as if they were real. After a nightmare, they wake up with tachycardia, can fall asleep very hard, and are much harder to distinguish between healthy and healthy people between the dream and reality.

Nightmares due to stress

Stress also causes nightmares. If this is the case, it's not so much about an accurate dream analysis, but about reducing the stress. After all, even antidepressants and alcohol can lead to nightmares.

substances

Here it is important to separate those nightmares that cause substances from those that reflect our internal conflicts: Alcohol affects the messenger substances of our brain. Especially if we regularly drink too much and have nightmares, we must not confuse cause and effect. So instead of looking for the meaning of the symbols, we should urgently reduce the alcohol. Then the dreams change quickly.

This is especially true if, firstly, you have a tendency to anxiety, secondly, you suffer from anxiety, thirdly, they try to numb you with alcohol and, fourthly, your dreams increase under the influence of alcohol.

There are several dangers lurking here. The first is that the alcohol distorts a possible psychic statement of dreams. Alcohol is "dream poison". Nightmares under the influence of alcohol are as confused as the impressions of a drunk. You do not have to express an inner suffering, but the inner suffering can play into it. With alcohol, you hinder the dream analysis and its possible healing.

Second, the nightmares underlying the nightmares are made worse by drinking, and that's also why the bad dreams are on the increase.

Those who suffer from fears and / or have frequent nightmares should urgently reconsider their alcohol consumption. (Image: lassedesignen / fotolia.com)

Cause biology

Not only nightmares in general, but also their frequency and intensity have in part a genetic basis: For example, identical twins both suffer from frequent nightmares when one suffers, as opposed to dizygotic twins.

Nightmares also reflect archaic situations that correspond to the elemental behaviors that every living thing must master to survive: perceiving a threat, fight or flight, feeding or being eaten.

Cause medication

Not gods, but our brain controls the dreams. Those who take inhibitors of serotonin against the "happiness hormone" take care that our brain does not release the good feelings when sleeping.

Personal disposition

People who are prone to depression, are particularly anxious or irritable, have more nightmares than more psychologically stable people. People with addictions or anxiety disorders have these not only because of their anxiety pictures, but also because of bad sleep.

Sleep complaints

Lack of sleep, restless sleep, drugged sleep or irregular sleep do not have to, but can trigger nightmares.

dream therapy

Nightmares are not fate but can be worked on. Many are, literally, meaningless - they are caused by alcohol, drugs or bad sleep. But others show difficult situations, burdens and conflicts and are our "allies".

When life "goes smoothly" without us doing something, usually something is wrong. Those who actively live deal with problems, solve them and face future challenges. There is no phase of life without conflicts - living a life means surviving these conflicts. Just as Jung saw the monsters of our psychic shadow as those who push us to the heart of life issues, nightmares compel us to cope with awful situations in our sleep.

From the victim to the director

If storylines occur in the dreams that could have a meaning in real life, then therapy is about scrutinizing the threatening elements and working through how they can be defused. As in real life, here: A perceived danger can be handled.

Even if it turns out in therapy that the biggest threat of the nightmare can not be handled, that's no reason to despair. For then, as a rule, it is an expression of something that we can not solve, such as the death of human beings.

Therapists are now also working with patients to develop alternative stories: both together design a new dream story that takes away the horror of the old. Those affected can also keep a dream diary and even restructure their history.

The unconscious designs our dreams, and it is we who enrich our unconscious with stories. We can also change the patterns of the stories of our brain.

It is important not to write a completely different story. The storyline itself remains, the script we correct only in the most important places. The tiger is still in front of the forest, but instead of threatening us, he purrs and lets himself be stroked.

Our brain can be manipulated in this way, and the "good end" anchors itself in the synapses as well as the horror story. Nightmares also have something positive: they enable us to live out fear that we can not give in while awake. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)