What Causes Nightmares and How to stop Them

What causes nightmares and how to stop them

What actually causes nightmares is unknown. However, being too tired, not getting enough sleep, having an irregular routine for sleep, and having stress or anxiety may all increase the risk of having nightmares.

Frequent nightmares can be caused by major life events. Constant stress or anxiety can lead to nightmares as well.

Contrary to popular thought dream interpretation is not an exact science. The method of dream interpretation is only used to reveal some things about the patient to form a conclusions. Some dreams or nightmares can be specific and can be caused by certain things. However often times they are merely a left over thought process from the day before. Sometimes a psychologist can infer from your dreams what you may have been thinking or worrying

I was going to right such a detailed answer that took me 15 minutes to write but my device deleted it when it ran out of power :(

Anyways nightmare is when your brain remembers something, this can be fear or stress. The brain creates dreams because your brain can Never be inactive.

Anyway a nigtmare is when your brain causes a dream to spiral out of effect. This happens because once the dream starts, your brain is so drowsy tha you can't tell reality from the dream, therefore you can't stop it...

Intimates happen when your body is in stress (pregnancy, puberty, disease, medications, ailments) are physical factors and depression, fear, trauma are mental factors. Your dreams are ussualy based on what happened earlier as dreams are mostly made of memories, the faces you see, your thoughts..

Whence a nightmare your brain creates a creepy, scary scenario, these can include something not scary such as playing a sport that you find scary. Your mind is not trying to tell you something, it's simply doing what your thinking..

Let's assume you had a dream where you were swimming in a river, it's all nice and fun, this is because of your brain making a normal scenario, maybe you took a bath before bed. Then the water starts to freeze and your drowning as a man pulls your feet down and rain starts to fall... This may be simply because your covers fell off, you, and your sleeping brain can not properly think, you don't understand up why your suddenly cold, you think your in the dream so you must have a reason to be cold in the dream too. That's an enviromental factor.

But say you have a dream where your child was lost and you could hear them scream and they kept dissapearing.. Well, that has nothing to do with environment! Is is because somehow you started to fear this.. For some reason you thought of losing something and had that dream.

It's all because of your thoughts :)

O prevent this do something meticulous before bed, read an SA on something like the eucolyptus tree.. Eliminate stress. Also if you say what these dreams were, I can try to help you figure out the cause :)

Good luck, sleep well. Go to sleep, even if you have a nightmare whats the worst that can happen?

Bad food of difficult digestion may cause such frightening dreams as nightmares. 

The worried thoughts about your own home, that it in some way might be haunted, and thus make you feel that your belonging is very endangered, may have resulted in your having a such a nightmare in your dreams. 

Strong fears and strong concerns about life, one's strong fear of not being able to cope with an important issue in one's life, shattering experiences that give a lot of psychological pain, may result in nightmares. 

Small babies may have many more fears of insecurity and thus more nightmares than experienced grown-up people with a calm and acquainted life. 

Generally uneasy dreaming is sort of a digestion in one's own brain of the effects from experiences and concerns that are giving many difficult thoughts. It may be compared to the digestion of food in the stomach. 

A heavy feeling of insecurity in one's own world, in one's own belonging, may give nightmares. 

Living an easy and more healthy life with a glowing confidence about one's own surroundings and one's future, and also sleeping comfortably in one's own bed in a safe home where you feel belonging and comfortable should be a good remedy against having nightmares.

what exactly cause nightmares, and if you have a lot of nightmares, how can you stop it, i mean is there a certain way to not have nightmares?

No one really knows, but some contributing factors have been identified as worry, stress, fear, or repressed fears from the past all from when your awake. These things then return from within your brain (or subconscious) when you dream...as bad dreams or nightmares. 

Also they can be caused by actively thinking of something that stresses you, worries you, or frightens you just before or while going to sleep.

 

Sometimes they're caused by nothing at all except random dreaming. 

Do you remember the nightmares? Are they all similar, do they have a common theme (for exampled being chased somehow in all of them, being lost etc.) if so perhaps you can identify the cause. 

A possible remedy....take time to relax and feel good before bed, then actively think about something you like, is pleasant, makes you happy while falling asleep

What you can do to stop having nightmares

You can learn to control your dreams, and therefore, stop having nightmares. First of all, start keeping a dream journal. Use a small notebook and keep it right beside your bed or even under your pillow. When you wake up, whether in the middle of the night and especially first thing in the morning, write down everything you can remember about your dreams - even before you get out of bed, as soon as you wake up. In time, you will remember more and more, and will create more awareness about what you are dreaming. 

Eventually, you will learn to recognize that you are dreaming and will even be able to control and direct your dreams. Once you recognize you are having a nightmare, say that in your dream, "I am having a nightmare." Over time, you will be able to say things like, "I don't want to have a nightmare. I'm going to change this," and do so. If a monster is chasing you, for example, try changing it or dressing it in funny clothes. I have for many years been able to "rewind" my dreams - like an old VCR tape (if you know what that is, haha). Then I can replay them like I like. Or if I get killed or something, I come 'back to life' Super-Hero style and whoop the monster's hiney. Sometimes I recognize it's a bad situation and I just fly out of there. 

This may take many, many months of recording your dreams before you are able to do this, but keep at it. Find a style that works for you, something you like, like a super-power. I have friends who like to turn invisible, one who carries a machine gun and weapons around to defeat any baddies (he was in the Army), others who turn into birds or butterflies and flutter away, one who turns to liquid and floats away, etc. etc. You can decide if you want to pull away where nothing can hurt you (where you can still observe the bad thing and figure out what it may be about in real life), or if you want to stay and fight it (which can get a little violent if you do it over and over, and is not always as psychologically helpful as your dream IS trying to tell you something). 

After some time you will be able to decide what you are going to dream about before you go to sleep. For example, I usually say, "Tonight I am going to fly in my dreams," and I am able to control myself flying around for some time. However, you need to be vigilant about recording some aspect of your dreams or you will lose the ability. This is called "Lucid Dreaming." Search that and you will get many tips. 

The first step is to remember your dreams, so before you go to bed say, "I am going to remember my dreams tonight." It sounds like you can remember some if you know you are having nightmares, but you need to remember details, not just, "Oh, I had a nightmare, but I don't remember what it was. The next step is before you go to bed say, "I am going to recognize when I am having a nightmare and stop it." 

Nightmares are a way for us to work out our emotions. So the other thing you must do is figure out what is not working in your life. Depending on your age it could be school, work, relationship issues, etc, etc. Often once you take care of these issues the nightmares disappear. However, sometimes they don't for some time. Lucid dreaming and taking charge of your sleep will help in this. You will still get the messages and some conflict in your dreams, but you will be able to say, "Oh, look, I am having a nightmare. I wonder what that's about," and change it. Your dream journal will help you figure out that something is wrong.