Different Nightmare Triggers That Affect Sleep
Hello Everyone,
There are a number of reasons that can trigger nightmares in most individuals. When you wake up in a sweat, panting, screaming and get your sleep disrupted it could be due to the nightmare you had. At times nightmares are caused by negative emotions or various stress-related issues you could be facing. Though different life events happening to people could easily trigger nightmares at night. As a matter of fact, this is not something to worry about for everyone who has had a nightmare once or twice in their lifetime. Sleep therapists do believe that nightmares are ways of someone to relieve their daily pressures. Children also even with limited responsibilities in life no matter how they sleep in a good Casper mattress or an excellent environment have issues too like illness, death in the home, bullying, relocating among others that stress then and lead to nightmares. Below are some of the common triggers that can cause you to have frequent nightmares.
Daily Realities
Dreams most of the time incorporate daily realities or experiences that you go through. These repeated actions you do on a daily basis such as studying, meetings, family matters are common to have them while dreaming. The intensity of the dream may be due to the negative emotions it causes you that cause stress, arguments, pain that are easily seen or experienced in your nightmares. However, it is not necessarily that the literal or abstract form of your reality happens to you in the manner you experience them. And if they do they have to be exuding a certain ill emotion like a child bullied at school, domestic violence, or witnessing or surviving a fatal accident.
News
There are many forms to get news in today’s world. The internet forms being the fastest and caught in real time conveys various types of news that can affect your sleep. visual images from the media are known to be harmful to people due to its content especially if it is scary, of fear or a dreadful sight. This content rises up in dreams and depending on how you perceived it, you experience nightmares on the same. Stress and anxiety can also be experienced after watching thrilling movies especially when exposed to children. These images now that people can record them in real time with no alerts you tend to get a phobia from what you see and can make you even unable to eat.
Forms of treatment
Medications and drugs are various treatments that have different effects on people. Medications that influence neurotransmitters to enhance a higher nightmare frequency. Sleeping pills, narcotics, antidepressants and drug withdrawals affect REM sleep. Triggers brought about by medicine should be further discussed with your doctor. Be careful about your lifestyle if you indulge in recreational drug use or you are suffering from withdrawal effects of alcohol or drugs for they both affect sleep.
Anxiety and Stress
This affects not only adults but children as well. Anxiety and stress can come from poor sleep patterns and with a mix of other life issues it triggers nightmares. A child moving away from his friends, or losing a pet or loved to an adult who lost their job or gets chronically ill all these are various ways of experiencing improper sleep. This is common among athletes as well as they await certain competitions they feel anxious and stressed causing them to have dreams and most cases, not good ones. The fear of performance as well from a young age can trigger nightmares especially if you are scolded and labeled a failure most of the time.
Identity
According to how you identify with people it defines your personality traits. Hence it is vital that you check your temperaments, labels and mindset stages to be in a better position to have a healthy mindset. Personality traits such as isolation, distrust, emotional estrangement have a higher likely hood to experience nightmares. This is an unhealthy state of the mind that keeps you on your toes and has continuous negative thoughts.
Traumatic Ordeals
Natural disasters, genocides, domestic violence, and bullying are some examples of traumatic experiences that people cannot easily rub off their memories. In spite of many counseling sessions or not for others these ordeals trigger a lot of frequent nightmare episodes. Sometimes it can cause disorders like posttraumatic stress. Once you get this disorder your nightmares become more progressed in number and in most cases they replay the events exactly as they occurred.
 Other Triggers
People who are sleep deprived due to after-effects also experience nightmares. Also as those with sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, insomnia, and other sleep disorders easily experience nightmares. Different types of headaches like migraines, explosive headaches are also linked to recurrent nightmares especially due to the pain and discomfort. Depending on the type of pain you experience like burn pain, your chances of getting anxiety that triggers nightmares are quite high and this makes the pain more intense.
Pregnancy
Every pregnant woman whether it is the first time or not feels a different way generally. Due to the hormonal changes in a pregnant woman. Some of them especially those with poor support systems tend to be anxious and fearful of how their pregnancy will progress. These emotional feelings and hormonal shifts, mess up the sleep routines that when distorted trigger nightmares or unexplained vivid dreams. However, this experience does not last in all trimesters of the pregnancy it wades of as the body gets used to the fetus.
All in all, nightmares may be scary and uncomfortable. However, they are not life-threatening and not all nightmares are the same. Other people actually have nightmares for no apparent reason. Some when experiencing high body temperatures from diseases have nightmares and hallucinations until they are able to be treated. Male and female nightmares have also been studied and it shows that women’s bad dreams are based on interpersonal differences while that of men was more of war and uncontrollable disasters.