Nightmares can be offensive, causing apprehension and fear and affecting quality of sleep. This can lead to mental stress and physical tiredness. Nevertheless, before people can start to treat them it’s necessary to understand the cause of nightmares.
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Causes and Why do We have Night Mares?
These are dreams that are usually disturbing and realistic in a vivid way that rattle an individual from their deep sleep. They make the heart pound from fear. Most of them are experienced when somebody is asleep and most often during the early morning hours.
The subjects of these terrible dreams usually vary from one individual to the other. There are various causes of these nightmares especially in adults. There are various factors as well as underlying disorders that cause these frightening dreams.
There are people who experience them after enjoying a snack late into the night. This can be attributed to the increase in their metabolism which could signal their brain to become more active. There are also some medications which can contribute to the nightmare frequency that a person using them gets.
Another cause is the drugs that usually act on the chemicals found in the brain like narcotics and antidepressants. Other causes could be blood pressure and non-psychological medications.
Many times the merely dreams people remember are the ones they desire they could forget. Nightmares can be enlightening, and some psychologists believe that nightmares are a nourishing part of life.
But if people are losing sleep and are bothered by repetitive nightmares, many times varying their regular habits can minimize nightmare repetition. Generally nightmares can be caused by deficient sleep, stress and poor diet and exercise.
After understanding what a nightmare is you should then proceed to trying out the various known methods on how to get rid of nightmares. It is important to note that there are no fast and hard ways of stopping them. However, all is not gloom as there are ways that can help in reducing their occurrence. Below are some of the things that you can try.
23 Effective Solutions to Stop or Prevent Nightmares
1. Combating Stress
Nightmares are often as a result of stress as they form one of the symptoms of stress. If you have stress or are stressed during the day then it is highly likely that you will be stressed in your thoughts at night.
Your nightmare experience should be a wakeup call to try and figure out the root cause of stress in your life. Addressing these causes will help a long way in your efforts to reducing their occurrence during the night. If the things that cause your stress are not easy to deal with then you should consider visiting a therapist.
You can also combat stress by taking some time off work and getting away for a holiday.
2. Avoiding Drugs
There are several medications and drugs that can cause you to have a nightmare as it is one of the side effects of using them. If you are on medication that causes you to experience these horrendous dreams, ensure that you consult your doctor.
You should seek their advice on swapping with other similar medications that will not cause you such dreams. Likewise if you indulge in any recreational drugs that cause you to suffer from this condition then you should try as much as possible to stop.
3. Watching Your Diet
Just like the drugs affect your dreams, it is also possible for the food you eat to affect them too. Food usually interacts with the human body in various ways just like drugs usually do. You should therefore watch your diet to avoid things like carbs that can give the body extra energy.
You could also elect to forego caffeine as it causes the mind to race. Ensure that your diet does not also include food that is hard to digest as it can cause you to have disturbed dreams.
4. Sleep
Ensure that you try as much as possible to sleep heavily every night. This will be possible if you avoid sleeping while angry or even stressed out. You should also ensure that you adopt regular sleep patterns that should be spread to over the weekends. This would be a great way to assist you get rid of nightmares.
5. Reducing the Exposure to Outlandish and Lurid Images and Films
Another important step to take when you wish to stop nightmares is reducing the amount of exposure to violent images and film. This should be more so during the evenings just before retiring to bed. Watching horror movies can cause you to have a nightmare that will linger for even years.
6. Avoid sleeping on your back
It is important to ensure that you do not sleep on your back often as it leads to a type of nightmare referred to as sleep paralysis. This makes you feel as if you are alert and awake while you feel like you are unable to move. People who suffer from this nightmare also experience breathlessness or an “unknown presence” inside the room.
7. Combating Illness
Illness is another common cause of getting a nightmare as the distress of the body is often reflected in the dreams you get while asleep. This condition is not always permanent but temporal and hopefully they would not recur for long.
However, it is important that you ensure that you have a good temperature, comfortable and taking the prescribed medication well before sleeping. At times when illness brings about these dreadful dreams, it can be taken as a way of your body passing a message that all is not well.
It would be important if you underwent a check to establish if there is an underlying illness.
8. Keep Aromatic Oils and Flowers in your Bedroom
There is credible research that has shown that keeping flowers or some aromatic oils that smell good inside your bedroom has an effect on your dreams. The good smell usually has a positive effect on the dreams you get while asleep. This acts as a great and ingenious way on how to get rid of nightmares.
9. Attempting to manipulate your Nightmare
You can look at attempting to manipulate your nightmare as a way to stop nightmares. You can try to make certain things to happen or alter the outcome in order to make it less upsetting and frightening. This can work fast for some people and also take a longer time for others and it is therefore important not to be discouraged.
10. Relaxing
If you spent your whole day either watching some scary films, busy or stressing over certain things ensure you do not go to bed straightway especially when wide awake. This will lead you to the path of a nightmare if that train of thought continues. You should give yourself a few minutes to relax well and de-stress before sleeping.
The suggestions under are aimed at cultivating a nourishing sleep and dream life.
11. People should not go to sleep stressed out. They should provide themselves time to cool down.
12. They don’t eat right before bed. Particularly foods that take longer to digest can maximize nightmares.
13. Everyone should diminish exposure to violent images in the media, particularly in the evenings. Dread movies can cause loitering nightmares for years.
14. People should spend time in nature as many times as possible, even if this means sitting in a park regularly for fifteen minutes. Some therapists believe that everyone suffer from nature inadequacy disorder.
15. Anyone should not sleep on their back. This emboldens a special sort of nightmare called sleep paralysis, in which we feel like we are awake while at the same time we can’t move. Sufferers merely feel breathless in the room.
16. People should begin an amiable body practice for example yoga or walking. Generally reasonable exercise maximizes the quality of sleep.
17. If anyone has repetitive nightmares, role-play next time how he will face his nightmare attackers.
18. Everyone should place a dream journal. Many times writing it out can scatter a lot of efficacious emotionality.
19. People should join a dream-sharing group. Some larger cities have them. If not, they should begin their own.
20. People should provide themselves self-love and acceptance. Simple to point, but difficult to perform. Some people use journaling to remind themselves that they are loved. Their backlog of journals is necessarily a history of pep-talks they have given themselves over the years and still it works.
21. People should place fresh flowers or fragrant oils in the bedroom. Research shows that virtuous odors absolutely affect their dreams.
22. They should try to eradicate bad dreams by establishing a normal sleep schedule that involves ample sleep at night so they don’t feel the urge to take evening or afternoon naps. Cutting out caffeine, cigarettes and alcohols particularly in the day can aid merely. They should avoid eating before going to bed since those late eating snacks can result in nightmares.
23. Exercising is a righteous way to nix nightmares during the day time but don’t exercise close to bedtime. Relaxing is a key to a virtuous night’s rest before falling asleep. Avoiding horror or scary movies, video games and TV shows can also be helpful.
Conclusion
From all the above ways on how to get rid of nightmares, it is easy to conclude that all that it takes to stop them from recurring is practicing good sleep hygiene. This will assist you in ensuring that you do not suffer from sleep deprivation that can bring along nightmares.
Your bedroom should be a tranquil place that is strictly reserved for sleep and making love without associating it with any strenuous activities. Observing all the above steps would help you win big in the fight to stop nightmares.
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