Nightmare, anxiety, panic: how to determine the level of stress in your dreams?

Nightmare, anxiety, panic: how to determine the level of stress in your dreams?

Don’t try to delve into the plots of nighttime horror movies: they aren’t important on their own. We don’t do psychoanalysis here, but we try to assess the level of stress. There are only three such levels. Find out what they mean and how to deal with them now.

Step 1 – Alert

Your body is not your enemy. First, it tries to intelligently reach your consciousness, to negotiate with you like a human being. Expresses concern about the crazy lifestyle. This hints that it’s time to breathe. He sounds the alarm. But you don’t always realize it’s anxiety. It’s not a nightmare. It’s simple…

1. In a dream

Previously, dreams were in color, but suddenly they faded – they became black and white or completely disappeared (provided that before that they went to serial mode every night). This should alert you. Dreams disappear when you work too hard and sleep too little. If there is practically no sleep, the body gives preference to what is most important for the survival of the physical shell.

awake

You become distracted and irritable. You lose creativity. Lower than colleagues in brainstorming sessions. You miss deadlines. Argue with your boyfriend. Spill hot coffee on your blouse, break dishes, break appliances…

What to do?

If you bring misfortunes on yourself, like fridge magnets, and you don’t see dreams for a long time, you need to rest and sleep. Otherwise, nervous tension will spiral out of control, and dreams will appear, but you will probably not like their content …

2. In a dream

You go, you go, no one knows where, you search, you search for something unknown, of which there is not even a hint in your memory. And when you wake up, only fatigue.

awake

The same goes for obsessive actions: you constantly twist a pencil in your hands, play with a pendant on a chain, drum your fingers on the table – a sure sign that stress is already turning into an obsessive-compulsive disorder .

What to do?

Organize a “day without information”: do not read anything, do not study, do not watch television. Yet nothing comes into my head. If during the day you do not try to fit a single new fact into it, then overnight all existing ones will crumble – and you will pass the exam and avoid neurosis.

3. In a dream

Most of us have our own obsessive dream that we have had since childhood. Forced to watch, but you don’t want to. And above all, it always breaks in the same place, which is also very annoying…

awake

You fixate on a painful idea or situation. It may no longer be tied to your present at all, but you cannot let it go.

What to do?

Ideally, of course, it would be useful to contact a psychologist. But you can try to deal with your own dreams and the fears that reflect them. The original way: you have to put bad dream plots on paper, then rewrite the script the right way. Then try visualizing a new version of the night terror. To do this, you need to present your remake as clearly as possible so that it impresses the subconscious and the dream begins to dream in a corrected form.

Stage 2 – Nightmare

Nightmares occur at the end of REM sleep – on the border with slow-wave sleep. The worst thing about them is your state of complete helplessness in the face of an imminent threat. The feeling is not at all pleasant, but such stillness is definitely good for the sleeper, because nature has provided this protective mechanism so that you do not rush to destroy the herd of goblins, destroying furniture.

If the nightmares have already started, it means that you did not react to the warnings of disturbing dreams in time and triggered the situation. Ideally, you should take a vacation and see a neurologist or neuropsychiatrist. But it’s possible that not everything is as scary as it seems. The reasons for your horror movies could well be, for example…

fast food

If you want to sleep peacefully, don’t stress your body! Don’t eat at night, especially burgers. The dream plots that healthy food supporters visit are very different from what fast food lovers see at night. The latter are much more likely to have nightmares, as malnutrition is stressful for the body.

Medications

Some of them give a side effect in the form of terrible dreams. It is fixed, for example, in many antibiotics, drugs for hypertension, antidepressants, sleeping pills and a number of painkillers. The instructions don’t always warn about this…

Health problems

Have you dreamed of being stabbed in the stomach? Appendicitis must be ruled out! In a dream, they tried to suffocate you with a pillow? This means that breathing was difficult: the nose is very stuffy or bronchial asthma is approaching you – it likes to break out at the darkest time of the day. Talk to your doctor to find out.

Stage 3 – Panic

When the nervous tension reaches its climax, the nightmares disappear, replaced by night terrors. However, especially strong and fearless women fall into the panic phase immediately after the anxiety phase.

As a rule, everything happens within the first hour after falling asleep. You’re shaking all over and screaming so loud that the alarms go off on the cars parked in the yard. You open your eyes wide, you tremble, you sweat, you breathe often.

A panic attack only lasts a few minutes, but here’s the interesting thing: you never wake up until late, and in the morning you don’t remember anything, you just feel sleepy and overwhelmed.

What to do?

You need to see a neurologist immediately! Stress has acquired the force of a hurricane – you cannot face it alone.

Source: The Voice Mag

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