Nightmares help you control your fear

Bad dreams not only reveal a person's emotions and fears but can also help us cope better with stress.

Nightmares can carry many different content, but they all make people dream of fear, disgust, stress and affect health.

"Meet many nightmares, for example every night, lead to stress and sleeplessness" , Michael Nadorff, assistant professor of psychology from Mississippi University and director of the Sleep, Suicide and Aging Research Department told TIME. . Due to prolonged insomnia, people face a variety of physical and mental disorders, including depression and cardiovascular disease. However, nightmares are not always harmful.

Nightmare helps people dream to improve anxiety and learn how to manage stress better.(Photo: mamaonica).

According to Tore Nielsen, professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal (Canada), nightmares help dreamers improve anxiety and learn how to manage stress better. He said: " From the time of Freud, we knew that preoccupations would be reflected in the dream." Therefore, nightmare analysis with a therapist will reveal its connection to reality to better understand emotions and fears.

In addition to providing the above information, nightmares also serve as exposure therapies, the gold standard for the treatment of many fears as well as problems related to post-traumatic stress disorder. For example, if someone is afraid of dogs, exposure therapy will require him to spend time in the room with a consultant and a dog. By facing the fear between a safe environment, this person realizes how to control fear. Similarly, nightmares allow us to recall things and overcome them.

Of course, if you dream of nightmares too often and negatively affect your life, you should seek help from medical experts. Mr. Nadorff offered two ways to intervene.The first is that prazosin antihypertensive drugs work to "ease the body's stress response" but it is easy to return nightmares to stop using them. The second method is image rehearsal therapy: the patient recounts his or her dream and changes the content so that he is less afraid and tries to dream again according to new content.

Besides, people who dream of nightmares should dig themselves to understand themselves. Recognizing fears will help reduce nightmares.