Scary dreams can have a “good effect” when we wake up
If you see a frightening dream during sleep, this may have a good effect, as research has shown that fear during sleep helps control fear during wakefulness.
Researchers in Switzerland and the United States have examined how the brain responds to patterns of dreams.
They found that frightening dreams increase the brain’s effectiveness when dealing with frightening experiences while awake.
In the case of terrifying nightmares, research has found that their effect is negative.
Neuroscientists from the University of Geneva, the University of Geneva Hospital in Switzerland, and the University of Wisconsin in the United States have concluded that dreams can be used as a way to treat anxiety.
The study examined whether frightening dreams that did not reach the level of horror serve a positive purpose.
“More effective”
The researchers followed the effect of frightening dreams on people’s feelings while they were awake, using 250 electrodes connected to eighteen people.
The findings, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, show that frightening dreams help people respond better to fearful situations.
The researchers noted that the person who wakes up after witnessing a frightening dream, the area that responds to fear in his brain is more effective.
Accordingly, scientists have concluded that frightening dreams are a way to prepare a person to face fear while awake.
The more frequent nightmares are, the higher the level of activity in the area of the brain that deals with fear.
Emotions associated with nightmares
The researchers said they found that there is a close link between our feelings during sleep and wakefulness, where frightening dreams are a way to train a person to face similar situations while awake.
“Dreams can be a real exercise to prepare us to face the real dangers in life,” said Lampros Perogamvros, a researcher at the University of Geneva.
But the positive benefits of nightmares remain until a certain level of terror, above which their effect becomes negative and leads to interrupted sleep.
He explained, “If fear exceeds a certain level, it loses its positive effect on regulating emotions.”
A scientific study described as “strange of its kind” concluded that nightmares carry a benefit to humans, contrary to the popular belief that links them to anxiety and stress.
And according to what the British newspaper “Daily Mail” reported on its website, Sunday, the study confirms that nightmares prepare humans to face difficult situations in reality.
Researchers in Switzerland and the United States subjected 18 people to a strange experiment of its kind, as monitoring devices were placed on the heads of the sample members, to monitor brain activity during sleep.
Later, they were subjected to questions such as Did you have bad dreams? And if so? Did you feel afraid?
The researchers said that there is a pattern that repeats among people, which is that during nightmares, activity increases in the areas of the brain that control emotions.
In another experiment, 89 people were given a “dream and nightmare” diary, which requires recording all the dreams and nightmares that pass through their brains when they wake up, for a week.
And then it happened
They were subjected to negative and shocking MRI scans.
The researchers found that people who experienced nightmares had emotional areas of the brain respond faster and more efficiently than those who did not.
When we experience a traumatic event or a difficult problem, it is common for your nightmares to reframe these situations during your sleep and can cause poor sleep and chronic insomnia, exposing you to health and physical problems, including depression and heart disease, but nightmares, while scary, are not always a bad thing. Lots of benefits.
According to TIME, in many cases, it may help a person relieve some of his fears during the day. Research has found that nightmares can help some people learn how to better manage stress in their lives.
Shock therapy
Nightmares or bad dreams may also function as a form of “shock therapy”, which is now considered an effective treatment for many phobias and some conditions associated with PTSD. For example, if someone is terrified of dogs, shock therapy may include confronting a source His fear is in a safe place so that the person learns how to manage this phobia. In much the same way, nightmares, especially those that follow a disturbing event, may allow the person’s mind to relive the event and move beyond it.
Increase emotional feelings
The site stated that several scientific research confirmed that people who dream of nightmares, their emotional areas of the brain respond faster, and their emotional feelings and feelings of others increase, and more efficiently than people who do not dream of nightmares.
Emotion therapy
Nightmares also effectively help to process the feelings of the previous day, as people, while sleeping, arrange and preserve memories of the previous day, while emotional memories become the subject of our new dreams, so experts have begun to reveal the relationship between nightmares and mental disorders and their importance in keeping us stable Psychologically and emotionally.
