All people, without exception, see bad dreams: some people do not attach any importance to them, while for others, the terrible picture cannot get out of their heads, deprives them of peace, and does not allow them to concentrate on everyday activities. In order to prevent a nightmare from poisoning your existence, you need to “deal with” the unpleasant vision and restore peace of mind. What to do if you had a bad dream?
What do bad dreams mean?
Scientists have proven that dreams do not affect reality, so if someone dreams about being fired from work or getting into a disaster, this does not mean that the dream will come true. At the same time, it is worth paying attention to such dreams in a different way. Why do I have bad dreams? This is a kind of signal from the subconscious that something is wrong with the body or psychological state of a person. Problems that cause nightmares can be of different types.
- Overeating before bed, eating large amounts of fatty and spicy foods. At night, the body needs to rest, metabolic processes slow down, but a hearty dinner disrupts all plans. As a result, the stomach, which is set to rest, cannot cope with digesting food and sends signals to the brain about this. The brain, in turn, reacts by giving the person nightmares and prompting them to wake up.
- Alcohol consumption. Alcoholic drinks disorient the nervous system, as a result of which a sleeping person may experience nightmares.
- Stress of various types. Anxiety and worry are some of the most common reasons why nightmares appear. It is not necessary to experience very strong stress, it all depends on the characteristics of the nervous system of a particular person; for some, a quarrel with work colleagues will be enough for a nightmare to appear. In general, stress can be divided into several different categories, depending on the significance of the events that cause it.
- Minor and one-time. Quarrels with someone, small mistakes, an upcoming test at work or a test at school. Such events are not recurring and cause a single surge of negative emotions, which can give rise to a nightmare if the nervous system is especially susceptible to stress.
- Constant stress. These are events that are repeated day after day and make a person nervous. For example, the need to go to a job you don’t like every day. Negative emotions and a sense of inevitability can cause nightmares.
- Serious stress and its consequences. This category includes situations such as major operations, violence, and the loss of a loved one. Nightmares can be one of the types of consequences that appear after such events.
- Premenstrual syndrome. This reason is relevant for women - during the natural monthly cycle, body temperature can change, which, as a result, causes nightmares. This phenomenon is not observed in all females, but it may well be one of the causes of bad dreams.
- Various health problems. With the help of nightmares, the subconscious can try to draw our attention to the fact that some problems have arisen in the body. Moreover, a nightmare can occur both during the course of the disease and at a time when the disease has not yet been identified.
- Chase nightmares may indicate problems with the cardiovascular system.
- If someone is constantly being strangled in their sleep, this is a reason to check the functioning of the respiratory system.
- When you smell unpleasant odors in a dream, perhaps the fact is that the digestive system is not in order or you need to make a visit to the dentist.
- The inability to get out of somewhere, labyrinths and frightening places in a dream indicate severe fatigue and depression.
- The subconscious may react to an increase in temperature during illness with an unpleasant dream about a bathhouse or a fire.
How to avoid nightmares?
We offer the following tips:
- Maintain a sleep schedule.
Spend at least 7–8 hours a day on it. Go to bed at the same time every night. - In the evening, try to relax more,
move important matters and serious physical activity to the morning. - Don't overeat before bed.
- Avoid drinking alcohol and caffeine several hours before your vacation.
- Make the atmosphere
in the room as comfortable as possible. Ventilate the bedroom, put in new linen, eliminate excess noise and light sources. - Use meditation to fall asleep.
The Nimbus Mind app contains proven techniques for falling asleep that you can learn gradually using a multi-day course on healthy sleep. .
Traditional methods
The easiest way to not worry about a bad dream is to forget about it as soon as you lift your head from the pillow. But what to do if you can’t get rid of negative emotions so easily? We share the proven “recipes” of our wise ancestors.
- Don't tell anyone about what you dreamed. There is a sign: if you share the plot of a nightmare with a friend or someone else, problems cannot be avoided. The dream will either come true, or you are inviting some other misfortune upon yourself.
- When you wake up, immediately go to the bathroom. Turn on the water and say into the tap: “Where there is water, there is sleep!” This simple spell must be said three times. Then take a breath and get back to your normal morning routine.
- If you haven’t gotten up yet, then, without lifting your head from the pillow, look out the window glass and repeat three times: “Where the night goes, there goes the dream, after the moon it left, with the sunrise it died.”
- If previous manipulations did not help, and painful emotions continue to haunt you, a ritual with water and salt will help. Add some salt to the water and say a spell over it: “The salt has dissolved, like a dream has gone into oblivion.” Pour the charmed liquid into the ground, out a window, or flush it down the toilet.
- If time permits, take a pen and paper and describe the dream in every detail. Talk about your negative emotions, throw them all out without a trace. Then burn the paper - the fire will destroy all bad memories
- If nightmares torment you quite often, place a large, weighty stone next to your bed. If a bad dream overtakes you again, in the morning take a cobblestone in your hand and say: “So that the nightmare hits this stone.”
And most importantly: control your thoughts. As soon as you feel that the memories of the nightmare you experienced are again covering you, with an effort of will, change them to positive statements. Try to remember something good and joyful.
Gradually, you will learn to ensure that you do not allow thoughts of nightmares into your subconscious. Then your dreams will only be light and pleasant.
“Methods of combating” bad dreams
Our wise ancestors were very good at dealing with negative messages from the dream world. They believed that bad dreams could harm a person in reality, deprive him of health, prosperity, and beauty. And that is why they tried to get rid of the consequences of bad visions as soon as possible. The ancient rituals that our grandmothers performed are quite possible to carry out today.
Many people know that in order to remember a dream in all its details, you need to try not to look out the window immediately after waking up. This trick, only exactly the opposite, can be applied in the case when you want to forget a dream as quickly as possible: look out the window at how you woke up, then the dream will be forgotten faster.
Bright light: sunlight, light from an electric light bulb, or a bright fire in the fireplace will help you quickly forget a terrible dream.
In order to prevent the nightmare from persistently spinning in your head, you can use a small ritual that our grandmothers resorted to: you need to turn the pillowcase inside out and turn the sheet over to the other side.
Why do I have terrible dreams?
Any information received consciously or unconsciously during the day can be seen in a dream from a different angle at night. Therefore, children often dream of dinosaurs, scary monsters, monsters, and this terrifies them. Such dreams should be taken out of the window or washed away with water for peace of mind and forgotten about them forever. Many people use the magic phrase for this: “Where there is night, there comes sleep,” while looking out the window.
A bad dream most often comes in the morning, during the REM stage of sleep, which lasts only 5 minutes. It is clearly remembered and then becomes the subject of discussion. It may reflect sexual fantasies and sensations, various fears. A detailed interpretation of such a dream helps to calm down and forget the dreamed event forever.
Women have bad dreams more often than men, and this is due to the functioning of the reproductive system. The course of natural monthly cycles with a decrease and increase in basal temperature and premenstrual syndrome can cause bad dreams.
Negative energy accumulated during periods of prolonged stress is processed during periods of sleep. It is used by the cerebral hemispheres to relieve nervous tension. Such night visions bring benefits to a person’s mental state, because negativity is replaced by a positive perception of life, and the person adapts to society.
Having a bad dream is often a signal from the nervous system that it needs help. Nightmares can occur when the subconscious is trying to convey to the conscious mind about the onset of serious failures in the internal secretion organs. After such dreams, a person usually begins to get sick. Doctors say that some dream details can be correlated with health problems:
- The chases are seen by people with heart problems. When you dream of running with strange feelings of weakness and fatigue, you need to consult a cardiologist and check the functioning of the heart muscle during exercise.
- If you had a bad dream with suffocation, drowning, or a clear lack of air, then you can assume that the disease has affected the respiratory system.
- Video footage of raw meat and the smell of rotten meat may be present due to disturbances in the digestive system.
- Wandering in an impenetrable forest, an unfamiliar place or a labyrinth signals overwork and depression.
- Fire or steam is often dreamed of at high temperatures.
Such visions should be perceived as the work of the body and developed intuition, and it is advisable to take care of your health in a timely manner. Seeing a doctor for a preventive examination helps to get rid of the developing disease in time.
When do bad dreams mean illness?
Freud, while studying dreams, discovered that they can be a harbinger of illness. The subconscious thus seems to warn a person: there is a health problem, you need to pay attention.
You should be wary in the following cases:
Watch a video about what to do if you have a bad dream:
When does a bad dream mean nothing?
Not all dreams need to be given meaning. Therefore, study the information below to understand when you should not worry about nightmares.
When a bad dream means absolutely nothing:
Remember the days when your night visions resonate with lunar energy, and try to forget about the nightmare as soon as you wake up. You should only worry if terrible dreams are repeated over and over again.
Causes of disturbing dreams
A person sees nightmares during difficult periods of his life, when there is a threat to health, well-being, and career. Dreams that plunge you into horror warn that you should solve the existing problem before it is too late.
Nightmares caused by physiological reasons or external factors must be distinguished from scary warning dreams. Sometimes we provoke scary dreams ourselves, even if we don’t set a specific goal for this.
Uncomfortable position, full stomach, stuffiness, bright light, harsh sound - this is an incomplete list of reasons that can cause unpleasant dreams.
Nightmares may be caused by an incipient illness. All these images are in no way associated with a bad omen, but only mean that you need to seek medical help as soon as possible. What to do if you had a bad dream caused by problems in the body?
How to get rid of bad feelings
If eerie dreams do not occur to a person too often, you can use the following methods to eliminate night fears:
- Cleansing the subconscious. Before going to bed, you should try to clear your mind of negativity.
- Rest. You need to get more rest to avoid overwork. In some cases, active rest and taking vitamins will be required.
- Examination of the body. It would be a good idea to undergo a preventive examination with a doctor and undergo general blood and urine tests. This is especially true when dreams are associated with a hospital, doctors, or sick relatives.
- Execution of obligations. Often, to escape from nightmares, you just need to solve a certain issue and complete your plans. Then increased anxiety will no longer bother you at night.
As for children's nightmares, here you need to spend time with your child, discussing with him his dreams and the events of the day. It is important to create favorable conditions before bedtime and reinforce a sense of security. The meaning of nightmares can be easily deciphered by yourself. You need to be more attentive to their content and use your intuition.
Popular experience recommends getting rid of dreams that disturb you with their information. This only works if the vision was born during the period of processing the information received and the emotions experienced. It does not indicate illness and only creates uncertainty about the future.
To prevent such a dream from coming true, you need to perform a ritual:
- look at the flame so that the energy is cleared;
- escort him out the door;
- tell your loved ones about it;
- leave it to the stone by knocking on it;
- wash off the information with cold water, washing your face three times.
All rituals must be accompanied by affirmations that accompany sleep. It is recommended to use the following words:
- indicating the direction: where, there;
- objects that can carry away unpleasant thoughts;
- actions that will be performed for purification.
So, in order to get rid of bad premonitions, they first tell about the dreamed episode of a stream of water from a tap or running water in a river or stream, and at the end they ask for water to take away all troubles and sorrows.
Such ritual actions help to forget the dream, but if it is prophetic, it will still come true. This is how the subconscious mind warns a person about danger or changes in life. To calm down, you need to try to understand what it wanted to communicate. To do this, you can purchase a dream book and read in it why you dream about objects and actions that were seen at night. Often after this you can realize that the worst dream is an allegory that carries a positive meaning.
If an unpleasant dream came to you by chance and you, in general, understand why you have bad dreams, then nothing bad happened. The correct reaction will help avoid recurrence of unpleasant sensations.
It's another matter when A Nightmare on Elm Street continues for several nights, or even becomes habitual. This situation indicates serious mental disorders that may be associated with any of the above problems. The main thing that is necessary in such a situation is to find the reason. It is best if at this time you receive qualified assistance from a doctor or psychologist.
Don’t let your body set alarm bells ringing, relax, take a walk, and your dreams will always make you happy.
“Oh my rashness! How do I decide to see my dreams?” — wrote B. Akhmadulina. After some dreams, these words are immediately remembered. Indeed, sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and with a pounding heart and you don’t know, maybe you should never sleep again so that this is guaranteed not to happen.
Why do people have bad dreams?
When a person sleeps, his brain works in a different mode - not like during the day. During sleep, the brain goes through two alternating phases several times: the deep (slow) sleep phase and the REM sleep phase (also called paradoxical).
The phases of deep sleep are long, they take about 40 minutes. The paradoxical sleep phase lasts on average a quarter of an hour. It is during this period that people dream.
How many hours a person slept, approximately how many dreams he saw. Why didn't you remember? Because people remember a dream only if they woke up during REM sleep.
And during these periods, the human brain “digests” its daily impressions with enormous intensity. Sometimes at this moment a decision appears that was not given to the person during the day. It is known that Mendeleev could not correctly arrange the elements in the table until he saw it in a dream.
And there are also nightmares. These are also fragments of memories, but mixed into a crazy “vinaigrette”, because at night it is not the consciousness that rules, but the subconscious.
First, calm down. Even if it seems like a prophetic dream. Even prophetic dreams do not always come true. There were so many dreams even that night. Did the person sleep for 7 hours? This means I had 7 dreams. Why exactly this terrible one should be prophetic?
A dream may indicate an onset of illness, this is true. If you run away in a dream, check your heart. Choking - throat. The stomach smells rotten. In a dream, you cannot get out of the labyrinth - this is. But there is no need to be nervous - you should be glad that you were warned at an early stage. Go to the doctor and get treatment while the disease is in its infancy.
If you have a bad dream and don’t know what to do, you can use folk remedies. The most famous of them is to tell a dream to flowing water. Not everyone has a river under their window, but you can tell just the water from the tap. She will take a bad dream with her.
You can stand in front of the window and say to the setting moon: “Where there is night, there comes sleep.”
People have long figured out what to do to prevent a bad dream from coming true. They say that if you don’t say a word about a bad dream before lunch, then it’s guaranteed not to come true.
Christians do not believe in bad dreams: a believer should not be superstitious. But if you can’t get out of the impression of a dream, you’ll have to take some action. What should a believer do if he had a bad dream? will help. You can read any prayer to the Mother of God or the Cross (“May God rise...”, “Protect me, Lord...”) or Psalm 90 (“Alive in help...”), cross yourself and not think about it anymore. If the Lord wanted to say something, he would have addressed through the conscience, and not the subconscious.
Omens and working with them
It is foolish to argue with the fact that most of our dreams are simply plots dictated by fatigue, processed events of past days. But it is even more stupid to deny the existence of prophetic dreams.
There is hardly a person who can confidently say that not a single dream of his has ever come true. We cannot ignore those whose dreams have come true down to the smallest detail. And those who have only good dreams come true are incredibly lucky. How can you prevent your nightmare from becoming a reality?
First of all, don't panic. Yes, the nightmare could be damn convincing, but for now it is still just a dream. Dreams are warnings given from above, and they usually warn in advance. Therefore, you definitely have time to correct the situation.
How to avoid trouble? Usually it is enough to change only the smallest detail in your behavior for failure to pass you by. You can, for example, not go for a run late in the evening, or go for a run along a different route. You might want to avoid going to a meeting with someone you're not sure about, or not going to places where something bad happened in your dreams. It would seem that all these are mere little things, but it is these little things that make up our life. And thanks to these decisions, she changes, obeying no one but you.
And for those fatalists who believe in the inevitability of fate, there is another piece of advice. They should not avoid their usual route for a run, meeting a person, or visiting certain places. They just need to be prepared for anything, not relax and keep their ears open. Deliberate movement towards what you see in a dream will prevent you from getting into a bad situation. It is worth combining vigilance and efficiency, and also be prepared for the fact that everything may not go according to plan. You do not escape your destiny, but follow it with a willingness to fight back against failure. This is called strength.
What do they pay attention to?
There is a popular belief that dreams do not always come true.
To understand whether it can come true, you need to take into account the position of the moon, the day of the week and the time of day. It is believed that:
- A prophetic dream can only occur at dawn.
- On Monday he gives the schedule for the week.
- What you dream about from Tuesday to Wednesday or from Thursday to Friday often comes true.
- A Sunday dream can only come true in the first half of the day. If you dreamed of something terrible, sit out the weekend at home and nothing bad will happen.
People involved in astrology believe that you need to pay attention to a nightmare you have had on the new moon, when energy information is laid down for the entire lunar month. 8, 12,13, 25 and 28 lunar days may bring important information that should be taken into account. Nightmares that occur at this time require cleansing ritual actions.
If a person does not suffer from an excess of emotions, leads a calm lifestyle and does not have mental problems, then he can consider some visions as prophetic. Usually the following events occur in them:
- Dead relatives may come in a dream - with reproaches, warnings of danger, words of gratitude.
- A monk can inform about the occurrence of an important event.
- A dreamed icon indicates a change in worldview.
- Water always indicates future changes.
- An attack by animals and reptiles signals upcoming quarrels and intrigues.
There is no need to be afraid of such dreams, they need to be taken into account and some steps must be taken so that they do not come true or the damage is much less. Many people avoid trouble when they perceive what they dreamed as important information and do not try to get rid of it, but use it in planning their day.
Dreams and their content have always excited the imagination of people, forcing them to look for a prediction of the future or a hint of a solution to current problems. Sometimes dreams are so vivid and exciting that they overshadow reality.
Anyone who sees them wakes up every morning with regret and waits all day - he can’t wait to plunge into the magical world of dreams again.
But other dreams also happen - difficult, unpleasant ones. Some of them leave a painful, sticky feeling of impending disaster. Others show people they know or love in impossible, strange, or dangerous circumstances. Still others are terrible nightmares, causing panic, irresistible horror and forcing you to wake up with a scream on your lips and a desperately beating heart. What to do if you had such a bad dream?
First you need to figure out why you had a bad dream. It often happens that an unpleasant dream has no mystical background and was the result of a completely material reason. For example, if you go to bed after a large, fatty dinner, there is a good chance of waking up in the morning from a terrible nightmare with the walking dead or unappetizing fauna.
An unventilated bedroom before bed, overly fluffy pillows and a stuffy nose can in a dream turn into a fall from a height, drowning in water or a desperate flight from hordes of terrible enemies.
Those who have worked themselves to the point of nervous exhaustion may continue to work while sleeping, or wander until exhaustion in a dark labyrinth, not finding a way out.
Often bad, disturbing dreams are experienced by people who are in a difficult situation from which they cannot find a way out. The brain continues to search for a solution to the problem even during rest, and the feeling of hopelessness gives rise to images that make sleep frightening or unpleasant.
Sometimes a person may not be aware of a change for the worse in any circumstances, but the subconscious mind registers every little thing and in a dream gives the consciousness a hint as to what to pay attention to.
So, sometimes poor sleep becomes a harbinger of illness. While awake, a person does not notice the body’s signals about the onset of the disease - he is busy with completely different things. However, at night, when the worries of the day fade away, the brain processes weak signals from the body and outputs them.
A similar mechanism can operate in the case when the one who sees the dream is a victim of deception or betrayal: the nuances in the behavior of a loved one are not registered by consciousness, but are obvious on a subconscious level, and the consequence of this is a “prophetic” dream.
However, often bad dreams are a common release of nervous tension or a change in hormonal levels in the body. Thus, women quite often experience unpleasant dreams as one of the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome. They are also common among those who have been in a stressful situation for a long time: this way the accumulated negativity is reset. These dreams are incoherent and illogical, their content is quickly forgotten.
About the benefits of scary dreams
All people, without exception, have horrifying dreams - this is a normal physiological phenomenon. It’s not for nothing that they were singled out into a separate category of sleep types. If terrible visions are not recurring and do not destroy the human psyche, to a certain extent they can be considered useful.
A nightmare experienced in a dream is a kind of preparation for dramatic events that can await a person in real life. He does not allow him to relax to the point of being completely unprepared for the blows of fate.
You should not take the terrifying vision literally; it is likely that the dream only revealed your fears, and nothing like this will happen in life.
Dreams (even the most terrible ones) are part of our “ego”, although not fully known, but not losing their significance because of this. We must live in accordance with our dreams: cognize, compare, penetrate into the mystery. You shouldn’t ignore the clues of fate, but you don’t need to get hung up on what you see. A terrible dream is not a death sentence; it can be “cancelled” by first extracting warning information from it.
We also recommend watching a video with recommendations on what to do if you have a bad dream:
Source
Overwork
Any overwork, physical or emotional, has a negative impact on all systems of our body. We try not to notice such conditions, we try in every possible way to drive away from ourselves all negative thoughts that it is time to rest, that the body cannot work for wear. But it is precisely these harbingers that should become the first bells in order to stop and take a break.
If we do not respond to our dark thoughts, the body begins to send other signals - illness, and due to weakened immunity, nightmares, as a sign of mental disorder.
What to do if you had a bad dream
✅ What to do if you had a bad dream and it doesn’t get out of your head, distracts you from work and spoils your mood.
❎ First you need to stop being upset and try to analyze it.
Vivid dreams filled with negative emotions foreshadow changes in life, and they are often positive.
Dreams are the work of the cerebral hemispheres, which process received impressions and some signals from the senses, which continue to function all the time. As a result of complex activity, the brain produces a video sequence that a person views at night.
Pregnancy
It is perhaps difficult to imagine a more inadequate person than a pregnant woman. Being in a sober mind and with a good memory, he can behave, at least, strangely.
Why do pregnant women have bad dreams, and how does this condition affect the relationship between mother and baby? This is quite explainable by changes in hormonal levels. The woman’s excessive impressionability during this period, her fears regarding the development of the baby and childbirth - all this leaves an imprint on the content of dreams.
Diseases and medications
An increase in body temperature can be a serious cause of nightmares. Moreover, this condition can lead the patient to hallucinations. The cause of a dream in which you are tormented by suffocation may be the notorious runny nose.
The same effects can be expected from some medications, especially antidepressants, barbiturates and narcotic substances. To find out the reason why you have bad dreams, read the instructions for the medications you are taking.
