Extended Inquiry: Nightmares and night terrors

By: T Cole April 2014 English 1102-107

Cold sweat, tossing and turning, heart throbbing and then you rise from the grave that is your bed to only realize it was just a dream. But are these bad dreams just harmless dreams? It turns out that some of these particular dreams are actually nightmares or in severe cases nightterrors, which cause the brain to undergo much stress while your body and mind attempts to rest and rejuvenate. The proceeding research hales from reputable sources of doctors and experienced professionals alongside my opinions and interpretation of certain events. Anyone who believes they have experienced a nightmare or night terror or any parent of a child who has had these experiences would find this to be very relative and informing. According to the International Association of the Study of Dreams, ninety percent of people who have nightmares are from ages three to eight years old. Another eight percent is accredited to adolescents between the ages of twelve and sixteen with the remaining two percent going to the adults. These nightmares consist of any state of sleep where after several hours of sleep you begin to become restless and the mind begins to portray a hallucination of a stressful or fearful nature. On the more severe end of these nightmares are night terrors Doctor Patricia Garfield says, In children, this disorder is technically referred to as pavor nocturnus, from one to five percent of all children have at least one attack of night terrors. In these extreme conditions the child is in a deep sleep in within the first two hours of sleep they fall into a deep sleep that controls their mind and body to do numerous things that they will not recall performing because there mind is still in a technical sleep mode. Doctor Garfield also states that, In adults, the equivalent experience to night terrors is called incubus, from a Latin word meaning, to lie upon. This term is based on the ancient notion that a demon or evil spirit possesses the victim during the night. Although the actual possession of a human is still largely debatable from one person to the next, this condition is very

real. It has all the same signs and symptoms as a child but most adults also report a feeling of crushing weight on their chest or head. Victims of night terrors often have relatives who suffer from the same disorder; 14 percent of first-degree relatives also had attacks. Many people who have other disorders of arousal also have night terrors; for instance, 33 percent of sleepwalkers and 16 percent of bed-wetters also experience night terrors. Similarly, 94 percent of people with night terrors also walk in their sleep (Garfield,NightTerrors). Now not many people experience these night terrors regularly but the list of common occurrences with night terrors listed above are seen regularly particularly in children (Garifield,NightTerrors). While Doctor Garfield and the collective professional of IASD believe the age range pertaining to these such sleeping patterns and events is almost exclusive to children between three and eight I believe the range is much greater. Being a college student there are many things that I learn on regular basis, but I do believe myself and nearly everyone you speak with can tell you personally or through an acquaintance of someone who has nightmares regularly beyond the age of eight years old. Particularly women in our society who have a growing fear of being alone in certain situations do to the media portrayal of crimes involving woman and even movies where the innocent woman is victimized by a fictional or non-fictional monster. Yet most of the common fears women experience are be traced back to childhood or even sharing key points with a child experiencing a similar nightmare. Through my research nobody can give a definitive answer, they all seem to contradict and vary in opinions across the board. So in my opinion I believe that the women in society today who experience nightmares on a regular basis could be paralleled to a child going through a similar experience. Some women and children share a similar perspective on reality and this is my logic to why they would share so many subconscious experiences. The most prime example between the

two would be a woman at the age of nineteen or twenty who is in college and a five or six year old in the bedroom down the hall from their parents. While both of these live day to day very different walks of life, they share many common fears. Being afraid of the dark and needing protection tend to be the most common of fears between the two according to Harvard Mental Health. For women it is a man lurking in the darkness around a corner, for a child it is a monster hiding somewhere in their room. Both of these cause a large amount of mental stress on the suffering party which could easily cause nightmares. With that being said; after a traumatic firsthand experience whether the individual is the victim or just an eye witness the trauma can cause the brain to replay the experience and many other malicious both fictional and nonfictional events. Although through different studies done by different academic and medical professionals there is no clear answer if nightmares inflict damage to every person they affect, in one study done by IASD it is said that nightmares are just dreams to which a person needs to alter their perspective. Where in the same article it is discussed that if frequent they can cause a list of other mental and physical ailments most commonly anxiety, which is commonly referred to as the ignition to many other self-inflicted stressors because an individual becomes obsessed.

Works Cited Garfield, Patricia . "Nightmares And What To Do About Them." International Association for the Study of Dreams. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. <http://creativedreaming.org/medialibrary-2/childs-dreams-and-nightmares--patricia-garfield.pdf>. Harvard Mental Health Letter. "New Releases." <i>Childrens fears and anxieties</i>. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. &lt;http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Childrens_fears_and_anxieties.htm&gt;. IASD. "Nightmare Frequently Asked Questions." International Association for the Study of Dreams. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. <http://www.asdreams.org/nightmare-faq/>. Punamki , Raija-Leena. "Dreaming Articles Online from the journal of the Association for the Study of." Dreaming Articles Online from the journal of the Association for the Study of. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. <http://asdreams.org/journal/articles/pukamamaki94.htm>.