The Who, What, When and Why's of Nightmares

All of us at one point in our lives have woken up shaking, crying, and or scared to death. You had just dreamed that someone was chasing you in a dark alley, or a monster came out from under your bed to attack you, or you just watched a scary movie and Freddy invaded your sleep, or even you had dreamed that someone close to you had died and you witnessed the incident. All of these and more are categorized under the horrific state of having a nightmare.

But what exactly are nightmares? Why do they happen? How can I stop them from happening?

I too have been a sufferer of nightmares over the last month and am very interested in these answers myself.

There are nightmares and night terrors. A nightmare is a dream occurring during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep that brings out feelings of strong, inescapable fear, terror, distress, anger, guilt, sadness, depression, or extreme anxiety. They typically occur in the latter part of the night and usually awaken the sleeper, who is able to recall the content of the dream. While you sleep, your brain goes through several sleep stages, during REM sleep, your eyes move back and forth under your closed eyelids and about every 90 minutes your brain switches between non-REM sleep and REM sleep. The longest periods of REM sleep occur towards morning. If you wake during this REM stage, it is easier for you to remember what you were dreaming about. That's why your most vivid dreams - and nightmares - occur in the early morning hours.

Night terrors occur during deep sleep in the first half of the night. Loud screaming and thrashing about are common, the sleeper is hard to awaken and usually remembers no more than an overwhelming feeling or a single scene, if anything. During night terrors people wake up sweating heavily. They are unaware of their surroundings and unresponsive to attempts to comfort them. They may not calm down for 10 or 15 minutes, although they return to sleep quickly once the episode ends. Generally they do not remember what scared them, but rarely a person will retain a vague image of something terrifying.