Night Terrors

It is terribly upsetting to the parent of a child whom experiences a nightmare. You may try to reassure them, but it is usually the problem that you can't even understand them. Our adult instinct is to rationalize; to assure the child of the difference between the fear they feel and the real world. But how helpful is this? First it is useful to understand the nature of nightmares, how they occur, and what they mean. It is also useful to explore the models we can teach our children in order to best help them with this persona.

As unsettling as it is to see our children struggle with the fears of a nightmare, imagine a more complex form. To see your child awaken soon after sleep has set in and physically experience a terrifying aspect of sleep can be far more disturbing. Night Terrors are a dynamic sleep disorder experienced in the early hours of sleep. To understand this disorder we must first look at how it is different from the more common and less explosive nightmare. In the same way that we try to understand nightmares we must look at night terrors. By understanding the biological reasons and causes of night terrors we can then understand more about them and why they happen. This information while useful to parents is not always as reassuring as the methods they can use to help their child return to bed and enjoy a restful night sleep.

Personal Interests:

The specific topic of nightmares and night terrors deemed to be very intriguing to me. The reason that it was so interesting was because as a child I was plagued by such occurrences on a nightly basis. I would either wake up shaking or screaming with my sheets soaked right through. As I grew older the bad dreams went away and I grew out of them. It wasn't until I had another night terror about two months ago that I started to really think about them again. I woke up about one hour after going to bed to find myself at the bottom the bed screaming at the top of my lungs. When my girlfriend asked me what was wrong I simply replied "Nothing, why?" As I was lying there thinking of what had happened moments before my heart was racing at a rapid pace and my body was shaking in terror. Minutes later the visions begin to reappear in my head. And I begin to remember why I was so frightened. Some people when waking have no memory of the events that had just followed. All they are aware of is the fear that is still inside them. For me and many others unfortunately it is not this simple.

The really important thing is the fact that my girlfriend would let me explain to her what my dream was all about. She wouldn't sit there and tell me that my dreams weren't real because to me they were. How can you possibly explain reality to someone right after they felt a board crushing down on them? My girlfriend realized how scary and real these dreams were to me and she would help me cope with the realism. She would tell me to picture whatever it was that scared me in my head and then she would tell me to make the scary thing disappear. By doing this my girlfriend gave me a way to fight against it all. Saying that scary things are not real to children or even adults for that matter is pointless; they thrive on the boogie man in their closet or the ogre under their bed. By believing with them and showing them how to fight the bad you are helping the person to feel safer and less frightened of going to bed and dreaming.

What is a Nightmare?

Nightmares have quite an interesting past to them. "Nightmares have fascinated us for centuries. From Antiquity through to the late 18th century, it was commonly thought that the dream anxiety attack was caused by a demon pressing upon the chest of a person during sleep." (Anch et al, 1988, pg. 227) Nightmares were even considered to be signs of black magic, evil affiliation, or even possession. These dreams mainly consisted of, being chased down or hunted, threatened by old witches, vampires and other dark characters, and even variations of everyday waking activities. (Hadfield, 1954) So it seems that nightmares are not just common to our era, but are as old the function of sleeping itself. Maybe the only thing that is changing is the content of what we find scary in our specific time period.

Our sleep cycle occurs in a multi-stage format in which there are five stages altogether. The first four stages of sleep are that of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) while the fifth stage occurs in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. "They are dream experiences of a frightening nature, occurring usually in the second half of the night, in a REM sleep stage, and ending with our waking up with a start." (Borbely, 1986, pg. 58) Usually when a person awakens from this type of REM nightmare they are oriented and aware of their surroundings. This can be related to the fact that REM sleep is not as deep of a sleep as NREM sleep, therefore the person is not as drowsy and is more functionally alert.

Now we must ask ourselves what causes nightmares to occur. We mainly relate nightmares to children and them waking up crying in the middle of the night. "Dream anxiety attacks are quite common during childhood, apparently reflecting normal development conflicts and concerns during childhood." (Anch et al, 1988, pg. 227) This relates to children as well as adults. "The general adult themes involve fears, such as being chased or attacked. The person experiencing the nightmare often has physical sensations." (Anch et al, 1988, pg. 227) There is a theme suggested here where what we dream is related to our surrounding environment and what events are occurring in our lives. "In particular, nightmares occur following significant real events in life that are psychologically painful, such as a death in the family or being the victim of an assault. Nightmares are also involved with physical illness, which includes high fever." (Anch et al, 1988, pg. 227) It also suggests that we can sense physically what is happening during this parasomnia sleep.

Why is it that are bodies sense these dream occurrences? "The lesser intensity of the REM anxiety dream may be at least partially explained by the fact that during REM the physiological activation provides a buffer which prevents extreme terror." (Arkin et al, 1978, pg. 533) This physical movement also helps the body awaken to avoid the nightmare altogether and awaken the dreamer. "The nightmare provokes a retaliatory response, both in dream content and in actual physical movement. The resulting body movement is usually sufficient to cause an awakening." (Anch et al, 1988, 227) Therefore it seems that even though our mind is putting us through a nightmare the dreaming is helping us fight against the scary situation by giving us physical