Nightmares :: essays research papers

Nightmares   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Usually when you end up drifting off to sleep, you fall into a deep sleep and begin to experience a so called dream.† However, most children, and even some adults, experience some even more terrifying so called dreams. These dreams are called nightmares. Nightmares have been occurring in people’s sleep for hundreds of years. People have been interested in them for centuries and they have quite an interesting past to them. People used to believe that the dream anxiety attack was caused by a demon pressing up against a person’s chest during their sleep. They were even considered as a form of black magic, evil affiliation, and even sometimes possession. The sleep cycle comes in a multi-stage cycle. All in all there are five cycles. The first four of the stages is where there is non-rapid eye movement (NREM). As the fifth stage occurs, that is where rapid eyes moment (REM) happens. Nightmares almost always occur in the second half of a persons sleep and it is always followed with an awakening of the individual even if the person doesn’t remember waking up during the night. Nine times out of ten, when people’s brain can’t handle what is going on during the rapid eye movement stage, they wake up very panically and are also very aware of their surroundings. Nightmares are mostly referred to as being a younger persons trouble but you will find that a lot of adults have the problem of nightmares also. The children’s nightmare is very different than the adult’s because the adult’s nightmare is based on the persons fears such as being chased or attacked. The children’s nightmare is more of a fantasy nightmare. Anyone that has a high fever before they go to bed is more likely to suffer from a nightmare. Rapid eye movement will usually wake a person up if they can sense that something bad is going to happen. Most of the time when one has a nightmare, will wake up right before some really bad will happen. the most popular nightmare is when you are actually falling from something that is very high up in the air. It always ends by you waking up right before you are about to hit the ground. It is been proved that no matter how many nightmares that one person will have, not one single nightmare will be exactly the same as any of the others.