Why do I have dreams and nightmares

After unveiling the mystery of dreams, let’s discuss why people dream, and why some dreams are melancholy, some are thrilling, some are fearful, and some are happy.

Scientific research has shown that dreams are composed of some abstract things organically. There are many triggering factors, mainly as follows:

1. Brain activity The electronic activity in the brain during dreaming is very obvious. The transmission of energy and images in the brain is guided by a network of nerve cells. The basic materials of the brain constitute an electronic wave network, and the electronic wave network is composed of capacitors (electric storage) and transistors (electric channels).

Physical activity during sleep is greatly reduced, the frequency of breathing is reduced to half of that of wakefulness, and the frequency of heartbeat activity is also reduced to 40% to 70% of that of wakefulness. Metabolism and blood pressure are also greatly reduced. But according to the department of Harvard Medical School

Scientists say that even in deep sleep, the brain's electrical nerve cell activity is only reduced by 5% to 10%!

Even though the electrical nerve cells are only reduced by 5% to 10%, some special parts of the brain are still more affected. The most affected parts are those that manage attention, learning, information combination and memory. During sleep, the temporal activity of these parts is reduced by 50%, but during the rapid eye movement phase, they stop moving completely.

In the waking state, the learning, memory, and attention centers in the deep cerebral cortex are all actively working, and the information received by the brain is classified as important or insignificant, and at the same time, the information is allocated to memory resources accordingly.

The amount of information entering the brain always exceeds our brain's conscious ability to process each individual piece of information in different categories. Therefore, memory resources are allocated according to the urgency of a particular moment. At any given moment, the brain has the ability to acquire relevant memories in order to judge the importance of the situation at that time.

2. Recombination of reality One of the most common characteristics of dreams is that it recombines reality to transform a weird reality. In a relatively single, coherent dream, your brain may conceive this scenario: your two acquaintances have become married partners, and they are traveling in a foreign country. Although they are both your acquaintances, they are two Renbi

This is a stranger. There may be some reason for all of this to be connected, but obviously this reason is not obvious.

Because a dream is like a mosaic floor, you should observe the picture in the dream on a larger scale: Why do things that seem to be irrelevant appear in the same dream? Maybe their coexistence in the dream is actually not weird.

3. Mental anxiety In stressful sleep, the anxiety caused by a highly stressful lifestyle and sleep interruption has not been proved to be inevitable; but it is certain that the anxiety that people face when they are awake will definitely manage Enter their sleep. In fact, the many images and emotions included in most of your dreams are designed to eliminate your anxiety when you are awake as much as possible.

However, it is not easy to predict who will have excessive dream anxiety. Perhaps you can expect that a person who is obviously restless will have more nightmares, but this has not been confirmed, and it is likely that the opposite is true. In fact, some people who are more likely to experience stressful sleep and dreams are often those who hide their inner anxiety when they are awake. These people often have a personality that is too sensitive to intrusions and threats. They are seen as people with relatively fragile personalities. You often encounter such people. On the surface, they are gentle and calm, but they are the most anxious people in dreams.

4. Body reaction In addition to the mental reality in the dream, there may also be a material reality. It is this material reality that causes the material reaction of the lying and sleeping body. For example, people often dream that when they are lying in bed, something comes to them and squeezes their arms. Some people say that because they feel a certain smell in their sleep, although this is very rare. Others say that the feeling of pain is part of their dreams. These feelings often appear in the early stages of the dream state.

Usually, people's physical feelings when dreaming do not enter the life after waking up from the dream. For example, if you dream of falling from a tree and breaking your leg, you experienced pain in the dream; however, after waking up, it is unlikely that you will feel the residual pain in your leg.

In addition to being related to the organic combination of abstract things, dreaming is also related to changes in the dreamer's emotions. Because people have seven emotions and six desires when they know the things around them and interact with others, they often show corresponding feelings, and the corresponding feelings will trigger corresponding dreams.

Regarding this point, our country has noticed it a long time ago. The famous philosopher Wang Chong of the Han Dynasty

In the analysis of the reason, it is believed that dreaming at night is not caused by ghosts and gods, but transformed from psychological activities during the day. Since people often miss something when they are awake, full of certain imagination or hope, they will dream about the things they miss or the things in their imagination when they sleep. Wang Chong summed up these as "mind thinking and thinking". dream. He said in "Lun Heng? Ding Ghost Chapter":

"The essence of the husband's thoughts can be vented to the eyes, or to the mouth, or to the ears. When venting to the eyes, you see its shape; venting to the ears, hearing its sound; venting to the mouth, talking about it. Day and day If you see a ghost, you will hear it if you sleep at night. If you are in a single bedroom, if you are afraid, you will dream that your wife will cry according to her body."

We can know from his dream examples that the so-called mindfulness includes various emotional factors such as joy, anger, sorrow, joy, sorrow, and terror. Nian is also longing. "Shuowen" says: "Reading, think often." Essence is focused, hard thinking, that is, longing is very precise, deep, specialized, and deeply missed. Thinking, on the one hand, refers to always thinking about something, a certain situation, or a certain emotion that is always bothering oneself; on the other hand, it also contains a certain thought, imagination, and a certain emotional feeling is stored in memory. o

We can experience that dreams are sometimes related to changes in the mood of the day or recently, and sometimes they are related to changes in mood long ago.

There is no doubt that this is due to past emotional changes being stored in memory.

Emotional changes cause dreaming, which can be caused by normal emotional changes or excessive emotional changes. In addition, excessive emotional changes are more likely to cause dreaming than normal emotional changes. Therefore, when Chen Shiyuan discussed the dream of "excessive emotion", he said: "If you are too happy, you will have dreams, if you are too angry, you will be closed. If you are too afraid, you will hide in your dreams. If you are too worried, you will have dreams. Excessive surprise will result in mad dreams. This dream of overflowing emotion can be deduced by analogy." The so-called “excessive emotion” refers to excessive emotional changes. Chen Shiyuan divides dreams into several categories, such as qi, qi deficiency, body stagnation, and emotion, and named the dreams caused by changes in emotions as "the hair of emotions." The impact is also different. The ambition of joy is the emotional experience that arises when a person pursues and achieves the desired goal. When the mood of joy fluctuates, you will feel happy, the whole body is relaxed, and the qi and blood can be tuned. Therefore, the "Suwen? Li Pain Theory" says: "If you are happy, you will have Qi and Zhida, and Yingwei Tongli." Time can also be seen in dreams. Sometimes the joy in dreams is caused by the happy feelings of waking, and it is the continuation of the happy feelings of waking.

From Xizhimeng, it can be a happy dream or the opposite dream. Chen Shiyuan once cited dreams such as "If you have a marriage, you will cry in a dream", and "Celebrate, you will dream of a fierce suit." to illustrate that a happy mood and joy do not necessarily lead to joyful dreams; but in most cases , Dreaming because of joy, and most of its dreams are joy dreams.

Dreams caused by anger often show that they are also suppressed in the dream; or they take measures that cannot be taken when they are sober. Chen Shiyuan said in "Meng Zhanyi Zhi": "If you are angry, you will close your dreams." If you are happy, you will dream of flowers blooming, and if you are angry you will dream of thousands of flowers withered. In life, there are often such dreams. When a person encounters something in society that makes him angry and unable to do anything, he will take certain measures in the dream.

Dreams from worries are sometimes related to the things you worry about. If there is a rich man surnamed Yin, rich and powerful, but when he goes to bed, he "dreams about being a servant. If you move forward and work, you can do everything; you can count on the sticks and tarts." This may be related to his constant fear of losing his own. Valuable status is related. Sometimes you may dream of something that is very satisfactory, because people are disturbed, and you want to go smoothly. This kind of mood is often realized in the dream.

From sadness to dreams, sometimes dreams are related to the cause of sadness. For example, a patient suffered a car accident shortly after her husband died.

When she died, she was very sad, depressed and puzzled, so that she was depressed, taciturn, and could not sleep all night. When she closed her eyes, she would dream of her lost husband and son. Chen Shiyuan believes that excessive sorrow leads to dreams of salvation. This may be related to the dreamer's disillusionment, loss of confidence, and desire to be rescued.

Dreams from thinking, their dreams are often related to the content of thinking. As the saying goes, "Thinking about day and dreaming at night". Du Fu's famous lines "The old man enters my dreams and remembers how I look forward" and "I dream of the monarch frequently for three nights, and see the love of the emperor in love", which reflects Du Fu's longing for his friend Li Bai. Dreaming of drinking water when being thirsty, eating in the dream when being hungry , dreaming of seeing a doctor when being sick, and dreaming of being released. Although the dreams are different, they are related to their own thoughts. Of course, dreams are bizarre. Sometimes they are like a naughty elf. Not everything you think can be seen in a dream. "If you want to sleep alone in a dream, you will find it in a dream, but the dream will not be a lamp and it will be exhausted." It can be seen that thinking is a dream, which can be expressed as a variety of dreams.

Dreams caused by fear can be expressed as dreams of fear. Chen Shiyuan said in "The Purpose of Dreaming and Restoration": "If you are too scared, you will hide in dreams", which means that you hide in dreams because of fear. As fear of injury to the kidneys can affect the heart, it is often accompanied by heart palpitations. For example, a patient, because the bus hit a person when he was taking a bus to work, and the person died on the spot. The patient felt very scared.

I often feel heart palpitations, weak legs, dare not ride in the car, sleep well, close my eyes and dream, and most of the dreams I have are terrible, so that I often wake up from dreams, and still feel throbbing and restless after waking up.

Dreams caused by fright, most of their dreams are nightmares, and sometimes even make people afraid to fall asleep. This can also be seen from Zheng Xuan's comment on nightmares in the Han Dynasty. Nightmare is nightmare. Zheng Xuan said in his commentary: "Dreams in shock." He commented on the six dreams of "Zhou Li" from the reasons for the formation of dreams. He believed that the cause of the nightmares was caused by consternation.

For example, a woman who was suddenly frightened at night for more than 20 days after giving birth caused her heart palpitations, dizziness and fatigue. She was startled when she heard a sound. She was sweating all over and had difficulty falling asleep. She barely fell asleep after drinking a few tablets of tranquilizers. . Another example is Mr. XX, who was suddenly frightened when he was helping a friend to organize things, leading to a trance, often crying in grief, dizziness, chest tightness, and palpitations. There are many dreams at night, and most of what she dreams are terrible things. She often wakes up from fright, so that she does not dare to fall asleep. It is better to use the agent that nourishes the mind and calms the nerves and clears away heat and phlegm. This shows that shock can indeed cause dreams.

In short, there are many factors that trigger dreams, and the melancholic dreams, thrilling dreams, fearful dreams, and happy dreams are all about your emotions and psychology.