If you have experienced a traumatic event, for example an attack, accident or disaster, such as an earthquake, you may find that your dreaming mind recalls the horror of that event but as time passes the nightmares tend to become less intense. In general, they have little meaning other than your memory of it and are an attempt by your dreaming mind to help you deal with the original horror. Post-traumatic stress nightmares are usually different from other nightmares as the content of the dream will closely resemble a traumatic event that happened in their waking lives.
POWs from World War II and concentration camp survivors have been known to suffer post-traumatic stress nightmares for up to fifty years after the event. Unlike ‘normal’ nightmares, these dreamers can experience significant physical symptoms during REM sleep and non-REM sleep, such as an increase in respiration and heart rate, muscle twitches and more than one arousal. Adults might experience other traumatic events in their lives, such as the loss of a loved one or bankruptcy, and these events can also continue to play out in dreams over the years in the form of nightmares. The more standard anxiety nightmare dreamers, however, have nightmares that relate to work, school or relationship stresses. The threat here isn’t to your life but to your self-confidence and sense of self.
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