Blogpost # 1 :  Set foot in the Nightmare Realm

Everybody likes to sleep, but not everyone likes to have a nightmare. Back when I first had a nightmare I was really terrified my whole body froze, my breathing became heavier than normal then I wrapped myself with my blanket. I didn't sleep that night because of the fear that the nightmare will be back and haunt me again. but as I grow up not only my fear of nightmares disappeared but also I started to get a liking to it. Being obsessed with nightmares like me I had some positive and negative effects, the positive effects is that you will have less fears , your imagination will expand and you will be able to conquer your fears and on the other hand are the negative effects which is you may not be able to socialize, some people will call you scary and weird and you may not be able to differentiate reality from nightmares.

Now we’re going to define what a nightmare really means. A Nightmare is a dream that

Can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also

despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain some situations of danger,

discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress

and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time .Nightmares are just

psychological and behavioral imbalances that reminds us that we need to change something

 in order for them to go away. From the definition itself a nightmare is a bad thing but people

 often judge something without even getting a chance on knowing what they really are, so to understand them better we need to get to the beginning.

For us to know nightmares better we need to start on the question “why do we have nightmares or bad dreams and based on what I’ve read on Brie Cadman’s article entitled Six Reasons We Have Bad Dreams on the website divinecaroline gave me an answer that I have been  looking for.

According to Brie, there are six reasons on why we have bad dreams. First reason is anxiety

 and stress, often as a result of traumatic experiences in life, something that makes your

 heart pump, depression and seeing a terrible incident. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

 is also a common cause of recurrent nightmares. The second and third reasons are based on

 foods and the foods that give you nightmares are spicy and fatty foods. Because of the capsaicin  (the element that makes the chili spicy) it makes your temperature rise and the rising of temperature is one of the main causes of a nightmare. Eating fatty foods within the day  increases the quality and quantity of your sleep so it means that the more you sleep , you will get  a higher chance to get a nightmare. Fourth and fifth reasons are Alcohol and drugs,  Like eating fat foods , drinking alcohol increases the quantity of your sleep and it also increases the quantity of nightmares. As for the drugs, Some actually has a nightmare trigger for a side effect. For example the drug called ketamine is used for anesthesia  but may cause dream unpleasantness. The last reason in having a bad dream is because of illnesses such as fever and flu and they could  also trigger other sleeping disorders such as apnea and narcolepsy.

While reading through Brie Cadman's article she said that "While bad dreams and nightmares are considered normal responses in dealing with everyday experiences, the IASD recommends consultation with a therapist if they last in intensity and severity. But trying to eliminate these six factors first may be the best place to start in your quest to sweeten your dreams and chase the nighttime demons away." 

Well it's true that nightmares are considered normal responses in your everyday life because we sleep everyday and while we sleep, we are vulnerable to the nightmares that might bump into your dreams and she also said that  if you really have a serious case of nightmares it is probably the best decision to consult the doctor to check if there is something wrong with you. For me I like having a nightmare because it gives me an opportunity to conquer my fears and if I conquered that fear I will no longer be afraid of it and the nightmare behind it but majority of  people really want to have sweet dreams  for them to sleep comfortably because they don't know how to conquer their fears using nightmares or they really have a phobia on those kind of things.

After reading that article, I was enlightened because I love eating spicy and fatty foods at night and now I know the reason why I always have a nightmare but now it doesn’t really bother me anymore because I had a lot of experience dealing with nightmares I started to get a liking to it. So whenever I eat spicy foods at night I also get nightmares, it’s a win-win situation.

Again, browsing for interesting topics in nightmares I saw another article that got my attention, it's from livescience and it is an article with the title of 5 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams by Jeanna Bryner  and you could read it here at  In this article she didn’t directly mentioned how nightmares affected it but the articles that she wrote there can be connected to nightmares.

First is when she wrote that Violent Dreams Can be a Warning Sign, this means that a shocking nightmare that features some parts of your everyday life could somehow end up saving someone’s life or maybe even yours. Then next is that Night Owls has More Nightmares, they have more nightmares because  of the night owl’s sleeping habits and their hormone called cortisol that increases stress level and blood sugar, suppress the immune system and aid in fat and protein metabolism so the more stressful they are the more they sleep as for humans if we sleep more then there will be more possibilities to have nightmares. Then the last topic in Jeanna’s article that caught my eye is the topic that says You Can Control Your Dreams, well based on experience I am a lucid dreamer meaning I can freely control my dreams and nightmares into the way I like  but there are some down side to this because with you controlling everything on your mind will be swarming like bees and if you kind of thought of something that scares you its alright it will just pass by like nothing happened. She also connected gaming and lucid dreaming because if we are spending a lot of time in virtual reality then it’s like practice for lucid dreaming, she also stated that gamers are always used to controlling their game environments so that’s why they control their dreams as if they are controlling a video game character.

Jeanna Bryner also said in her article that ""Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." Jayne Gackenbach's past research has shown that people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams where they view themselves from outside their bodies; they were also better able to influence their dream worlds, as if controlling a video-game character." 
 
 As a gamer I experience lucid dream and even if all the things that scares me the most is in there, it just passes by . At first lucid dreaming is quite scary and you will just want to wake up if you panicked because of the swarming ideas in your thoughts that turns into your own reality. In lucid dreaming you are the main character and you create the game that you live in and that this dream is just like reality but better because you make your own rules.

 There are still many things that we don’t know about nightmares so don’t judge them just because of their bad reputation. There are still perks in having nightmares and it is never too late to like nightmares. Maybe someday, they might save your life.