How are dreams formed?

Why do people dream? At present, the physiological and psychological mechanisms of dreams have not been completely solved scientifically, but two things are very certain: First, external stimuli can cause dreams. For example, some scholars used to pour ice water on sleepers and wake them up with flashes and sounds. The results show that the proportion of these three stimuli programmed into dreams is 42%, 23% and 9% respectively. The second is thinking during the day and dreaming at night. Many scientists who study the content of dreams have found that dreams often attach importance to daytime experiences. From these two conclusions, we can easily find that as a nightmare, there are at least two reasons for its formation:

1. Some undiscovered diseases have occurred in the body. Generally speaking, the occurrence of organic diseases always has certain symptoms. However, in the early stage of the disease, because the stimulus information of the disease is weak, and in the awake state, because other strong stimulus information is quite weak, at this time, the weak stimulus of the disease can cause the excitement of the cerebral cortex, thus causing various morbid horror feelings in dreams.

2. Strong emotional depression during the day. An American psychologist once reported an example: a woman often dreamed that huge waves pushed her to the sea, while others were far away from her. She is always too scared to shout "help". Psychologists know through investigation that this woman has a heavy burden of work and housework, and often feels invincible, but she is unwilling to ask people around her for help. The sinister scene in the dream is a special description of the difficulties in her life. The psychologist told her that as long as she could get rid of the tension and depression in her life, the nightmare would say goodbye to it.

Therefore, in order to get rid of the nightmare, the following three points are worth noting:

1, stay optimistic.

2. Eliminate contradictions and conflicts.

3. Change the thinking of dependence.

Why should we "thank" nightmares?

Some dreams are obviously different from ordinary dreams, such as nightmares of fear, such as dreaming about yourself in a dream, such as dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming, such as predicting the future dreams and so on. In this chapter, we talk about these dreams.

Nightmare Many people have encountered this situation in their dreams. Terrible enemies appeared in front of them, but they could not move. Your chest seems to be suffocating like a heavy thing. You're scared to death. You want to shout but you can't make a sound.

This is a nightmare.

The ancients imagined that nightmares were caused by elves and ghosts. There are many descriptions in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio about a person being crushed to death by a monster.

One of the stories is that the hero sees an ugly woman and a man in his bed, but he seems to be invisible. The woman asked the man who came with her to cut open his abdomen with a knife and take out his intestines. The pulled intestines are piled on that man, and the pressure is getting heavier and heavier. The man is getting more and more scared, but he can't move. Later, after a long struggle, he finally let out a cry and pushed the intestines pressed against his abdomen away. So these two people also disappeared.

This is a typical nightmare, but Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio regards it as a supernatural story.

It is also the plot in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. A man was taking a nap when it thundered outside. Suddenly, he felt that an animal had climbed up his foot and his foot was paralyzed. The animal climbed up his leg, so he couldn't move where he climbed. It seems that this animal is a special anesthetic. When it climbed to his waist, he caught the animal, only to find that it was a fox.

Of course, this is just a dream fox. However, when this dream spread as a true story, the more it spread to Pu Songling, it became a beautiful story of the fox.

From the perspective of dreaming time, nightmares can be divided into two categories, one is when we are asleep, and the other is when cadres are awake; The former is also called night terrors, and the latter is also called anxious dreams. But we don't have to be so clear.

Children have more nightmares than adults. On the one hand, because children can't distinguish between reality and imagination, they are more likely to be afraid. He is really worried about whether there will be tigers under the bed, or whether there will be ghosts with Bluetooth red tongue. On the other hand, children do have more worries. The most important thing is to be afraid that parents will no longer love them, which is extremely terrible for children.

Some children's nightmares are related to their experiences at birth. Studies have pointed out that premature delivery. Dystocia children are often accompanied by nightmares. For example, a 7-year-old child often dreams of swimming in the water. The snake wrapped around his neck and squeezed him desperately. He struggled painfully, panting after crying.

It turned out that the child was entangled in the umbilical cord at birth and almost suffocated.

This painful birth experience recurred in his childhood dreams. Children born with their heads clamped by pliers are also prone to relive this experience in nightmares. For example, a child who has seen the paintings of Journey to the West has nightmares. He is cursed and rolled in the water. He had such nightmares so many times that he was afraid to listen. Afraid to see anything related to the Monkey King or even Journey to the West. My analysis of my child and his parents shows that his nightmare is related to his painful experience at birth.

Teenagers' nightmares are often a manifestation of trying to get rid of their parents and gain independence. The terrible characters in teenagers' nightmares are often the embodiment of their parents. Think of your parents as terrible monsters and you can leave them. When weaning children, some mothers will put some peppers on their nipples to make them uncomfortable, so that children will eat instead of breastfeeding, which is beneficial to children. Children will be malnourished if they can't get rid of their attachment to milk. Similarly, teenagers should be weaned psychologically. They should stop depending on their parents for everything and be emotionally independent. So the dream "smears pepper powder" on the image of parents, which makes teenagers afraid of them and avoid them, which is also good for teenagers.

Legend has it that some monsters will eat their own children. If parents don't want their children to be independent, then they will be like that monster in a sense, thus becoming the monster in their dreams.

In the parent-child relationship, both parents and children are the contradiction between independence and non-independence. On the one hand, teenagers look forward to their independence, on the other hand, they are afraid of independence and responsibility, which is often subconscious. Therefore, teenagers are more likely to project their fears on their parents. On the other hand, parents expect their children to stand on their own feet. Autonomy is not willing to change the original child's attachment to himself. Of course, the latter is mainly subconscious, which parents themselves are unwilling to admit. So many teenagers' nightmares express their independent, fearful and deformed parents.

Legft gave an example of a nightmare:

A young man dreamed night after night that he had fallen into a huge and complicated machine and was about to be dismembered before waking up in a cold sweat. This machine is a combination of a thresher and a generator, which were common on his father's farm when he was a child.

It turned out that this dream showed that he and some people fell into the institution set up by his father and engaged in the career his father chose for him, which he had neither interest nor ability to do.

It can be seen that the solution to nightmares and general dreams is the same. But the event of "waking up from a nightmare" is not common in dreams. This matter is also meaningful. What happened in your dream when you woke up is the actual situation of the dreamer now. For example, the young man has been persuaded by his father, which shows in his dream that he fell into the machine and was not dismembered, indicating that things can still be saved. "Wake up" means that you suddenly wake up.

Nightmares are a warning at this time, warning you that a danger is approaching.

Among the nightmares of teenagers, there is another one, especially among men, which is related to the fear of castration. For example, there is a middle school boy who is 15 years old. For a period of time, he repeatedly dreamed that monsters or ghosts cut off his nose with a kitchen knife because his "nose is too high". This is a typical dream of castration and fear. The "big nose" in the dream is a symbol of penile erection.

Sometimes nightmares are memories of traumatic experiences. Experienced fire, earthquake, car accident or robbery. After rape, the victims of terror will dream about that scene again and again. This nightmare needs no explanation, it just reproduces something traumatic. Since it is so frightening, why do people dream about it again and again instead of forgetting it as soon as possible? This is because that matter has not been solved. A rape victim dreams of being killed again and again to remind herself, "You have to think again, why did this happen to you?" How can we ensure that this kind of thing won't happen again? How to deal with the danger? How will this affect your psychology? "These are all need to understand. As long as I don't understand, this nightmare will not disappear. Although the number of nightmares will gradually decrease with the passage of time, I don't know when it will appear again, just like a vicious dog lurking in my heart.

Here's an example:

The walls and ceiling of the room were painted white. In a vague consciousness, she wanted to say, "I hate it here." But she couldn't make a sound.

It's always like this here Even the fluorescent lamps clinging to the white slender ceiling and the white curtains stained with light brown pollution are, as always, chilling in silence.

She lay on the palm of her hand, feeling the hard table. There seems to be a thin cloth on the narrow table, and the roughness of the cloth is as usual. Originally she thought she knew everything here, but she was as nervous as coming to this room for the first time. She kept changing her eyes and grabbed the edge of the table anxiously. The surrounding walls are far away from her, and she lies alone in the middle of the spacious house, feeling inexplicable fear.

There is a voice in the distance. But a man or a woman can't hear what she is saying at all, but she can feel several people saying that the sound is spreading like waves. The sound, combined with the dazzling light in this white room, stimulated her senses. The sound reflected from the hard wall and wrapped her whole body. From time to time, the sound was mixed with a "click" metal crash. It seems that any subtle sound is magnified many times under the high ceiling, showing its existence with awe. Her hand was still clutching nervously, listening to the sounds around her. She felt neither cold nor hot, as if her temperature had spread all over the room.

After a while, the sound of slippers came from outside the room. Slippers clicked and passed under her feet from left to right. Her back suddenly felt her heartbeat, and the slightly warm air around her was so unbearable.

How long am I going to stay here? I don't want to stay in a place like this by myself. She knew that sweat had seeped from her forehead because of anxiety.

"What a nuisance!" By the time she made this clear, she had made up her mind to leave here. The sound like the waves disappeared, and the baby's eager cry occupied the space just now. It's like a signal. She slipped off the table, her brain was still paralyzed, and she didn't really feel like stepping on the floor. On the other hand, she didn't feel it until now. In fact, this room is much smaller than when she was lying down.

"I have to go back." She looked for an exit for herself. She walked hesitantly to the side of the wall, as if she knew from the beginning that it was natural to go there. I don't know when a sliding door appeared on that wall, but she didn't notice it when she was lying on the table. This sliding door is out of harmony with this white room and looks worn out. In the second half, a teapot was painted purple-blue, and she felt as if she had seen it somewhere. When she came to the sliding door, she looked around hesitantly, but there seemed to be no exit elsewhere. Maybe that's all she knows.

When she finally reached out and opened the sliding door, she suddenly remembered one thing, that is, every time she opened this Latin 7, something terrible would happen. This door can't be opened, and only this door can never be moved.

She suddenly felt fear. Why do you always stand in front of this sliding door? Why are there such shabby sliding doors here? This is outrageous! I really hate this sliding door. She stared at the yellow sliding door paper in front of her eyes and did not move. Even so, I said I hated my hands, but I rushed to the sliding door.

"No, I hate you." Fear and anxiety disturbed her breathing rhythm, and the yellowing sliding door seemed to tilt. The inexplicable terror made her stiff all over. "What the hell ... what the hell is this ..." She tried to shout in this hoarse voice.

Then, I don't know when the sliding door she didn't want to open opened. Although she felt the bulge on the threshold under her feet, she had to stand there.

In front of us is a flaming ocean.

The waves are quiet, and the thick dark bright red sea is in front of her eyes, which makes people feel that the sea with body temperature is at their feet.

She stood on the beach in the Red Sea and shed tears unconsciously. The despair of nowhere and the terror brought by the rolling Red Sea made her have no other reaction except crying.

It's the same every time. I can't go anywhere. It's over. It's over. There is a crying voice in the distance. After a while, when she realized that it was her own voice, her body suddenly shook. Her stiff body completely collapsed and she woke up. Tears flowed from the corner of my eyes, soaked my ears and even entered my ears. Dry tears made her skin collapse and her eyes burned. She knew her eyes were swollen from crying. My forehead and back are sweaty. She adjusted her breath and looked at the ceiling dully.

This is a dream described in the Japanese novel Happy Breakfast. The dreamer Mizuho Numata impulsively killed her pregnant classmate Tomoko and watched her bleed to death. After that, she seems to have forgotten the whole event, how Tomoko died, and what happened that day. This incident left her with a nightmare that was repeated over and over again until her destruction.

In addition to psychological reasons, physiological reasons can also lead to nightmares. For example, pressing your hand on your chest will affect your breathing, or diseases such as rhinitis, asthma and chronic bronchitis will affect your breathing, which will cause nightmares.

Stevenson's masterpiece Dr. Jaeckle and Mr. Hyde originated from the author's nightmare. This story, or this dream, describes a kind and noble Dr. Jaeckle who periodically becomes a cruel and tyrannical Mr. Hyde every night because of drinking experimental drugs. From Interpretation of Dreams, we can know that Dr. Jaeckle and Mr. Hyde are both authors. When a person is too strict with himself and not noble, he will suppress the parts of his heart that he thinks are not noble, and these parts will become particularly cruel because of being suppressed. During the day, the cruel man can't appear, but at night, he will appear and become Mr. Hyde.

People don't like nightmares, so how can we avoid them? Parents should never use intimidation to discipline their children. "If you don't listen, tell the old cat to go away!"

"Let the old man with white beard take your factory, which is a great threat to children.

This naturally makes "old cat" and "old man with white beard" become important roles in children's dreams.

For adults, it is to prevent nightmares in life. Don't deceive yourself, don't distort yourself, make yourself happy, and there will be no nightmares. When a nightmare appears, remember its warning and use it to inspire and solve problems in life, and the nightmare will disappear.

We should also be grateful for nightmares, because they can help us escape from them in real life.