How to Stop Bad Dreams

Tap to Read ➤ Bidisha Mukherjee

If you want to know how to stop bad dreams, then read this story. Here, we are discussing some simple techniques that can help you out of this problem.

A bad dream gives you strong negative feelings of fear, anxiety, and distress. When you wake up from a bad dream, you can feel its physical effects as well, such as rapid heartbeat or excessive sweating. All of us have experienced it once in a while, but there are people who get bad dreams or nightmares regularly.

The most commonly observed causes of bad dreams are anxiety and stress. Major traumatic events of life, sleep disorder, excessive consumption of alcohol, side effect of medicines, alcohol withdrawal, etc., are the other possible causes. Let's talk about how to stop this in children and adults.

How to Help Kids With Bad Dreams

Bad dreams in small children are quite common, as they often get up screaming or crying in the middle of the night. Here are a few steps that can help your child to deal with bad dreams:

✦ Before bedtime, make your child feel safe and secured. Children have a fear of darkness, so put on the night lamp to assure them that they do not have to sleep in total darkness.

Keep their favorite stuffed toy on their bed. This can act as a support as they feel that they are not alone while sleeping. ✦ Make it a ritual that they say a small prayer before going to bed. This will inspire them to keep happy thoughts in their mind when they go to sleep.

✦ When children wake up with a bad dream, parents must provide them with adequate comfort. Calm them down with a warm hug and assure them that you are there for support. Rubbing your hand on their back shows physical assurance of your presence.

✦ Make your child speak up about the dream, as it will help to ease off their tension to a great extent. Listen to him/her very seriously and without getting judgmental. In other words, never make fun of the monster story that they are trying to tell you. This may hurt their sentiments and next time onwards they may not share their fears with you.

✦ Finally, when your child calms down, show him/her that in reality they are absolutely safe and there is nothing scary around them. Look around the nearby areas, like under the bed and inside the closet, that no unwanted things are hiding in any part of their room.

How to Get Rid of Bad Dreams

"How can I stop bad dream"' is quite a common query among many adults too. In fact, around 50% of adult people get disturbing dreams at one point of time or the other. For some unknown reason, women have more bad dreams than men. Here are some tips you can use if you are facing the same problem:

✦ Fix a specific bedtime for yourself and strictly maintain that under all circumstances. That means you must go to sleep at a certain time every night. At the same time, you must get up in the morning at a specific time every day.

✦ Stop watching television one hour before your bedtime, as a scary movie or some sad news on TV can influence your thoughts and stimulate bad dreams. Rather, spend the last one hour of the day with some pleasant thoughts. Never mind even if those thoughts belong to your fantasy world and are slightly weird for real.

✦ If you get nightmares very often, then you must analyze them. Write down every detail about the nightmare that you can remember. Then, try to figure out the cause by trying to analyzing your dream. If you think it is triggered by stress or anxiety, then talk to your friends or relatives about it. This will ease off the tension in your mind.

✦ Keep yourself stress free. Meditating just before you sleep is a great way of relaxing the mind. You can also reverse count from 100 to 0 with a focus on your breathing. Regular aerobic exercises also help you to control mental stress.

✦ Eliminate the external factors that can cause nightmares. Avoid excessive consumption of alcohol. If you suspect that you are getting bad dreams after starting any new medicine, then talk to your doctor about it.

So, these tips will help you get rid of your nightmare problem and sleep peacefully every night.