Interesting story: Is the terrifying nightmare really an attack by demons and monsters?

The reason I bring up this issue again is that I experienced it again last night. The process was so horrifying and terrifying that I decided to dissect it again to reveal its true form and stop harming people.

process:

I haven't been sleeping well lately, and I tossed and turned again last night. I looked at my phone half asleep, and it was 23:39. I finally felt sleepy and was about to pass out. Suddenly I remembered that I was not ready yet, so I opened my eyes and adjusted myself.

But it was too late. My eyelids were heavy and hard to open. My whole body was unable to move because of my brain. I struggled hard and opened my eyes. Finally, they opened! But what caught my eye was a tall strange figure in front of the bed. It seemed to be looking at me carefully.
I was so scared that I screamed and punched the dark shadow with all my strength.

But my shouts were so weak, and my punches were so powerless, the shadow didn't retreat, but rushed towards me. Then I felt my body getting heavier and heavier, and I couldn't breathe, and countless claws stretched out to me in the surrounding space, pulling at my hands and feet, and every part of my body.

I struggled with my hands and feet, but it was useless. The feeling of falling into a devil's den kept gnawing at me. I suddenly realized that this was the nightmare I had experienced in the past, just a bad dream, and as long as I struggled to wake up, everything would disappear.

I had to struggle harder, kicking and beating the monsters that tried to invade me while trying to open my eyes. Finally, I seemed to have opened my eyes!

However, what I saw was a weird image. There were dots of strange and fantastic lights everywhere in the room. Some words kept appearing in the weird lights, which seemed to be clear but not clear, and it was incomprehensible. Along with these phantoms, there were also bursts of strange chattering and laughing. Those devils were still hiding in every corner!

I suddenly thought of my wife next to me and asked her for help. I shouted to her: Save me, turn on the light! I pulled and pushed her with my hands, trying to wake her up. But she kept hiding from me and away from me. I held her fingers and suddenly felt that they were not the hands I was familiar with, but more like toes.

I wanted to pinch her to wake her up, but I felt a toe was pinched off! I touched her again and it seemed that I touched three feet, and another toe was pulled off!

At this time, she had already slid under the bed. Suddenly, a hand stretched out from under the bed, and it stretched longer and longer, grabbing me! This was not a human hand at all, but like a poisonous snake that was getting longer and longer! I realized that it was not my dear wife, but the incarnation of the devil.

I tried my best to avoid the hand and shouted: Help!

Suddenly, consciousness returned to my body and I woke up. I opened my eyes decisively. The room was still dark, with only the indicator lights of the air conditioner and TV box outlining the general outlines of the objects in the room, and the faint light of the indicator lights reflected on my walnut lacquered closet. There were no unpredictable words, no weird shouts or laughter, and except for the slight hissing sound of the air conditioner outlet, everything was so quiet and warm.

I checked my phone and it was almost 1am. Did this nightmare last for a full hour? I don't think so. Maybe I didn't fall asleep before midnight.

Next to me was my wife's gentle and even snoring, she was sleeping soundly. When I woke up, I was still in the same position as before I fell asleep: lying on my back slightly to the right, with one hand on my chest, not moving at all because of the struggle of the nightmare, and my roaring must have been just an indistinct dream talk.

It turns out that all of this was just a dream, just like erotic dreams, good dreams, bad dreams, and nightmares. Nightmares are also completely abnormal images of the chaotic thought struggles that are not usually present in one's mind. This kind of consciousness is called subconscious by scientists.

The subconscious mind is locked in a corner of the brain when we are conscious. Only when the brain cells that manage the conscious mind are in a dormant state, the door that closes the subconscious mind will gradually open, and the subconscious mind will slip out and start to stir up trouble.

Nightmares occur when the subconscious mind cannot wait to squeeze out when the waking consciousness has not yet completely fallen asleep. When the waking consciousness wants to fight against the subconscious mind, the remaining waking consciousness cells are extremely weak and cannot fight against the powerful subconscious mind, which leads to this terrifying experience.

The subconscious is actually also memory fragments of people's feelings and experiences in life, but these fragments are broken and distorted. They are the accumulation of people's yearning, pursuit, hope or worry about life deep in their hearts. When the waking consciousness is dormant, these subconscious will appear in various dreams or nightmares. Because the subconscious is fragmented and distorted, most of the dreams we have are chaotic.

From ancient times to the present, many people do not understand the reasons for dreams, and thus have come up with many strange theories, believing that dreams can predict a person's fortune or misfortune. As a result, ancient books such as "The Interpretation of Dreams by Zhou Gong" are regarded as holy books by many people, and have become the theoretical basis for feudal superstition, divination and fortune-telling, which have harmed countless people for money and lives.

In the books on dream interpretation, it is believed that dreams are warnings about people's future destiny. Some people believe that dreams have the opposite meaning, such as getting rich means losing money, losing money means getting rich, rising water also means getting rich, getting benefits means losing, and dreaming that the sky is red or even the whole world is red seems to be a good omen, but in fact it means a bloody disaster, etc.

However, there are also people who believe that dreams are warnings. For example, dreaming about being hit on the head, encountering disasters while traveling, bleeding from all seven orifices, being chased by people, etc., may indicate a bloody disaster. Dreaming about pain in a certain part of the body, unsteady walking, difficulty breathing, being burned by fire, etc., indicates certain diseases, etc.

However, these dream analysis books (in fact, many of them cannot be called books, but just a patchwork of garbage texts full of typos) often contain contradictions. The same dream may have multiple interpretations, or even exactly opposite ones. Anyway, they will do whatever makes them seem self-consistent.

More than a hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian psychiatrist, psychologist and founder of psychoanalysis, analyzed dreams from a scientific perspective. His far-reaching masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams, has become one of the most important textbooks in modern university psychology.

In this masterpiece published in 1900, Freud attributed dreams to the release of the subconscious mind, which is a manifestation of "understanding the subconscious psychological process". He introduced dreams into the concept of the self and extended it to psychology, thus interpreting the manifestation of human subconsciousness in dreams. Freud's theory of the subconscious mind is very complicated, so I will not elaborate on it here.

Since dreams are the subconscious response of people's life feelings, and are presented in dreams, there are of course some positive and some negative. For example, if you can fly in a dream, it means that you always want to improve your skills, and it would be great if you can fly. It cannot be realized in reality, but it is realized in dreams; if you feel pain and discomfort in a dream, it means that you are worried about your body, or you may really have such illness in your daily life; if you dream of picking up money or pie falling from the sky, it means that you usually want to make a fortune, or your stock trading business is not going well and you always want to get it back; and losing money means you are worried about the safety of your property, etc.

Now let's talk about nightmares. I am an atheist and I don't believe in the existence of ghosts and gods in this world, but atheism is rational. In emotional life, the darkness that we usually fear and the horror described by people or portrayed in movies, etc., will also exist in our subconscious mind. Once they encounter an opportunity, they will slip out to create nightmares and bad dreams.

So, it’s not that atheists don’t have nightmares. I’ve had them several times since I was a child.

Once when I was still a minor, I was sleeping in a hotel with my parents. I was also half asleep and half awake when I suddenly saw a black shadow floating towards me quickly from a distance, and then pounced on me. The dreams that happened afterwards were similar and extremely frightening. It happened again when I was a teenager. By then I already knew the scientific explanation for nightmares, so I was not so scared anymore.

After that, I tried my best to avoid the conditions that might cause nightmares, and this kind of thing hasn't happened for many years, until last night.

Many people who have experienced nightmares have similar feelings in their dreams. This is because the causes of nightmares are similar and they are a manifestation of subconscious activities. Combined with some scientific theories, nightmares generally have the following conditions:

1. Recently, you are very tired or in poor health, suffering from insomnia or difficulty falling asleep;

2. Having great pressure in life or encountering great difficulties;

3. Bad sleeping posture, such as lying on your back or stomach, or placing your hands or a certain weight on your chest;

4. Feeling of chest tightness or difficulty breathing before going to bed, etc.

This nightmare experience happened to me recently when I was not feeling well, tired, weak, had poor sleep, and had an incorrect sleeping position. I wonder if this is the case for other netizens?

Science shows that nightmares are dreams caused by the feeling of depression due to difficulty breathing during sleep. In this special situation, part of the consciousness is awakened but the muscle nerves are not, resulting in a terrifying experience of being unable to move. It is mostly caused by excessive fatigue, indigestion or excessive tension of the cerebral cortex, and transient cerebral ischemia during sleep.

So, how to avoid nightmares? Of course, try to pay attention to the causes of nightmares, especially try not to be overly tired, stay up late, maintain a good sleeping posture and breathe smoothly. If your partner has a nightmare or nightmare, their struggle and shouting do not actually appear in reality, at most they will only make a slight humming sound. If your partner finds out, push and shake him (or her) awake, and the nightmare will be gone.

Friends who have had nightmares or will have nightmares in the future should not be superstitious, otherwise it will cause endless harm. Knowing these principles and treating them correctly will reduce the occurrence of such experiences, and even if they do occur, they will not be overly frightened or afraid. What do you think? Welcome to discuss.

This is an original article from Space-Time Communication. Please respect the author’s copyright. Thank you for your understanding and support.