Nightmares through the period
Why do we often have bad dreams during menstruation?
© Tero Vesalainen / Shutterstock
Many women report having nightmares a few days before their period starts. Researchers have found out why this is so.
You have just been sleeping peacefully, then your beautiful dream suddenly turns into a nightmare scenery and you wake up bathed in sweat. The next day you look at the calendar – and suddenly you realize why you are currently plagued by nightmares. Your period is coming! In fact, when asked, many women say that they not only suffer from the annoying PMS in the days before the days, but also have more bad dreams. But why is that?
Dream once, please!
In fact, science has a plausible explanation for this question. To find out why period nightmares are caused by periods, take a look at the different stages of sleep. More precisely: to the REM phase (“Rapid Eye Movement”), because that is the phase in which we dream. Our eyes roll back and forth under the lids and our blood pressure increases. If you sleep for about eight hours, you will be in the REM phase for about two hours. If we wake up during this time, we are most likely to remember what we dreamed.
It’s all a question of hormones
dr Irshaad Ebrahim of the London Sleep Center told the online magazine Broadly: “In the week before the period starts, women have less REM sleep because progesterone levels are elevated”. We dream less overall during the period, but wake up more often due to the hormonal changes in the body – and we are more likely to remember our dreams.
Gynecologist and author Dr. Christiane Northrup also assumes that that the physical changes that the monthly cycle brings can also be part of our dreams. According to the gynecologist, many women report, for example, recurring dreams in which something breaks or breaks. This could indicate that the lining of the uterus is being shed by the body (meaning it “breaks” or “breaks”) and is passed out with some menstrual blood.
And what am I supposed to do now?
Anyone who has bad dreams for several nights in a row often feels worn down. But fortunately we are not completely at the mercy of our dreams! If we notice that our nightmares are triggered by the period or the hormonal chaos in our body, we can test the following methods, to scare them away:
- Talk about: It sounds trite, but it actually helps. Bad dreams often lose some of their horror when we tell others about them.
- self-help: The aim is to find a coping strategy for the nightmare yourself. First, you should write down the dream in as much detail as possible and deal with it. Then you think of ways you could reframe the dream so it causes less anxiety. For example, if you are being followed in a nightmare, you can imagine confronting the pursuer and confronting him. Now imagine that for at least two weeks, every day for five to ten minutes.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: If you can’t get any further on your own, you can also seek the help of psychotherapy and look for possible coping strategies. These are then also trained in so-called imagination exercises.
- Lucid Dreaming: Also known as “lucid dreaming”. The person concerned knows that he is dreaming and can thus influence the dream in his favor. Most people have a lucid dream at some point, but to be able to change dreams again and again, persistent training is necessary. You ask yourself about ten times a day whether you are dreaming or awake. However, it can take several months before you can automatically ask yourself this question in your dream and thus influence it.
Do you have more questions about periods? Here you can find out what spotting instead of a period means, what severe abdominal pain means, what heavy menstrual bleeding means and the causes of menstrual problems.