Preventing Bedtime Fears

Managing fears is tough at any age. Fears interfere with your sleep, work, relationships, and with your health. Bad dreams often make you have more fear and keep you awake at night. Sometimes loneliness and not feeling safe in your home make you have fears. Therefore, making changes to your sleep routine might make you sleep better. 

To prevent having bad dreams one must let go of each fear at the same time. A sleep journal is helpful because it permits you to write down your bad dreams even if you do not remember everything about the dream. You do not need to interpret your bad dreams. Instead, write everything down including your fears. In this way, your mind can let go of the fears gradually. 

Adding a calming scent to your room can relieve your stress and make you feel relaxed.

Calming scents such as roses, vanilla, lavender, and sandalwood can help you have peaceful dreams. Avoid watching frightening movies at night. Often your brain retains spooking images from movies and recreates them in a bad dream. Other times when your stress levels are too high, your brain gets too much stimulation from scary movies. 

However, watching scary movies during the day and occupying your mind with other things might help. Yet, it does not work all the time because scary images look so real to the brain. Moreover, not everyone can watch scary movies. Be cautious and aware of the type of movies that you watch so it does not disrupt your sleep. Avoid stimulating your brain too much at night. 

Another tip is to avoid having heavy meals or heavy snacks at night. Nevertheless, there are times when you avoid heavy meals and frightening movies but still cannot sleep. Being afraid because of the dark is called Nyctophobia. Nyctophobia can occur in children and adults. This type of fear is a specific phobia and a specific anxiety disorder. 

Fears caused by Nyctophobia cause insomnia, panic attacks, nervousness, and feeling uneasy. Nonetheless, any type of fear disrupts your bedtime. Seek therapy for your Nyctophobia and learn to cope with your fears. Sometimes being afraid of the dark is due to another fear. Other times it is being afraid of being lonely at night. 

A traumatic event can also make one afraid at night. Nyctophobia must be treated by a professional therapist and a doctor. If left untreated it can cause isolation and social behavior issues. Another fear is night terrors. Night terrors make you cry, scream, and fear everything at night. 

Waking up at night because of fear causes heart palpitations and rushing thoughts. It is recommended to have comforting items in your room. Play soft soothing music and have a comfortable dream pillow. Say mantras, positive affirmations, or one sentence to help you feel better. Talking to yourself to go to sleep can also help your nervous system. 

Take a warm bath. Read or listen to a sleep story by using a meditative application. Change your fears to pleasant thoughts. Loneliness, infatuation, unresolved emotions, anxiety, and other medical conditions can take away your sleep. Hearing voices is also a serious matter that needs to be treated.

Certain medications can cause anyone to have visual or auditory hallucinations. Nonetheless, preventing bedtime fears is necessary to avoid sleep deprivation. Review your medications and medication side effects with your doctor. Ask your doctor and therapist for tips on how to get better sleep. Here are websites with more information about sleep and fears.

How to Get Over A Scary Movie and Not Be Scared:

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/sleep/a706480/do-you-have-sleep-anxiety/

Do You Have Sleep Anxiety-Womens Health Magazine:

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/sleep/a706480/do-you-have-sleep-anxiety/

Night Terrors in Adults:

https://greatist.com/health/night-terrors-in-adults

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