Why Kids Have Nightmares and How to Break the Cycle
Every child has nightmares. Although they are usually more bothersome, these bad dreams can sometimes persist, disrupting sleep patterns at a critical time in development. If left untreated, chronic nightmares can quickly escalate into more serious problems. Today, research published in Sleep boundaries offers a new model to explain why children are trapped in a cycle of chronic nightmares and how therapy can break it.
“A nightmare is a bad dream from which you wake up,” study author Lisa Cromer of the University of Tulsa said in a statement. “If you don’t wake up, then the brain is doing its job to resolve the fear of the dream. But if a child wakes up, they’re trying to escape the nightmare. And when a child wakes up, they’re not able to resolve the nightmare, which exacerbates the problem. That’s why treating nightmares is so important.”
The model, called DARC-NESS as a mnemonic (get it?), identifies several factors that can keep children stuck in a nightmare loop. At the heart of the framework is nightmare efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to control, manage, or reduce nightmares. The other factors – dream content, appraisal, regulatory resources, conditioned arousal, sleep hygiene, and sleep quantity and quality – all interact to keep nightmare effectiveness low and keep the cycle running.
Read more: “How a Dream Engineer Conquers Nightmares”
But these factors not only exacerbate nightmares, they can also be therapeutic levers to stop the cycle. For example, a child may initially view a nightmare as an uncontrollable phenomenon that threatens his or her well-being (evaluation). If they can reframe the nightmare as physically harmless, it may provide an entry point to regain control of the spiral.
“The DARC-NESS model looks at the mechanisms that cause nightmares, as well as the mechanisms that can break the cycle of nightmares,” Cromer said. “It’s a child’s response to a nightmare that causes chronic nightmares, meaning that if we can learn to respond differently to nightmares, then we can interrupt this cycle. It’s empowering to understand that we can take steps to control our dreams.”
With so many different levers, researchers say the DARC-NESS model can provide targeted therapy, focusing on those children can control and give them the confidence to intervene and stop the cycle. Basically, this allows kids to break the wheel by identifying and breaking the weakest spoke.
Nightmares may be a part of growing up, but they shouldn’t be such a big part of it.
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Main image: ssstocker / Adobe Stock
