why do we get nightmares?
In: Biology
Long ago, when humans were still living out in the wild, there were a lot of dangers, especially from predators. So, it made evolutionary sense for humans to have nightmares, to envision and possibly prepare for physical dangers. Nightmares also make sense because they make us scared of potential dangers, something that was really important for human survival. After all, people need to want good things and be afraid of bad things in order for us to survive
If you want a more in-depth explanation, here’s an interesting Live Science article on the topic: [https://www.livescience.com/32730-why-do-we-have-nightmares.html](https://www.livescience.com/32730-why-do-we-have-nightmares.html)
A nightmare is just a dream that makes you scared.
I’m not a scientist, but the way I understand it, dreams connect parts of our brain that normally can’t “talk” to each other. Dreams can make us feel every other kind of emotion, too, even about things that wouldn’t make us feel that way if we were awake. A nightmare is just what happens when the part of the brain that makes you feel fear gets connected to something that happens in your dream, or more strongly connected than it normally would.
Another question you might have is why nightmares feel so much different to us than any other kind of dream. I think this is because the emotion of fear naturally stands out to us. We can’t help but pay more attention to things that make us scared because it’s usually more important to our safety and survival to avoid very bad things than to notice when everything is fine. u/Just_Want_To_Write explained this very well in another reply.
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