Why do people have mostly bad dreams?

Question

Research shows that the majority of dreams that people have are negative/distressful in nature, and a significant percentage can be considered nightmares. I was wondering people's thoughts on why this might be? Why do our subconcious minds seem to be full of creepy crawly things, and what is the purpose of rehashing these things constantly at night?

By the way, please don't reply saying that you don't have bad dreams, I am talking in general terms here, and most people don't remember most of their dreams anyway.

Ok, for the people wondering what my sources are, this sentence is from the article below: "Specific emotions were judged to be present in only 30-35% of the reports, with unpleasant emotions outnumbering pleasant ones by 2 to 1. Anxiety and anger were the most frequent types of emotions." from http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2005a.html

I guess what I meant then, is that most emotions that occur in dreams are unpleasent. Oh, and dream research is usually done by having people sleep in the laboratory, and waking them when their brain wave patterns are in REM mode. People will remember their dreams if they are waken in the middle of one and asked about it immediately.

Answer 1

About time you asked this question. you have two minds a reactive mind (sub concious mind) and anylitacal mind (concious mind) the reactive mind is geared toward servival. you put your hand on a hot stove it burns then next time you put your hand on a stove weather hot or not you retrack your hand from it.
now dreams are just peoples thoughts. you don't evan need to be asleep to dream just putt all of your attention on your thoughts and you start dreaming.
The problem you are getting while sleeping is a person is being putt in a very dark place which to the reactive mind means very unsafe. So the reactive mind trying to go some where else goes to any place other than the very unsafe dark place. All this while having all its attention on the dark place you tend to get nightmares a lot.
you get the same resualts by throughing somebody into a dark place they start to "see things" and "hear things" this is just there reactive mind trying to find a better place to be.
if you want better dream I would leave a night light on. Or learn how to control the reactive mind which I am not gonna go into here.

hope this helps
-David-

Answer 2

Neither, mine are purely undeniable strange yet i wager they're better sturdy than undesirable. as an party the different evening I dreamed that i change into with grandma. We were getting ice-cream from freezer, it change into strawberry flavor - which change into strange because I not often eat that flavor. -OR- the very actuality for the previous 5 nights I truly have dreamed about this guy i love. = ) I likely might want to do something about that, lol.

Answer 3

Since most people don't remember most of their dreams, how would anybody know that people have mostly bad dreams? What research are you referring to? What is your source? How was the study conducted? Answers to these questions would help to determine if the study is valid.

Answer 4

Dreams are the brain's way to defragging ; much as a computer defrags and backs up. Dreams mean nothing it's just the brain going wild because the body is at rest and not thinking

Answer 5

People probably only remember the bad ones because they stand out.

Answer 6

Actually your dreams are based on what you encountered during the day and most expecially the most recent before dreamtime.

Answer 7

i coulnt give u a scientific explanation.but my guess would be that people have good dreams..but the bad dreams shake you up that u only remember them.the good dreams remain in dream land

Answer 8

http://spirita.blogspot.com/

Answer 9

its athing from a god