the.com/nightmare
your brain rehearsing disasters that never come, in vivid surround sound
means A frightening or distressing dream that wakes you with your heart pounding, or by extension any situation that feels as awful as one.
from From Old English 'night' plus 'mare' — and the 'mare' here has nothing to do with horses. The Old English 'mære' was a demon, an evil spirit believed to sit on the chest of sleepers and crush them with suffocating dread. So a nightmare was literally a night-fiend pressing down on you in the dark. The word is related to similar goblins across the Germanic languages, and the same root lurks in the French 'cauchemar.' The dream sense — a bad dream rather than the creature causing it — came later, once we stopped blaming demons for our restless sleep.
- the mare
- old word for a demon that crushes sleepers
- peak hours
- most common in the final third of sleep
- sweat factory
- raises heart rate like real terror does
- recurring tenant
- trauma often replays the same nightmare nightly
- art muse
- inspired Frankenstein, Goya, and countless horror films
recurring nightmares ptsd — diagnostic symptom in post-traumatic stress disorder affecting millions of trauma survivors