![Jeremy Taylor Jeremy Taylor](https://cdn2.psychologytoday.com/assets/styles/profile_teaser_small/public/jeremy-taylor.jpg?itok=cVLfDp37)
Hello dreamers and dream workers. I have been off-line since before the new year working on old--fashioned print media deadlines - all of which I have finally met.
Thank you all for responding so fully to my request for laboratory data about RBD - (REM Behavior Disorder). I found it all very interesting, but not as relevant to the “Welsh dream killing“ as I had hoped.
Even if there are situations where dreamers do exhibit REM (Rapid Eye Motion), indicating that they are dreaming, and also simultaneously act out large body motions without waking up - (I have to admit that I do not find the evidence offered for that phenomenon all that convincing) - since there was no observer in the holiday trailer to verify whether or not the dreamer's eyes were moving in REM fashion as he strangled his wife, it still seems MUCH more likely to me that this event is mis-named as RBD, and it is actually more likely to be a special case of parasomniac “sleep walking,” taking place in a dreaming state NOT associated with REM.
Be that as it may, I want to say something more about the parasomnia called “night terrors.” My experience with dreamers who exhibit true night terrors (as distinct from really bad, terrifying nightmares“ ) is (a) the dreamers never remember the dreams that stimulate the night terrors, and (b) are almost always children of parents who came together and married in defiance of their own respective parents' strong objections. Usually these objections stem from strongly held, exclusivist religious and cultural beliefs.
The most dramatic thing about the instances where I have been invited to consult with parents of night-terror children (about 20 in the last 40 years), is that I have always advised parents to have the long-postponed conversation with each other where they put into words what they actually do believe now, having defied their own parents, and the communities of faith and cultural belief they were raised in.
My experience is that when the parents have this conversation, the night terror behaviors in the child simply disappear - whether or not the child has any conscious knowledge that the conversation has taken place!
I will grant that the 20 instances is not enough to apply the laws of large numbers and draw any statistically valid conclusions from, but it is 100% of my experience that this is the case. Somehow there is, at the very least, a subtle change in the atmosphere of the family milieu as a result of the parents having spoken candidly to one another about their current beliefs and cultural attitudes that is sufficient to make enough of an impression on the night-terrorized child for the problematic behavior to disappear.
In light of this consistent experience of mine, I would be very interested in hearing from any of you who have had any direct contact with night terrors, particularly with regard to the religious and cultural backgrounds of both parents.