How does modern medicine explain nightmares caused by fright, as described in Donguibogam? It is deeply connected to post-traumatic stress disorder. When our brain experiences immense shock, it stores and processes memories in a special way for survival.
There are three main brain regions to note: the amygdala, which processes fear and emotion; the hippocampus, which stores and retrieves memories; and the prefrontal cortex, which regulates emotions and aids rational judgment.
When experiencing trauma, the amygdala becomes overactivated, triggering strong fear responses even to tiny stimuli. It is just like a danger alarm siren continually sounding inside the brain. Meanwhile, the hippocampus struggles to organize and store traumatic memories like normal memories. Thus, the memory of that day cannot be filed away as a past event, appearing instead as a flashback where it feels vividly as though it is happening right now. As the prefrontal cortex becomes vulnerable in regulating these intense emotions, it becomes difficult for us to manage fear or anxiety effectively.
These nightmares often appear during sleep, especially in the REM sleep stage. REM sleep is an important period for memory consolidation and emotional regulation, but patients with post-traumatic stress disorder tend to show reduced sleep quality and excessive activation during REM sleep. Traumatic memories are continually reprocessed in the brain, manifesting as nightmares. It is just like the brain forcibly playing shocking footage of that day every night to torment you.
What is more serious is that during this process, stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline are excessively secreted. These hormones keep our body in a state prepared for threat situations even at night, reducing sleep quality, raising heart rate, and tensing muscles. Phenomena such as sleep paralysis are also deeply related to the mechanism where body movement is inhibited during REM sleep, but when combined with anxiety and fear, they can be experienced as even more severe distress.
Ultimately, recurring nightmares are not simply unpleasant dreams, but a signal revealing a complex state where the brain is desperately trying to recover from trauma while simultaneously trapped within that wound. Modern medicine understands these brain changes and helps the brain reorganize memories and regulate emotions through various psychotherapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Please do not suffer alone in the darkness of the night. Because our brains possess the power to heal, you can certainly overcome this.
