At night, your mind remembers the plot revisions and incorporates them into the dream. Talk about the terror. Because nightmares could represent underlying, unresolved emotional conflict in your life, some form of therapy may help. Nightmares often are confused with sleep terrors, which are seemingly similar but completely different. People with sleep terrors are not even dreaming, Dr. Mahowald says.
Sleep terrors are akin to sleepwalking, because both occur in the deep stages of nondream sleep.
Unlike someone having nightmares, a person with sleep terrors never actually awakens. In fact, they're difficult to rouse. And once they are awake, they can't remember what scared them or even that they jolted up in bed with a cry that would daunt Dracula. Ride it out, gently. Sleep terrors are just part of the maturation process in kids.