Bumisuka.com – 8 Causes of Someone Crying in Sleep. Crying while sleeping can occur in infants, children, adults, and even the elderly. However, waking up with tears in your eyes can be confusing. Not to mention if the problem of crying while sleeping is quite common.
Are you in such a situation? You even wonder what the real cause is? Here are some possibilities that can underlie someone crying while sleeping.
1. Nightmare
Anyone can have nightmares. Waking up from a nightmare can trigger feelings of resentment, anxiety, shock, and even fear. If the effect is very strong, the individual concerned can wake up with tears in their eyes.
A 2017 study in Sleep Medicine Reviews explains that nightmares are related to how a person processes excessive emotions and stress. In addition, it also has something to do with unfavorable situations and feelings of anxiety about future events.
2. Night terrors
Night terrors are characterized by feelings of fear, screaming actions, even hitting while sleeping. This case is also often accompanied by sleepwalking or even crying.
Night terrors are parasomnias or sleep disturbances that cannot be remembered when the person concerned is awake. This problem is more common in children than adults.
This is in line with a scientific article titled Night Terrors which was published in 2022. The article explains that night terrors most often occur in children aged 3 to 7 years. Meanwhile, the duration can last from a few seconds to several minutes.
3. Stress and anxiety
The complex dynamics of life such as family, work, health, and financial problems can trigger stress and anxiety for most people. When life’s problems keep hitting you, your body will automatically process them.
During sleep, the brain will work to form emotional memories, develop empathic behavior, and modulate emotional reactivity. While the stress and anxiety experienced can be manifested as crying sleep.
4. Depression
Depression is a mood disorder associated with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a loss of interest in activities that used to be enjoyable. Depression and sleep problems actually have a significant scientifically proven correlation.
A study in Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience in 2008 revealed that one of the symptoms of depression is crying for no apparent reason. This condition can even occur when the individual experiencing it is in the sleep phase.
5. Morning depression
Morning depression is known as a diurnal (active in the morning) mood variation. This condition is a form of depression that occurs when a person wakes up in the morning.
Symptoms of morning depression include sleeping longer than usual, feeling frustrated, feeling irritated, lowered energy levels, and having a poor outlook on the day. Experts suspect that this problem is related to circadian rhythms.
The circadian rhythm is the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle which has an important role in capturing signals when it’s time to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. If this rhythm is disrupted, it is not impossible that someone can cry when sleeping or when they wake up.
6. Experiencing suppressed emotions or sadness
Everyone has different life experiences. Sad life experiences such as being hit by a disaster, accident, disaster, or being left by the death of someone close to you will definitely leave a deep impression.
Some people can express their emotions, one way is by crying. While others tend to hold back, suppress, or choose to run away from painful realities. However, they may forget that the subconscious holds various memories that they are never aware of.
People who are in situations of suppressed grief are more likely to cry in their sleep. Often what happened never crossed my mind and was not even wanted.
7. Parasomnias
Parasomnias are a category of sleep disorders that include sleepwalking and sleepwalking or delirium. Someone who experiences parasomnias will physically fulfill their dreams in real life including crying.
If you have this sleep disorder, you most likely will too. Keep in mind that parasomnias can get worse due to stress, anxiety, and changes in sleeping habits.
8. Dementia
Dementia has been linked to sleep disturbances. A 2021 study in Nature Communications explains that sleep problems due to dementia have the potential to occur due to disruption of the sleep-wake cycle caused by degeneration of the hypothalamus and brainstem.
People with dementia have reported having trouble sleeping well, taking frequent naps, being irritable at night, and waking up frequently during the night. In short, people with a diagnosis of dementia can wake up crying, which is usually related to emotional elements.
Occasional crying while sleeping is not something to worry about. After all, humans have different emotional levels. While the discharge of tears or crying is a representation of a soul full of emotion.
However, if you often cry while sleeping to the point that it interferes with your quality of life, you need to do a serious evaluation. Don’t hesitate to involve doctors as medical personnel to help diagnose the underlying problem. The sooner the condition is known, the faster help can be done.