One in four adults still sleeps with the light on – and a fifth run upstairs when it’s dark! Polls show that millions of us have never been able to shake off our childhood fears
- Thousands of adults admit to living with childhood fears, including the dark
- Almost half of those surveyed indicate that they do not like spending a night alone in the house
According to a poll, a quarter of adults still sleep with the lights on.
Meanwhile, around 18 percent are terrified of sleeping with their feet out of the duvet and a similar number run upstairs when it’s dark.
The findings come from a survey of more than 2,000 adults, which also showed that half of adults are still afraid of the dark.
Psychologists said this was proof that “our inner child stays with us throughout our lives.”
A survey of 2,000 adults shows that half of adults are afraid of the dark, while a quarter sleep with the light on
Jo Hemmings, member of the British Psychological Society, said: ‘Unfortunately this may mean that irrational fears and anxieties that we had as children manifested themselves later in life.
‘The fear of the dark is common in childhood because it is a primitive behavioral instinct that instills fear and anxiety in the absence of comforting images or soothing sounds to make sense of the world.
‘It usually decreases with age as children understand that although it is dark, they are not really alone and their caring adults have not disappeared.
‘Adults may associate darkness with an inability to be in control – if we cannot see, we may fear bad things happening to us at night that we are not prepared for, and our fear becomes a defense mechanism, where our brains during the night The waking period is on high alert and our imagination can go into overdrive.’
The research was commissioned by Netflix ahead of the release of Orion and the Dark, an animated film about a boy who is terrified of the dark.
Forty-one percent admit that they don’t like spending a night alone in their own home.
If an unusual noise is heard downstairs, many will persuade their partner to take a look (13 percent), with many thinking creaking pipes are ghosts in the night.
But the average Brit is not only afraid of the dark, they also have around five bad dreams a month, with many waking up with a start three times a month.
Four in 10 say they often wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare, with 16 percent regularly waking their partner by screaming.
One in ten (10 percent) have even lashed out at the other half during sleep while having a bad dream.
Nightmares people reported included being chased (28 percent), falling from a height (26 percent) and teeth falling out (15 percent).