A family member (female, age 50) suffers a recurrent nightmare, that there is an intruder in their bedroom. They sometimes sit up and scream out, and have to be gently woken and reassured by their partner that there is nobody there. Sometimes they dream they are being attacked, so they kick out violently, to the point that they have pulled leg muscles and kicked chunks of plaster out of the wall (not so bad as it sounds, as the bedroom is a loft conversion and they swivelled round, kicked upwards and hit a weak spot in the plastered eaves). There is no obvious pattern in the timings of the dreams - they can be months apart or twice in the same month. The dreams are not related to any specific trauma in their past. They've had intermittent vivid nightmares since childhood, often involving large spiders on the ceiling. However, the recurrent intruder dream started when they moved house 4 years ago and may or may not be related to peri-menopause, generalised anxiety and insomnia.
I'd like to do some reading around this. I've looked up "night terrors" but that term seems to be used mainly for children, at least by the NHS. Does anyone know of another medical term I can search for? I thought I saw one used in a previous thread but can no longer find it.