Bad Dreams Help Us Deal with Unpleasant Emotions
Bad dreams are extremely common. In fact, studies show that most of our dreams are not happy ones. Unpleasant dreams may be the brain’s way of helping us process our stressful thoughts and emotions, according to researchers from Yeshiva University in New York.
Emotional regulation may be the primary function of REM sleep, the sleep stage during which most dreams occur. In a typical dream, bits of our memories “get thrown into a room together and jumbled around,” the researchers say. This puts the memories in a new context and diffuses the fear attached to them.
On the other hand, a nightmare may occur when that emotion-regulating process goes wrong. With nightmares, the dreamer wakes up, disrupting normal emotion processing. Waking up is a relief for the moment, but it interrupts the brain’s self-regulating process and may ultimately serve to “reinforce” the feeling that the threat was real, according to the researchers.
Most people have the occasional nightmare, particularly during stressful times. But people who tend to have trouble with anxiety in response to stress are more prone to have recurrent nightmares. Also, some people who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder tend to have trouble with repeated nightmares. Their terrifying and bizarre nightmares may lead to more distress in waking life, which may in turn spur more nightmares, the researchers point out.
The good news is that there is help for those who suffer from repeated nightmares. It’s been found that while awake, the person can imagine the dream and then voluntarily change the context or the outcome. In some studies, the person changes the scenario of a recent nightmare any way he or she wishes, writes down the improved version, then mentally rehearses it in a relaxed state. This technique, called imagery-rehearsal therapy, has been proven to be highly effective.
Source: Current Directions in Psychological Science, April 2009.
Source: “Imagery Rehearsal Can Control PTSD-Related Nightmares”, Psychiatric News September 21, 2001
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Hi Nina, I liked this article. Very interesting!
Very interesting and something I hadnt thought about before. If bad dreams help to process bad feelings, is the opposite also true?