08/03/2021
Sleep and Dreaming
Not all dreaming is the same.
Dreams can be funny, frightening, sad or strange. Flying dreams can be euphoric, chasing dreams can be terrifying, forgot-to-study-for-my-exam dreams can be stressful.
There are several dream classifications, including nightmares, recurring dreams, and lucid dreams.
Nightmares are broadly defined as frightening dreams that result in some degree of awakening from sleep. "Bad dreams" are considered a less severe form of nightmare. Most people experience nightmares throughout life, usually very rarely and, less commonly, with more regularity. A small percentage of the population—studies suggest around 5%—have nightmares as often as once a week.
Nightmares can result from different triggers, including stress, emotional upheaval, and traumatic experiences. They can occur as side effects of some medications, use and abuse of drugs and alcohol, and illness. Nightmares themselves disrupt sleep by not only by waking the sleeper, but also leading to a fear of falling asleep and returning to a disturbing dream.
Nightmares can have other negative sleep-related health consequences, as well. According to research, they may contribute to insomnia, daytime fatigue, depression, and anxiety.
Studies indicate that people with certain conditions may be more likely to experience nightmares, including:
Migraine
Obstructive sleep apnea
Clinical depression
Night terrors, or sleep terrors, create another frightening dream-like experience. While they are frightening and disruptive to sleep, night terrors are not the same as nightmares. Night terrors are very intense episodes of fright during dreams. These frightening episodes are often accompanied by screaming or yelling, as well as by physical movement such as leaping out of bed or flailing in panic. Research suggests that sleep terrors occur during non-REM sleep dreaming, while nightmares tend to happen during REM sleep.
Adults do experience night terrors, but they are somewhat more common in children. Estimates suggest that as many as 6% of children experience night terrors, most often between the ages of 3-12.
Recurring dreams are ones that reappear with some pattern of regularity. Studies suggest that recurring dreams may contain more threatening content than regular dreams. Research suggests links between recurring dreams and psychological distress in both adults and children.
Lucid dreams are an especially fascinating form of dream. In lucid dreams, the dreamer is aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming, and often can manipulate or control the dream as it unfolds.
Research links lucid dreaming to unusually elevated levels of brain activity. Studies have found that lucid dreamers displayed significantly higher brain wave frequencies than non-lucid dreamers, as well as increased activity in parts of the frontal lobe. This area of the brain is deeply involved with conscious awareness, a sense of self, as well as language and memory. Studies of lucid dreams are not only shedding light on the mechanics of dreaming, but also on the neural underpinnings of consciousness itself.
Dreams appear to be influenced by our waking lives in many ways.
Theories about why we dream include those that suggest dreaming is a means by which the brain processes emotions, stimuli, memories, and information that’s been absorbed throughout the waking day.
According to research, a significant percentage of the people who appear in dreams are known to the dreamer. One study found more than 48% of dream characters were recognizable by name to dreamers. Another 35% of characters were identifiable to dreamers by their generic social role or relationship—as a friend, doctor, or police officer, for example. Fewer than one fifth of dream characters—16%—were unrecognizable to dreamers.
Other research indicates that a majority of dreams contain content related to autobiographical memories—memories about the self—as opposed to episodic memories, which deal with events and details, such as locations and times.
There’s a body of study that suggests our waking lives have great influence over the content of our dreams. Pregnant women dream more about pregnancy and childbirth. Hospice workers who act as caregivers to others (whether patients or family members) dream about the experiences of caregiving and the people for whom they care. Musicians dream twice as often about music as non-musicians do.
There’s also fascinating research that shows our capacity to dream beyond our waking experiences, in profound ways. Dream reports of people born paralyzed reveal that they walk, swim, and run in their dreams as often as people without paralysis. Dream reports of people born deaf indicate they often hear in their dreams. These reports may lend credence to the theory that dreams serve as a broad, virtual-reality model of waking life—a proto-consciousness—that instructs and supports survival and growth.
Daily life experiences don’t always present themselves in dreams immediately. Sometimes an experience from life will filter through to a dream after several days, or even a week. This delay is what’s known as dream lag.
As much as dreams may contain aspects of everyday, routine life, dreaming is also a state in which we contend with extraordinary experiences. Another likely function of dreaming appears to be processing and coming to terms with traumatic events. Grief, fear, loss, abandonment, even physical pain are all emotions and experiences that often replay themselves in dreams. Studies of people who’ve experienced loss of loved ones indicate that most of them dream about the deceased.
Some of the most common dream subjects include:
School dreams (studying, taking tests)
Being chased
Sexual dreams
Falling
Being late
Flying
Being attacked physically
Dreaming of someone dead being alive, or someone alive being dead
A recent study of the content of nightmares found the most common themes included:
Physical aggression
Interpersonal conflicts
Experiences of failure and helplessness
Researchers found fear to be the most common emotion in nightmares and bad dreams, though it’s often accompanied by other emotions as well.
Call Stuart -07825 599340 to discuss your sleep issue and how sleep therapy can help resolve sleep issues .
stuart@stuartdowning.co.uk
