Nightmares are an emotional outlet.
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Editor’s note: Many people may have had nightmares. Waking up in the middle of the night, cold sweats. Scientific research shows that if there are negative emotions, nightmares at night may help relieve tension in real life, and nightmares may be an emotional outlet. This article is translated from Medium, author Tessa Love, and the original title was “Nightmares Are Good for You, According to Scientists”, I hope to inspire you.
Whether you sleep well or not, you may have experienced such things as waking up at night, sweating cold, and your heart beating with fear. When you realize that it is a dream, you are relieved.
It is common to have dreams that wake you up. According to the American Society of Sleep Medicine, up to 85% of adults occasionally have nightmares, and the American Psychiatric Association defines nightmares as strong, unpleasant dreams that can trigger Threats, anxiety, fear or other negative emotions. By definition, nightmares are clearly remembered when they wake up, and most nightmares are completely harmless.
Having nightmares is normal, although a bit painful. But we can’t help but think about it: is there any reason why the brain lets us experience these terrible scenarios?
Dream experts think the answer is yes, and nightmares do have a certain effect. Although there is no unified theory to explain its purpose, more and more studies show that nightmares can help people better control their lives when they are awake.
Nightmare can actually help reduce anxiety in real life through “emotional rehearsals”.
Deirdre Barrett (PhD), a professor at Harvard University, said: “The content of dreams is like our thinking when we are awake, repeating the cycle. Thinking when you are awake Things often appear in dreams, butIn a way that is more metaphorical, more intuitive, and less verbal. “
Barrett says that nightmare is a way of thinking that makes people” anxious to predict bad things, And try to figure out how to respond. ”
Many experts, including Barrett, believe that before the emergence of social order, people ’s neurological response to life threats was a nightmare. For example, remembering that “the village on the mountain may be attacked” or “there may be beasts lurking in the dark”, this is a matter of life and death. Being aware of this even while you are sleeping and practicing what to do in case it happens is vital to survival.
Barrett said: “In ancient times, some kind of injury to people was inherently easy to happen again.” A recurring nightmare of some kind of traumatic helps you stay alert. In today’s society, although the situation is different, we still have this instinct mechanism. “
This instinct may be responsible for nightmares that are not so harmless: those caused by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Unlike ordinary nightmares, posttraumatic stress disorder nightmares usually occur outside the rapid eye movement sleep (REM) state, which is the deep sleep state in which most ordinary dreams occur. Ordinary nightmares are usually fictional and generally do not disturb the real life of dreamers, but patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are more likely to have extremely disturbing nightmares than those without PTSD. These nightmares are real life Reproduction of trauma.
Barrett said: “Everyone with this symptom is eager to change the status quo, and it is not difficult to understand why this symptom occurs.”
On the other hand, ordinary nightmares reflect the potential dangers of dreamers, which may or may not be related to what they fear in their daily lives. A 2016 AmeriSleep survey of 2,000 people found that the most common nightmares include falling, being chased, and dying, and the most common fears among Americans are around government, the environment, and money.
Barrett believes that these potentially dangerous dreams have evolved from a useful neural response, and she said, “In modern society, this is not applicable.” In other words, modern humans are no longer Need to be reminded of the danger of the world.
Not everyone agrees with this theory. Harvard MedicalJohn Allan Hobson, a professor of psychiatry at the hospital, said having this dreaming instinct is still a key factor in keeping our lives awake.
“Life is always dangerous, especially in the United States in the 21st century,” he said. “The most important thing for any animal is to be afraid, to know when to run and when to fight. Survival depends on these.”
According to Hobson, nightmares are how humans adapt to the “fight or flight” response in the real world, without considering the possibility of these events actually occurring. Although this theory sounds crude, a recent study found that nightmares can actually help reduce real-life anxiety through emotional rehearsals.
This study is divided into two parts. In the first part, researchers from the University of Geneva, the University of Wisconsin, and the University Hospitals of Geneva analyzed 18 people who slept. In the brain, it was found that during the nightmares, the brain regions and the cingulate cortex were activated.
In the second part of the study, 89 experimental participants recorded their dreams and dream emotions every morning for a week, after which the researchers scanned their brains and showed them “images of negative emotions.” Researchers have found that the more fears people experience in dreams, the fewer areas of their brains are activated when they see negative pictures. The activity of suppressing fear areas in the brain also increases with increasing nightmares. This may mean that experiencing fear in dreams helps regulate fear in real life, and even dreams can be released as an emotion.
However, this theory is not impeccable. Some studies have found that nightmares exacerbate anxiety rather than relieve it. For example, a 2009 study analyzed the dream and stress conditions of 624 high school students and found that those who were troubled by terrible dreams were more likely to develop anxiety.
A small study in 2019 also found this. Researchers found that when 18 people who often recall nightmares see disturbing pictures, the areas of their brains associated with the negative emotions in dreams are activated, suggesting that nightmares actually exacerbate real life pain.
However, these studies do not answer the classic “chicken first or egg first” puzzle: anxiety or nightmare first? After all, according to Barrett’s research, people who often have nightmares do show higher levels of anxiety during the day.
Barrett said, “People who have nightmares are more likely to be frightened during the day.”
According to Hobson’s research, anxiety and anger are the two most commonly experienced emotions in dreams, and the third place is happiness. People experience anxiety and anger twice as often as they do in dreams.
Researchers also found that nightmares often stem from ideas that people avoid in real life, which supports the idea that negative emotions can lead to negative dreams. There is a concept called “dream rebound”, which means that when a person consciously suppresses an idea or emotion, it returns to the brain while sleeping.
While this view is based on Sigmund Freud’s extremely disdainful theory that dreams are a subconscious way of releasing depressed desires, several recent studies do find The behavior of certain thoughts (for better or worse) may cause these thoughts to appear in dreams.
For example, a small study of 87 people in 2015 found that personality thinkers (those who often suppress their thoughts) are more likely to experience real-life emotions in dreams. A 2011 study found that those who were asked to suppress invasive thoughts before going to bed had a higher percentage of those thoughts in their dreams than those who did not.
However, until recently, it was not known whether the “rebound of dreams” would be beneficial or harmful to the psychology of people in real life. A study in 2019 has shown to be beneficial. In this study, 77 participants were asked to suppress an idea each night before going to bed each week for a week and to record their dreams in the morning. Before and after the study, researchers asked subjects to rate how pleasant and unpleasant this idea was. When this suppressed thought is unpleasant, people who do not dream about it while dreaming feel more unhappy than those who dream about it at the weekend. In other words, nightmares may be a way for the brain to release emotions.
More research is needed on these theories to better understand how nightmares work in our daily lives and how people can better understand themselves through dreams. Most of the existing research is only for a small number of people, and larger studies may provide more data to understand our dreams. You can rest assured that nightmares will not hurt you and may help you release your emotions.
Translator: Jane
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