Often the format is not obvious.”įor instance, the Harvard survey turned up dreams about different types of bugs-bed bugs, cockroaches, stink bugs, and various types of flying insects. However, if we are anxious or distressed or feeling a lack of control during the day, it can certainly show up in some way in our dreams. “We can’t say I dreamt about ‘X’ so it must be that ‘Y’ is bothering me. “I wish it were the case that we could draw a point-to-point correlation between what happens in our dreams and some meaningful information during the day, but we can’t always do that,” Rubman says. What do your dreams and nightmares mean?ĭoctors aren’t certain whether such dreams carry much meaning beyond possibly being a sign a person is under more stress than usual. You are more likely to remember dreams if you wake up during them, she adds, but not remembering your dreams does not mean you are not having them. “It’s hard to judge time when you are inside a dream,” Rubman says, but the actual duration of a dream can range from a couple of minutes to as long as 30 to 45 minutes. People spend about a quarter of a night’s slumber in REM sleep, with dream cycles occurring about every 90 minutes, becoming longer and more intense in the latter half of the night. Another one of these stages, when most dreams occur, is called rapid eye movement (REM), because the eyes dart back and forth very quickly, heart rate and blood pressure rise, and brain activity becomes more intense. “I like to compare sleep stages to carousel horses where we move up and down through the different stages across the night,” Rubman says. Sleep is not one continuous experience rather, each evening contains several stages of non-dreaming sleep, including a state between being awake and falling asleep (light sleep) onset of sleep and deep restorative sleep. “If they are staying up late and not making up the extra sleep, they will get ‘REM rebound’ when they do eventually sleep more.” This means they experience an increase in REM sleep (described below), which is associated with disturbing dreams. “Some teenagers have become totally nocturnal,” Dr. An estimated 50 to 85% of adults report having an occasional nightmare, and up to 50% of young children report having nightmares so severe they wake up their parents.Ĭraig Canapari, MD, a pediatric sleep specialist for Yale Medicine, says that among children, COVID nightmares may be most common in those whose families are experiencing a lot of stress during the pandemic, as well as in teenagers who are going to bed late and sleeping late because of cancelled school. “Nightmares are often reflective of our own effort to avoid threats to our security, our survival, or our physical integrity,” she says. People who have nightmares typically are immediately awakened by them and have strong recall of the dream, often with anxiety that can linger, Rubman says. These showed clusters of COVID-related dream content around specific topics, including fear of getting the virus, frustration over social distancing and sheltering at home, and forgetting to take steps to avoid the virus.īad dreams can be disturbing, but the definition of nightmares is more intense “dreams with vivid and disturbing content,” according to the National Sleep Foundation. As the number of COVID-19 cases has increased, a Harvard researcher reports receiving thousands of responses to an online dream survey she created. The researchers concluded this arose from increased emotional arousal after the trauma. At least one small study after 9/11 showed a significant increase in something called “central image intensity” (the central image is considered the emotional focus of a dream). What’s more, doctors aren’t surprised to hear reports of anxiety-related dreams about COVID-19. “It’s important to realize that this is part of human nature and to know you are not alone.” “People say they feel alone in having so many strange dreams, but it is a significant phenomenon, and it’s happening with some frequency during the pandemic,” she says. Susan Rubman, PhD, a Yale Medicine psychologist and sleep specialist, agrees, noting that these dreams and nightmares are surprisingly common. “Some think it’s a way for us to work out our daily stresses or preoccupations during the day.” “Nightmares and bad dreams, in general, have not been shown to be unhealthy,” she says. People are reporting strange, intense, colorful, and vivid dreams-and many are having disturbing nightmares related to COVID-19.īut Christine Won, MD, a Yale Medicine sleep specialist, who has noticed an uptick in patients reporting recurrent or stressful dreams, provides reassurance that this is no cause for concern. Apparently, it has even invaded our dreams. Whether the cause is stress related to working from home, wearing masks, lack of day care, or limited access to health care, COVID-19-related anxiety has spilled into nearly every aspect of our lives.
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