How do dreams work? Even the best of scientists aren’t sure, but let’s do the best we can: take a look at what the science says and sprinkle it with some wonderfully inexplicable true life stories.
Dreams – what, how and why?
When we sleep, our minds are creating images and stories – this is what dreams are. They can be adventurous, sad, romantic, silly, futuristic – and, at times, scary and very strange indeed.
We sleep in cycles, each lasting between 90 and 110 minutes and consisting of four stages. On average, we go through five cycles each night. The first three stages are known as NREM (non-rapid-eye movement) sleep, with no dreams during the first two. The 3rd stage is known as deep sleep stage, the time of our most restorative nourishing slumber. This is also when night terrors and sleepwalking occur but, thankfully, this is not common. Most dreams happen during the 4th, REM stage. At the start of our sleep, REM stages are short, with longer deep sleep periods. As our sleep draws to a close, REM periods get longer, meaning more dreams but less deep sleep.
During REM stage, the brainstem releases an amino-acid called glycine onto the motor neurons, which conduct impulses from the brain towards the spinal cord. Glycine acts to paralyse the body, which the scientists explain as the nature’s way of protecting us from the injury which could result from us acting our dreams out in the material world, with real consequences.
Come to think of it, dreaming is as old as humanity, and we have always pondered why we dream. Ancient Egyptians believed dreams were communications from gods. The threat simulation theory states that in dreams, we rehearse various challenging situation scenarios, to better cope with real-life events. Zigmund Freud published Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, laying the foundation for the psychological field of study that looks at dreams as messages from our subconscious. Today, we continue to draw on our dreams for insight into our inner worlds, inspiration and even premonition.
What are the different kinds of dreams?
Bad dreams and nightmares happen to people of all ages and take place during REM sleep. Nightmares are more intense than bad dreams and tend to wake us up. Caused by difficult emotions, stress, fear, trauma, illness or medication and drug use, nightmares often include bizarre and emotionally charged situations, aggression and failure. Threat theory states that such unpleasant dreams are an ancient biological defence that prepares us for the events we worry might actually happen. In a study of 841 German athletes, 15% saw distressing dreams before important competitions, and most of these were about athletic failure.
Night terrors differ from nightmares, as they occur during the deep sleep stage and mostly happen to children. We may remember nightmares, but completely forget night terrors as soon as we wake up. During a night terror, the sleeper may act as if awake: eyes open, screaming, thrashing around and not recognising the person trying to comfort them. Night terrors last for about 15 minutes, then the person returns to normal sleep. As they are usually caused by stress, tiredness or fever, prevention may involve getting enough rest, treating underlying health conditions and reducing stress levels. Research suggests there may be a genetic link, as night terrors tend to run in the family. Luckily, most children grow out of them.
Recurring dreams happen on a regular basis when we sleep. A study of 212 recurring dreams found that two out of three dreams contained dangerous threats aimed at the dreamer, who tended to take reasonable evasive or defensive action, albeit not always successful.
We wish we didn’t have to experience any of these dreams, but if we can learn to see them as our brain’s way of processing life’s stresses or pointing us towards a health issue, we can learn to be grateful for the messages these dreams are sending us.
Lucid dreams are a rare sleep state in which the dreamer is aware it’s a dream and can use it to gain insight into their inner world. Fascinating, isn’t it? Research findings suggest that lucid dreaming is unlike any other state of consciousness, as the parts of the brain normally supressed during sleep, are activated. It’s quite pronounced in younger children but drops towards 16 years of age. Lucid dreaming is an exciting field of research and the good news is that it is possible to train oneself to do it!
How to conquer nightmares
For some of us, nightmares are a chronic issue. As part of research into how our daytime behaviour affects our sleep, American psychologists Edward Selby, Thomas Joiner Jr. and Jessica Ribeiro came up with the Emotional Cascade Model. It shows how negative experiences we have during the day contribute to nightmares, especially when we engage in:
ruminating – replaying the negative scenario over and over in our minds and
catastrophising – coming up with the worst possible outcome for our situation.
The research proves that these two ways of thinking have a direct effect on the frequency and intensity of our nightmares. It goes further to show how continuing to think about the nightmares we had spills the cascade over into the next day. The researchers highlighted two types of people that are more prone to nightmares due to their reduced ability to regulate emotions: ones diagnosed with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and people who engage in out-of-control, often addictive, behaviours.
So, how do we get back to pleasant restful sleep?
- Set some time aside to clear your head before you go to bed and get your thoughts to flow in a positive direction. Recount your day, finding a way to appreciate the difficult moments and giving thanks for every good thing that happened, however big or small.
- During the day, notice when your mind starts to ruminate or catastrophise. Once you are aware of these tendencies, learn to stop them gently, let them go or practice positive, constructive self-talk.
- Observe if you tend to engage in out-of-control behaviours to regulate painful emotions and find a healthier way to process them, such as going for a walk to clear your head, talking to a loved one or meditating.
- If you do have a nightmare, instead of ruminating over or catastrophising it, think of it as your brain’s way of processing stress, thank it for being so diligent, and start your day afresh.
Dreams that changed the world
Dmitry Mendeleev was a 19th century Russian aristocrat, chemist and inventor, most known for creating the Periodic Table of Elements. Did you know that it came to him in a dream?
He was pondering how the basic elements of the Universe combine to make all physical matter but couldn’t comprehend their seemingly random properties.
One day, while on holiday with his family, Mendeleev was listening to them struggle to play chamber music. He grew tired, so he excused himself and went to take a nap. In the dream that changed the course of science, Mendeleev saw basic elements flow together akin to a musical sequence – graceful and orderly. Upon waking, he arranged every element in the order he dreamt up, and it’s now known to us all as the Periodic Table of Elements.
In 1965, Paul McCartney was staying at his parents’ home in London. He recounts:
"I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"
That tune became “Yesterday” – the hit of The Beatles album “Help!” and Number 1 song of all time as voted by MTV and Rolling Stone Magazine.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was what we would call a professional dreamer who, in his own words, ‘conceived, wrote, re-wrote, re-re-wrote, and printed inside ten weeks’ his famous novel “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. And it came to him in a dream!
“For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers.”
Stevenson’s wife told how one night she woke him up and he exclaimed, "Why did you waken me? I was dreaming a fine bogy-tale!" The next morning, as he emerged from the bedroom, he cried out with enthusiasm, "I have got my schilling-shocker -- I have got my schilling-shocker!"
Stevenson has always believed that his creative writing process and his subconscious interacted when he slept. He said that ever since he was a child, his dreams were more entertaining than any of the books he read. From an early age, he saw complete stories in his dreams and trained himself to return to the same dream on the following nights and dream up alternate endings to his stories.
Stevenson described his dreams as happening in “that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long.”
Have we shed some more light for you on how dreams work? Keep your body supported by a high-quality mattress (link to the Amrath Classic product page), as your mind travels across mysterious dreamscapes, illuminating more hidden corners of who you are.
References
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/297625.php
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/dreaming
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201311/five-steps-conquering-nightmares
http://www.dreaminterpretation-dictionary.com/famous-dreams-6.html
http://www.dreaminterpretation-dictionary.com/famous-dreams-paul-mccartney.html
http://www.dreaminterpretation-dictionary.com/famous-dreams-robert-louis-stevenson.html