Pandemic Nightmares - The Bad Dreams That Usually End

Recently, while chit-chatting idly with my friends and family, I have observed that we discussed the vivid dreams we were having every day a lot more. We frequently described being in a room with too many people, bugs and insects crawling on us, our loved ones in peril. While listening to people talk about how realistic the nightmare felt and the subsequent relief and panic at waking up, I wondered if there was a reason for that.

The rise in dreams….and nightmares

Research suggests that if you have been experiencing this, you are not alone. Many people have reported having vivid and violent nightmares, especially during the covid-19 lockdown period, with stress and anxiety levels rising and many of us feeling helpless when faced with the sudden changes to our immediate world that were unprecedented just a year ago.

This change in dream contents can be traced to declining mental health during the pandemic, lifestyle changes and the physical isolation from the outside world, including friends, family coworkers, etc., which all impact how our general wellbeing, including the quality of sleep.

At the same time, many researchers have found that we are able to recall our dreams better during this time, with those dreams being more emotional in nature especially for people who have lost their job, a loved one, or are afraid of themselves or a loved one getting infected with the virus.

The lockdowns ending didn’t stop the nightmares, either, for many people, as our sleep-wake cycles have been altered, and the time of going to bed for good pushed further and further back. Coupled with the increase in anxiety and depression, it is meant to stay.

What do our dreams tell us?

A pertinent question, thus, arises. Why do we dream? What does having dreams mean? What do they tell us? And perhaps more importantly, how can I go back to not having nightmares and being able to sleep (somewhat) well?

Dreams usually occur during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep, which happens when we are deeply asleep. Our brain activity increases (although we stay asleep) and it is usually the period of time when we are most likely to wake up, thus, we often remember our dreams. The specific parts of the brain involved in the creation of the contents of the dream, and the indisputable reason and function of dreams/nightmares, is largely unknown, although we do know that the logical reasoning part of the brain, i.e., the prefrontal cortex, is inactive, making the bizarre movie – one that no one really asked to see – possible.

The question of why dreams happen, therefore, is one that’s difficult to answer and will depend on who you ask.

The Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Sigmund Freud, who is regarded as one of the first psychologists to search for the significance of dreams, believed that dreams are a “royal road to the unconscious”, i.e., that our dreams contain our deepest desires, fears, worries and memories that have been relegated to the unconscious. He believed that dreams simply unearthed what our conscious represses into our unconscious because we are uncomfortable to consciously confront them. He used this principle to provide his client’s therapeutic help as it is essentially a window to one’s internal conflicts. However, it has been out of fashion and use for quite some time.
Carl Jung, a psychoanalyst and former disciple of Freud’s, contended that dreams were a manifestation of the unconscious, however, he disagreed that they always had to be repressed contents. He contested Freud and stated that dreams contain powerful messages and symbols that are very important to be paid attention to in order to solve our conflicts with life, and lead us to what he called “individuation” – a process by which our mind achieves a superior state of perfect stability and harmony. His views, also, have been since largely discarded.
The neurobiological perspective of dream cause and function is a combined effort of several doctors through time. Hobson argued against the Freudian view and said that dreams occur as our brain circuits become active during REM sleep, which examines changes in the external environment which leads to other parts of our brain involved with memory and emotions to become active and producing dreams. In further elaboration of this, Zhang proposed that during REM, our memories move from the short term to long term memory, from the conscious to the unconscious part of our brain. In between this process, dreaming occurs, which is why the dream is continuous, but at times, also changes rapidly as the new “file” loads.
More recent theories of dream interpretation propose that dreams help us to better generalize, or make sense of, our waking world. They state that to break the monotonous and “overfitted” nature of daily life, dreams have to be chaotic and bizarre so that our waking minds think of the world in more simplistic ways.

All of these to say that,

There’s no indisputable cause and function of dreams, and,
No matter who is answering, dreams can be said to be a response to, or a manifestation of, some environmental or internal conflict or circumstance. This conclusion can help us in understanding why pandemic nightmares are happening – the increased stress, depression, anxiety during the pandemic due to various factors including but not limited to, concern for one’s and loved one’s physical wellbeing, the transition from commuting to our place of work/study to the online mode, and the uncertainty of every passing day.

What can we do about the nightmares?

Since sleep is associated with better psychological well-being and vice versa, and nightmares often hamper our ability to sleep well, there should be some solution to this problem. The most obvious solution would be to sleep early, but that’s difficult for a lot of people as our sleep patterns have been altered. To attempt to push the bedtime ahead, the possible solutions can be:

Quitting the use of your devices about an hour before planning to sleep, as the bright screen tricks our brain into thinking it is daytime.
Taking a warm bath, drinking some warm tea or milk, and optimizing the sleeping area to be the best temperature.
Using the sleeping space to just sleep, and keeping other activities such as working, eating, etc. in other places.

In the event, you wake up to a nightmare and are unable to go back to sleep,

Divert your thoughts from the nightmare
Imagine a more positive outcome to the nightmare by giving it an ending you prefer.

Although these “solutions” seem too reductive, it is all we can do at a time where situations are not in our control. However, if things get too bothersome, seeking professional help should always be an option to be holding on.

With this information in your arsenal, get under the covers and get the rest you need!