Total nightmare: why so many of us are having anxiety dreams
Coronavirus-based fears stopping you getting a good night’s sleep? Leah Hardy investigates
Last night I woke up at 3am, gasping for breath, my heart racing. A confusing dream in which I faced a terrifying but faceless threat left me so unsettled I had to get up and pace the house until my adrenalin subsided. Friends report similarly vivid nocturnal adventures – some say their dreams are more frequent and bizarre, but others admit they are plagued by nightmares. And now new studies confirm the fact that for many people, Covid-19 has turned 2020 not just into a metaphorical nightmare but a literal one.
In a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, scientists in Finland analysing data from 4,000 people found that the number of bad dreams had increased by 25 per cent since the pandemic began. Not only that, when they used artificial intelligence to analyse the dreams of 800 of the participants, they found that more than half of them had been infected with the virus. Common dream themes included forgetting to social distance or being horrified to find themselves hugging, as well as apocalypses and even the horrors of home-schooling.
Throughout the pandemic, dream researchers have found that it has infiltrated our nights as well as our days. Dr Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School who has been researching dreams for four decades, has written a book, Pandemic Dreams, based on a survey carried out since coronavirus took hold. She says that many respondents report terrifying dreams in which they or a family member are dying of the disease, with healthcare workers reporting particularly “horrific nightmares”. Others process their anxiety in metaphors such as tidal waves or tornadoes. Corona dreamers, she says, are also having a “ton of bug dreams”, she says, which is “partly because we say, ‘coming down with a bug’.” But also because “lots of little things that could cumulatively harm or kill you is a good metaphor for virus particles”.
In Italy, Dr Claudio Colace, a psychologist at the National Health Service Office, has been collecting the dreams of children aged three to eight via the Facebook page “coronavirusanddreams”. He says that he is seeing “nightmares related to social isolation and Covid-19 as well as wish-fulfilment dreams to return to play with friends and meet them at school”.
In the UK a group of postgraduate psychoanalysis students in London (@lockdowndreams on Twitter) are asking people to submit their dreams to lockdowndreams.com so they can analyse how the crisis is being processed in our unconscious. “Over 75 per cent of respondents are reporting more vivid dreams since lockdown started,” researcher Zara
Shirwan explains. “The dreams are incredibly varied, but there are themes of being chased or pursued, and of being frustrated.”
A new study from researchers in Toronto this week reported similar findings, with anxiety, fear and confusion the top-reported emotions experienced by dreamers. They found that students’ dreams were more vivid, and that they were having more nightmares than good dreams. A third of nightmares were specifically related to Covid-19, including details like PPE and social distancing. Researchers believe these nightmares are not only our way of processing our frightening “new normal” but a way in which we rehearse and consolidate the new protocols we are expected to adhere to, such as social distancing.
However, there is good news: we might have more influence over our dreams that we think.
There are two ways in which we can sweeten our night-time subconscious. The first is by developing “lucid dreaming” – a state in which we are at least partially aware that we are dreaming during the dream itself. Dr Denholm Aspy, a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide’s School of Psychology in Australia, says around half of us have at least one lucid dream in our lifetime, and almost a quarter of us have at least one lucid dream a month.
But if you aren’t one of the naturally lucky ones, don’t worry. In a 2017 study, Dr Aspy found that by using techniques such as keeping a dream diary to help better recall what happens in them and “reality testing” – checking several times a day whether you are dreaming or not – some participants were able to achieve the goal of having lucid dreams in 46 per cent of their attempts.
“Many people, once they’re lucid, have a lot of control over the dream,” Dr Barrett says. “If they’re being chased by a witch, they can choose, ‘No, I don’t want to have a witch dream any more’ and dissolve a dark building into a beautiful palace and swap in some of their friends instead of the witch.” Astonishingly, she says achieving this just once can be enough to end a recurring nightmare forever. Alternatively, Dr Barrett says an easier solution might be “dream incubation”.
“Most people can at least sometimes control their dreams if they ‘incubate’ particular content at bedtime. In one study, I asked college students to try to solve a problem in their dreams. Over the course of a week, 50 per cent had a dream about the target problem and a quarter had one that solved it.”
The areas in our brain associated with memory are “not quite as active in sleep but they are certainly somewhat awake, so requests to our dreaming mind very often get through,” she adds. “It’s not a matter of ask for it once and you are guaranteed to dream on this topic, but it’s very often effective with repetition.”
And, even if you don’t suffer from nightmares, Dr Aspy says now is still the best time to learn to take control. “Even if our day-to-day lives are limited... in your dreams you can have any experience you want.”
‘There are themes of being chased or pursued, and of being frustrated’