[imagesource: here]

Yeah, you’re not imagining it.

Your dreams have been weirder and oddly vivid since the pandemic took the world and flipped it on its head.

I have a recurring dream every other night that I accidentally left my mask and hand sanitiser behind when I left my apartment. When I try to go back for it, I can’t seem to find the door, or I end up in another building, or something gets in the way of the mask retrieval.

That dream tends to takes turns with the one where I have a maths test that I didn’t study for. I haven’t had to write a maths test since high school.

Some scientists think that the uptick in weird dreams during the pandemic has something to do with an increase in REM sleep – the part of the sleep cycle when dreams most often occur.

This is in part due to our new schedules while working from home, as no commute often amounts to more sleep.

Weird dreams are for the most part a little anxiety-inducing, but nightmares are something else entirely.

Those too, according to TIME, have become a little more frequent in recent months for some.

Where Do Nightmares Come From?

Nightmares, and their content, develop over time, starting when you’re too young to form lasting memories unless they are particularly traumatic. That period of your life is characterised by what’s referred to as “infantile amnesia”.

Infantile amnesia gets disrupted, if the child experiences significant trauma during that sensitive time-window—physical abuse, witnessing domestic violence, or being placed in rotating foster care with no consistent attachment figures, to name a few examples.

Other less traumatic events can contribute to nightmares as well. Daily stress is a powerful causative factor which would account for why more of us are having them, and having them more often, now.

Then there’s your personality. People who score higher on tests of empathy and sensitivity are more likely to pay for daytime stress with a sleep-time nightmare.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Nightmares aren’t necessarily unhealthy. There also isn’t an exact science behind the imagery, some of which you just collect throughout the day or over a lifetime.

Still, it would be nice to not have to deal with them.

There are a few options if you’re keen to try to take back control.

Image-rehearsal therapy – imagine the nightmare multiple times a day in a calm setting, but change it, giving it a happier ending. For example, if you haven’t studied for that maths test, imagine being told that it was all a big misunderstanding and you don’t have to write it.

In fact, you can drop the course entirely and still graduate.

Desensitisation and exposure – visualise the nightmare in vivid detail while practising relaxation techniques, including steady breathing and alternately tensing and relaxing muscles throughout.

Then visualise the nightmare again, this time with no relaxation techniques. The former allows you to take control of the experience, while the latter exposes you to the nightmare in a raw setting that can strip it of its power.

Take control during lucid dreaming – there’s always that point in a dream where you feel like you could break out of it or wake up. It’s at this point that you take control of the dream.

Turn around and chase whatever is chasing you, or exit the dream entirely. It takes practise but it can be done.

Look, nightmares probably can’t be eradicated entirely, but it helps to know where they come from and what can be done about them.

And, finally, don’t panic too much if you’ve been having more bad dreams than usual.

It’s weird out there.

[source:time]