How Dreams Affect Your Sleep

Here's what we know about dreams is dreams move in succession throughout the night. So if you start at chapter 1, at the end of the night you're probably going to be on chapter 5 or 6 of that same dream. So it's very consistent throughout the night. We know that repetitive dreams usually occur with people during times of high stress. Everybody has one repetitive dream, or sometimes more than one that will occur during these times of high stress. So as an example, mine is I'm running through the halls of high school and I get to my locker and I can't remember the combination to my locker. And the bell has rung and I'm trying to get to class. Usually dreams, the reason that I use that as an example is that usually dreams are similar in nature to that. You're running somewhere, you're trying to get to something and you can't quite get there. That's also a manifestation of REM sleep in your dream. During REM sleep you're completely paralyzed so that you don't act out your dreams. And so when you feel like your feet are in quicksand or you're moving in slow motion, in fact, that is usually a dream that is occurring during REM sleep. Again, nightmares can be a whole other situation that people have, especially people who have post traumatic stress disorder, for people who are rape or disaster victims. They will oftentimes report recurrent nightmares. There are things called nightmare therapies that are out there and available that people can go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist and work through these types of situations. Those aren't going to be easy to work through on your own and so I oftentimes tell people that if they have nightmares to really go seek the help of a therapist.