Effects of Stress and PTSD on Dreams
While in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, our body simultaneously suppresses the neurotransmitters that usually keep us awake: histamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Because those transmitters are suppressed, we’re less conscious of our surroundings, which allows our bodies to enter the four stages of sleep throughout the night. However, some factors may inhibit our ability to sleep.
Throughout the week, people often experience stressful or traumatic experiences that may occur in one’s dreams a few days after the event. This is called the ‘dream-lag’ effect, a 6-day temporal delay in dream content incorporations.
Health and Stress Management teacher Jennifer Bornheimer says, “Trauma is a chronic stressor.” Sometimes, people may dream about specific life events, and emotions throughout the day may impact the mind’s thoughts during REM sleep.
Trauma can influence one’s dreams and day-to-day life, causing moments following the event to be unpleasant. “I was constantly anxious, and my mood was always very down afterward,” said alumni Gigi Roldan.
“With the things that happened in my childhood, it left me in fear of having to care for others,” Roldan said, “so when I had a dream of having to care for children, once I woke up, I was unsettled and anxious for the rest of the day,”
“Sometimes we remain in that fight or flight phase,” Bornhiemer said. Occasionally, if a stressful event occurs, the trauma response sticks around for the rest of your day. “It can interrupt our ability to go to work,” Bornheimer said.
When under stress or when experiencing anxiety, there are times that the human body will ignore signals that tell us when to eat and even when to sleep.
When and What We Dream
People often have 3-7 dreams a night. Dream activity occurs during REM sleep. During this time, people produce more acetylcholine, which maintains brain activity, and dopamine, which some researchers have linked to possible hallucinations.
Throughout the night, people will experience four stages that can total up to anywhere between 90-120 minutes per cycle. Assuming someone gets an average of eight hours of sleep, this cycle will repeat four to five times.
Stage four is when people enter REM sleep, and vivid dreaming occurs. REM sleep can last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. During REM sleep, some psychologists say dreams consolidate our memories, allowing people to analyze them.
“I think it’s a lot of memory consolidation that goes into dreams,” Williams said. There are many prevailing theories that suggest that dreams consolidate our memories and allow people to analyze them.
Another theory that has circulated is the Firdous theory, which suggests that dreams happen for a reason and may hold hidden meanings for people to decipher. “It’s the subconscious [saying] the dream is happening for a reason, and [may be] telling you something,” said Williams.
