If you’re having bizarre dreams during the coronavirus pandemic, you’re not alone. A lot of people have been reporting experiencing particularly vivid dreams right now. Google searches in the United States for “Why am I having weird dreams lately” have spiked in April, almost paradoxically as most of the country is on lockdown and people are spending more time at home than ever — hardly the best fuel for dreams. This, however, might actually be part of why our dreams are working overtime.
“Everyone’s quite shocked by the fact that they’re having incredibly vivid dreams,” Jake Roberts, a spokesperson for Lockdown Dreams, a group of postgraduate psychoanalysis students, told The Guardian. “That’s so interesting because our material waking lives have become, in a way, more dull.”
Roberts explained that the current monotony of our daily routines is resulting in “our minds… reaching out to try and make something from the little stimuli we’re receiving being locked down, and bringing up things we’ve completely forgotten about.”
People are also remembering their dreams better than they usually do
People aren’t only having more vivid dreams, they’re remembering their dreams more than they usually do. HuffPost noted that this can be at least partially chalked up to poor sleep quality. If you typically don’t remember your dreams, it’s likely because you are used to getting a good night’s sleep. When we don’t sleep well, however, we tend to remember our dreams better.
“People are remembering very specific aspects of the dreams, like smells, emotions or places,” said Roberts. “And they are able to describe buildings and scenery, which is something we are not usually able to do. They’re experiencing their dreaming world as they would their waking world.”
If these vivid dreams are disturbing your sleep, you can at least take comfort in the knowledge that they probably won’t last for too long. “In general, humans have an amazing capacity to become accustomed to any situation,” Roberts explained. “So at least tentatively, we could say that this incredibly vivid dreaming might start to wane after a while as we get used to this situation.”
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