Have you ever been woken up by a bad dream? Or never wanted a dream to end? Dreams can be either a fun part of the night or horrify you and make you never want to go back asleep. But, how do dreams affect our sleep?
Dreams can impact our sleep and our sleep routines, depending on what type of dream we are having.
Bad Dreams
Bad dreams can mean so many different things to many people. For some people, a bad dream could be getting murdered, while another person could be dreaming about getting married. Bad dreams can make us not want to go to bed because we don’t know what is going to happen that night. Some dreams are so disorienting that when we first wake up, it takes us a moment to realize that it was just a dream and not a reality.
This can adversely affect your sleep because one way to achieve a good night’s sleep is to go to bed around the same time each night. If you are lying in bed fretting about what you might dream about, you aren’t falling asleep. Bad dreams might also impact our sleep after we have fallen asleep. After all, we may have trouble getting back to sleep. This can make us feel tired, and our overall sleep quality will suffer. Bad dreams can impact our sleep, but what about good dreams?
Good Dreams
Having good dreams is a reason many people like to sleep. However, having a good dream can also make our sleep quality suffer and might lead to bad dreams. We might try to control our good dreams, and this is where we start to have problems. If we go to bed intending to control our dreams, then we might struggle to get to sleep in the first place. Trying to control our dreams can also lead to us having a restless night. These can all lead to us to not getting the best night’s sleep, and can potentially lead us to have more bad dreams. It can be a vicious cycle of good dreams, bad dreams, controlling the dream, and not sleeping because of it all.
It sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?
Dreams can be a fun part of going to sleep. They can help us escape our normal lives, but they can also make us hate going to sleep. Dreams can impact our sleep in many ways, from keeping us up to waking us up. However, it is probably best not to force the issue when it comes to dreaming and focus on getting the best night’s sleep. There has been research that has shown people who sleep better have better dreams. If you are finding that dreams are keeping you up, waking you up, or impacting the quality of your sleep in other ways, try to write down your thoughts.
Before laying down at night, write what you hope to dream about, or what you hope to not dream about. If your dream wakes you up and you can’t fall right back asleep, switch on your light and record what your dream was. By writing your thoughts down, your releasing them from your brain which could help you sleep better.
