A lot of people experiencing coronavirus lockdown will be ‘having quite emotional dreams’ which are more intense and last longer, a leading expert in sleep and dreams has said.
Professor Mark Blagrove from Swansea University’s department of psychology said it’s linked to the coronavirus lockdown upheaval, and increased levels of stress.
Increased pressure on finances, cabin fever and a lack of stimulation from staying at home all day could result in significant changes to the kind of dreams we’re all having, he said.
“Many people will have experienced a change in their circumstances recently, and any type of stress may be dreamt about,” he said.
“Some people will be having a life that is more boring than previously.
"There’s going to be a lot of people having quite emotional dreams"
“But there will be a lot of people who have more stress, possibly because they are with people who they wouldn’t spend so long with as a proportion of the day.
“It may be discomforting, it may be extremely stressful and dangerous for people in domestic violence situations,” he added.
“You then have the extra things like financial worries, employment worries, worries about your children.”
Prof Blagrove said there was a metaphorical “replication of life in dreams” which focuses on the “more emotional side”. Lots of us will be dreaming about doing the kind of ordinary things that we’re now not doing in real life - like going to the pub, going to work, being at work or meeting friends.
“For a lot of people, they won’t dream about their working life because, generally, it’s not that interesting,” he explained.
“But if the current situation gives people more interesting things happening, it may happen that people are dreaming more.”
And there’s a reason why people may be remembering their dreams more often during a coronavirus lockdown.
Because people are either not going to work, or working from home, they are sleeping later into the morning - and those extra few minutes are when the brain typically goes into REM sleep, where dreams get longer and the brain is more active.
“Alarm clocks will often wake you up in the middle of a REM sleep period. If you’re allowing the person to have the long sleep period, they could have longer dreams,” said Prof Blagrove.
“You are more likely to remember the dream if you have a longer sleep. If you have a longer sleep, you will have a longer dream,” he added.
Professor Blagrove, who said he had started dreaming about his cat since spending more time at home, and said dreams featuring coronavirus, isolation or money would suggest that they are important to the person emotionally.
He also said there may be an increase in people dreaming about somebody they have not spoken to or seen in a while “due to long times spent on social media”.
