The Science behind Your Vivid Dreams (and How They Impact Sleep)

Between the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, wars overseas, and the onslaught of daily news at your fingertips, stress might feel like an inherent part of your days—and nights. That’s right: While humans respond to high stress in many different ways, the brain tends to work through things most at night, explains neurologist and sleep specialist W. Christopher Winter, M.D. This means that the stressors we experience by day often make their way into our dreams.

Vivid dreams, particularly nightmares, are a hallmark of clinical conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which can occur in the wake of trauma, but Winter explains that your subconscious is constantly wrestling with stressors—and that stress doesn’t need to reach a certain level to impact dreams or nightmares. “Many people think dreams are a little portal into your psyche, even if they’re not literal,” he says.

So, if your nights are full of detailed, colorful, or scary dreams as of late, you’re certainly not alone. Below, a look at how our brains work while we rest, the interplays between dreams and stress, and—most importantly—how to finally find some rest no matter what you’re grappling with.

First, it’s important to know that sleep, in general, is critical for emotional processing. This is particularly true of a deep sleep cycle called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which is when we dream. One study published in Nature Communications this summer found that when people were deprived of REM sleep, the brain regions involved with emotions and memory didn’t communicate as well with one another, which could lead to increased emotional reactivity.

During REM sleep, much like a filing cabinet, dreams are your brain’s way of sorting through your experiences and “figuring out what to remember and what to ‘shred,’” explains Shelby Harris, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in behavioral sleep medicine and director of sleep health at Sleepopolis. Some researchers have called dreaming “overnight therapy,” highlighting how much the phenomenon helps us sort through our emotional happenings. “[In dreams], we sort of evaluate and play around with things; they’re like a sandbox in our mind when we sleep,” Winter adds.

He explains that stress can be the engine that revs dreams up, too, since it informs memory; your brain works harder to reconcile stressful scenarios than neutral ones. This is why dreams aren’t usually about boring trips to the grocery store but rather something terrifying or a scene involving someone in your life you’re in conflict with.

Winter adds that dreams might also match your stress or anxiety levels, or loosely, even what you’re stressed about. “Your brain likes to take feelings you’re feeling or little signals from your environment and create dreams around them.”

For example, researchers have reported increased dream activity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic; when your world is turned upside down, you’re going through trauma, or you are trying to process a highly emotional event, it’s only natural you’d have more vivid dreams. Sometimes, these dreams have similar themes to your stressors, too, so for the many impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles, it would make sense that dreams may involve trying to escape something.

Of course, stress isn’t the only ingredient for vivid dreams. Certain medications (melatonin, some SSRIs, some blood pressure medications), alcohol, sleep deprivation, sleep apnea, and teeth grinding can all contribute to their formation, says Harris.

Generally, dreams in and of themselves won’t wake you up, says Winter. But nightmares—which are often linked with feelings like anxiety or fear—can. If you’ve ever woken up in the middle of a nightmare, you also know that sometimes falling back asleep can be scary—and being up in the middle of the night, of course, causes you to miss out on sleep.

Vivid, repetitive dreams can also cause anxiety around sleep at bedtime as they might make you not want to sleep, tanking overall sleep quality, says Harris. “If it keeps happening and you’re not getting restful sleep, that can worsen the dreams, creating this tough cycle that’s hard to break.”

Stress—which fuels dreams—also negatively impacts sleep quality; it makes sleep lighter and leads to more wakeups. So, while it might feel like dreams are always waking you up, Winter argues that it’s more likely that your stress—and your brain’s job of working through it during sleep—is the culprit. (And you’re also more likely to remember a dream if you wake up in the middle of one, he says.)

All this can cause you to lose sleep, wake up groggy, and miss out on the restorative rest your body needs to feel its best.

Stress can feel like a big topic to tackle, but there are proven ways to infuse more calm into your days and nights and address detailed dreams themselves for better rest. Here are four strategies sleep specialists suggest employing today (or tonight) for a quieter night’s rest.

1. Take inventory of your days and nights

Winter suggests first taking stock of your sleep, noting what is disturbed and where you need help. Are you waking up throughout the night? Struggling to fall asleep? Are you having the same nightmare night after night? What has your past week of sleep been like?

Then, do the same for your days. Have any significant changes in exercise, diet, and medications? What stressors are you currently experiencing?

Jotting some of this down will help you identify possible triggers to stress and sleep challenges and improve sleep quality.

2. Make room for relaxation

No one under stress wants to be told to relax. Still, there’s no way around the idea that certain practices—meditation, yoga, breathing, exercise, a regular sleep schedule, and rest—play a significant role in the relaxation of the nervous system and, in turn, sleep.

Need something new to try? One study published in JMIR Mental Health found that 15 minutes of journaling three days a week for 12 weeks significantly reduced mental distress in people with elevated levels of anxiety. Expressive writing, which can be done through journaling, is one way to process your emotions and experiences, which could put your brain at ease. While there’s not a ton of research on the topic, some studies suggest that this type of writing, particularly when done around distressing dreams, can soothe sleep.

3. For bad dreams, try imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT)

The practice, a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy sometimes used for PTSD nightmares, involves rewriting a nightmare while awake and then rehearsing the new version before sleep, explains Harris. “It’s a technique specifically designed to help reduce nightmares.” How it might look: Say you have bad dreams about snakes. Before bed, you might picture the dream in your mind, and instead of a snake lunging at you, you picture the snake slowly slithering away from you. “Once your brain loses interest in something, it doesn’t tend to want to dream about it,” says Winter.

4. Consider talking to a sleep specialist

If dreams or stress consistently disrupt your nights, professional help can offer solutions, says Harris. A sleep specialist can help determine if an underlying issue like a sleep or mental health condition is impacting your rest and provide specialized treatment modalities, from specific targeted therapy to pharmacological options. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s website hosts a directory of accredited sleep centers and specialists. Of course, therapy is a first-line treatment for mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD. So if you’re struggling in your day-to-day, whether it’s with something like losing your home or simply having a hard time processing your day-to-day, seek support from a mental health professional.