We are not alone…
It’s an interesting time for all of us, if you’re anything like us (i.e. good girls and boys), you’ve been at home for quite a while. For us it’s been about 10 weeks, I believe. While for many, the stresses of Covid-19 and the inability to live life as “normal” as before is causing a weird phenomena in the form of vivid dreams.
Now, I have always had very vivid dreams. For me, things haven’t really changed much. The biggest difference is the level of darker themes I’ve experienced. I am an avid dreamer that usually enjoys her dreams, they make great fodder for writing (of which I do often). Some of my biggest ideas come from dreams, which I’m grateful for. All of us, however, may not feel the same.
I am dreaming almost daily and recalling in great detail the stories within my dreams. They vary:
- Adventures through battles and great evils where I am or watching a good guy vs. bad guy scenario.
- Recalling past relationships and friendships and imagining what they are up to now.
- Working through some kind of problem or situation that involves magic or some kind of sci-fi element that’s either within my ability to procure or just out of reach.
Recent news says, it’s super common. Since the nationwide lockdowns and everyone staying at home, most people have begun to dream more and more vividly. For me, dreaming is like watching the ultimate film with multiple angles and perspectives, timeline jumps, and story lines that would otherwise make no sense seem to be taken as fact. Maybe because I am accustomed to dreaming at that level and learning from them, they don’t seem that bad but the consistency is definitely much more than I have ever experienced.
“According to Stacey Jenkins, a psychotherapist and Jungian analyst in Toronto, used the analogy of an ocean to describe our subconscious, with fish representing the contents of our dreams.”
It makes sense. We are normally too busy with life for introspection, let alone remembering bizarre dreams from the previous night. And if you are anything like me, you often have those dreams that seem to float away with the rising of the morning sun.
“Imants Baruss, a psychology professor at Western University in London, Ont….those able to wake up naturally without an alarm clock — will likely have better dream recollection.”
Absolutely! I’ve been training myself to become a morning person (in order to find time to work on personal projects), but every day I have an especially vivid dream I am waking up before my alarm clock and with plenty of detail at hand.
“Sleep specialist Amanda Jewson says peoples’ sleeping patterns — not just their dreams — are being upended by the increase in stress and anxiety surrounding the coronavirus threat. That stress in turn raises cortisol and adrenalin levels, making it difficult to fall asleep at night.”
Apparently, twitter and Reddit are spreading #pandemicdreams and #covidnightmares like hot cakes. The world has never had such a “universal stresser” as Covid-19, like ever. When in history, has the world felt trapped in varying levels of shitty buses which in turn has ended up being the same shitty bus.
It kind of sucks but also kind of makes the entire experience unifying. We are all experiencing similar levels of anxiety, once again reminding us that we are not as different as we all think. I’m sure once the world goes back to ‘normal’ we’ll go back to being our unkind selves but for the near future I hope we learn something profound from this experience.
And it profoundly changes something deep within us.
sources: COVID dreams? Pandemic stress, more free time could be leading to vivid visions. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-dreams-pandemic-stress-more-free-time-could-be-leading-to-vivid-visions-1.4900252. Date accessed: May 4, 2020. Published: April 17, 2020.
Why Covid-19 Quarantine Dreams Are Taking Over the Internet. https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-covid-19-dreams/. Date accessed: May 6, 2020. Published April 16, 2020.
Opposite But The Same 