Anu Bhandary D Line Psychology

To what extent do dreams reflect one’s emotional processes?
Anu Bhandary D line Psychology
Dreams are the subject of great debate and have been for years; whether they harbour subconscious desires or they simply are the result of our attempts to understand and process. It is unsure if we will ever be able to understand the significance or insignificance of our dreams. However, do dreams in any way reflect the way someone feels? Can they give us insight into how well we are doing in processing our emotions? They absolutely can. Our dreams can show us how our brain is attempting to understand our thoughts and feelings and process that information to store. For example, breast
cancer patients dreaming about their illness can show us that their brains are attempting to consolidate that. Whereas, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers are unable to have anything but nightmares about their trauma, shows us that perhaps something went wrong in the attempt to process and store the memory; rather it causes the victim to keep living it. How frequently we dream can indicate that perhaps we have a mood disorder. Patients with depression dream three times more than those without because their brains are working hard to be able to process the overwhelming amount of emotions during Rapid Eye Movement sleep (Elliot & Tyrell, 2017). Dreams reflect the quality of one’s emotional processes greatly and can give us great insight into what is happening to us psychologically.
Breast cancer patients more often dream about their disease as opposed to healthy women of the same age, therefore reflecting their emotional processing.
Women who have breast cancer tend to dream about their illness and the implications that come with it, for example, medical tests and death. Whereas, women of the same age without breast cancer dream about occurrences in their lives for example, relationships. A study done by King & DeCicco (2007) showed that there was a correlation between those who had poor health and dreams about body deformation, injuries, illnesses and body parts. In 1993, Wood et al. (cited as King, 2006), conducted a study in which they tested patients with Obstructive Airway Disease (OAD). They acquired an experimental group with patients with OAD and asthma and a control group without asthma. It was found that patients with OAD and asthma had three times more intrusive nightmares than those without. In this specific study, women with breast cancer were the control group and they were compared against a control group of women without, and their dreams were analysed. The women with breast cancer frequently dreamt of their health and suffered nightmares in relation to their illness. The control group however, dreamt about their relationships, their jobs and other stressors they may have (DeCicco, et al., 2010). This is consistent with the theory that we dream to process information. The Cognitive Theory of Dreaming was first proposed by David Foulkes
and states that we dream to form connections between memories and process new information (Berman, 2015). Dreaming of the trauma is the brain’s attempt at processing and understanding stressors such as the breast cancer is shown by the nature of dreams breast cancer patients have.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) sufferers cannot process emotions and have nightmares, therefore indicates their emotional processing is severely impacted by the trauma.
PTSD is a disorder of memory in which a person is subject to great trauma that trigger a set of unpleasant reactions (Beyond Blue, Ltd., 2016). Emotional processing is the brain’s ability to process stressors and trauma. However, in PTSD patients this ability to do so is impaired. People who suffer from PTSD often have nightmares in which they relive the incident. During sleep, it is essential to go through all the sleep processes such as REM (rapid eye movement) and Non-REM sleep. A study done by Ross, et al. (1994) showed that PTSD sufferers do not achieve proper REM sleep. REM sleep is crucial for memory consolidation; however, it is also the time in which the amygdala is most active (BBC, 2009). The amygdala is a structure in the brain responsible for emotions such as fear, in PTSD sufferers, the amygdala is more active as opposed to those who do not have the disorder (Shin, et. al., 2006). Another structure of the brain is the hippocampus it is the part of the brain responsible for memory. To consolidate memories, the hippocampus is active during sleep. However, PSTD sufferers have a smaller hippocampus to those without, therefore interrupting emotional processing (Collins, 2015). They do not process and store memories like Foulkes’ theory suggests. Rather than processing their emotions, they are
reinforcing the trauma (BBC, 2009). The nightmares that PTSD sufferers have indicate that there is something wrong with the brain’s ability to process emotions.
People with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) tend to dream more than people who are mentally healthy due to more demand to process emotion. During sleep, the brain attempts to process information. With someone who has depression, they have a lot more information to process therefore fall into REM sleep a lot faster than those without (Cartwright, 2010). However, this means that the brain is not falling in out of other stages of sleep that are essential for rest. McNamara (2008), explained that we dream in REM and non-REM sleep. He conducted an experiment in which he acquired a group of mentally healthy participants and depressed participants. He then woke each of them up during REM and non-REM sleep and asked them to recall their dreams, complete a mood questionnaire and a self-appraisal task. It was found that with both healthy and mentally ill participants, when woken during REM sleep, negative emotions were more so prevalent. Appraisal was consistently negative in mentally ill participants, however was significantly more negative when woken during REM sleep. Considering the amount of REM sleep that someone with depression is partaking in, this means that they have less time for non-REM sleep as well (Cartwright, 2010). Van Der Helm et. al, (2011), suggested that perhaps we sleep to be able to process emotions, hence why people with a mood disorder such as MDD tend to dream in REM sleep more. This is a problem however, because sleep deprivation can make symptoms of depression worse as well as contribute to feelings of anxiety and therefore contribute to the severity of the cycle of mental illness worse (Anwar, 2013). Depression causes one to fall into REM sleep faster and for long periods of time which reflects that there is a high demand for emotional processing.
Dreaming can give us a crucial insight to the inner working of our brains. It can express to us that it is processing information effectively. However, it can also indicate to us that we are not processing information correctly, for example PTSD sufferers are unable to consolidate their memories, rather they tend to reinforce them. This indicates that the emotional processing needs to be worked on through psychotherapy. However, the meaning of dream is not the only vital component, the number of dreams we have are also important. Dreaming too much can indicate a mood disorder such as MDD and therefore we can look to treat that to rehabilitate. Dreams greatly indicate to us the quality of our emotional processing and therefore our emotional well-being.