Why You're Having Weird Dreams During Coronavirus Outbreak

But just like the virus itself, stress is a lurking, undetectable threat. We experience not just individual stress, but societal stress, and we underestimate the effects of bad economic news and masked grocery store clerks on our psyches.

"The social-cultural stress is kind of permeating the air,” says Jade Wu, a sleep psychologist and host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast. “It's almost contagious. So even if we haven't lost our jobs or had a loved one contract coronavirus, we're still tapping into this heightened level of stress.”

New sleep patterns

One upside of the pandemic: Some people are sleeping more. Before stay-at-home orders were enacted in New York City, residential electricity use would usually increase around 6 a.m., peak at 7:30 a.m., then decline. But according to Columbia University's Earth Institute, once schools were closed and people started working at home, the morning power peak was around 9 a.m., which is more like a weekend.

More sleep means more time for dreams. And the period before you awake is when you experience your longest and deepest REM sleep. When you wake up normally, without your buzzing alarm, you experience more of what dream scientists call a REM sleep episode.

"That's where we have the most vivid dreams — in REM sleep,” McNamara says. “If you wake up with an alarm clock you say, ‘OK, I've got to do X, Y and Z, and then I've got to get on the subway’ — you're immediately in your day. But if you don't have any pressing obligations, like on a weekend or during a time like this, you tend to wake up in a REM sleep episode, so the dreams are more prominent, and you start to remember them."

When we don't get enough REM sleep, the brain tries to compensate, and the result can be nightmares. “If we don't get enough REM tonight, then tomorrow night, when we go to sleep, the brain will try to make up for the loss by giving you more earlier in the night,” Wu says. “And when that happens, we're more likely to have intense dreams and nightmares.”

Effects of age and medications

In the study conducted by Bulkeley, respondents age 18-34 were more likely to say they'd had a pandemic-related dream than people ages 55 and older. One reason may be that older people possess wisdom and life experiences that better equip them to manage stressful situations. In an analysis of survey data from Ipsos MORI, a global market research firm, New King's College London researchers determined that pandemic responses in the UK can be divided into three categories: the Accepting, people who are following lockdown measures and losing little sleep over coronavirus; the Suffering, the group most likely to feel anxious and depressed; and the Resisting, those who are least likely to follow lockdown rules. People age 55-75 were most likely to be in the Accepting group.

Older and younger people also dream about different things, McNamara says. With age, our dreams are more likely to be spiritual and reflective. “There's more themes about handing something on to some other character or set of characters,” he says. “And then as you approach death, there's quite a few dreams of being reunited with loved ones. They appear quite healthy and happy and say, ‘Don't be afraid, everything's gonna be fine. You'll be rejoining us.'"

The stages of sleep also change with age. Slow-wave sleep — the deepest type of non-REM sleep — tends to disappear. REM sleep declines as well. “In general, I would say that people dream a little bit less,” Wu says. Other age-related issues that can affect dreams include pain and sleep medications. “Almost every 60-plus patient that I've seen has been on some sort of sleep medication, whether it's on-label or off-label,” she says. This includes products such as ZzzQuil and prescription drugs such as zolpidem (Ambien), both of which can lead to more vivid dreaming.

Beating back nightmares

If you're having persistent nightmares, one option is a technique called Image Rehearsal Therapy, which involves journaling about your dream and rewriting it. McNamara gives the example of a monster that's chasing you in a dream. As you rewrite it, you determine that it's not a monster but an old friend. And he's not trying to hurt you, he's trying to share good news. “You rewrite the dream script so it's no longer scary,” he says. “When you do that on a regular basis for a couple of weeks, it tends to get rid of the nightmares and the disturbing dreams. It's easy-to-do therapy and it's effective."

Other recommendations include:

• Keep a consistent sleep schedule. “That'll help to stabilize your sleep pattern and set you up for less likelihood of really intense nightmares,” Wu says.
  
  
• Review your medications. Some of them could be causing nightmares. Also, avoid alcohol close to bedtime: It can disrupt sleep and dreaming.
  
  
• Don't go right back to sleep after a nightmare. You're better off getting up and maybe drinking a little water. “Don't worry about losing a little bit of sleep,” says Wu. “If you just roll over and reenter the nightmare, that's going to perpetuate a bad pattern."
  
  
• Plan your dreams. Before you go to sleep, think about what you want to dream about. That not only increases the odds that you'll dream about something good, but you'll also have fewer anxiety dreams, according to Barrett.
  
  
• Get more info. The Sleep Foundation offers advice for sleeping well during the pandemic.