People are experiencing strange dreams en mass during lockdown

Disturbed sleeping patterns and heightened anxiety induced by the current crisis has led to a sharp increase in vivid and unusual dreams, though experts claim it’s no cause for concern.

Since we began isolating all those weeks ago, you’ve probably been having some pretty strange dreams. While you’re definitely not the only one (check out the  #pandemicdreams trend on Twitter if you’re after some interesting stories), the vivid-nature of these ‘quarandreams’ can be quite disturbing, but sleep experts are stressing that it’s completely normal. 

Over the last month, there’s been a drastic increase in Google searches for ‘Covid-19 dreams and nightmares’ (which now yields almost six million results) and some are even submitting them to a site called I Dream of Covid. Clearly, the virus has set up shop in our unconscious minds as well as dominating almost every conversation, news announcement, and social media platform there is, our inescapable reality paving the way for a new phenomenon.

From Abraham Lincoln sewing face masks and white spiders with detachable black tentacles, to slightly more ordinary scenarios that involve panicked supermarket queuing and regrettable quarantine hair transformations, the internet is currently rife with impressively detailed accounts of what people have been experiencing once the lights go out. And, while it might seem rather alarming, Dr Deirdre Barrett — a dream researcher and psychology professor at Harvard who’s collecting data on this specific phenomenon — deems it an unsurprising side effect of a pandemic that’s turned the world on its head.

https://twitter.com/emilyfickcomedy/status/1264584200981671938

One of the more obvious explanations is that without needing to physically attend lessons or commute to work we are in fact sleeping much more — particularly in the absence of being woken by alarm clocks. This is the case for a whopping 62% of Brits (according to a survey conducted by King’s College London) who reported a noticeable change in their traditional sleeping patterns compared to before strict social distancing measures were put in place at the end of March.

With modern life typically involving shortened sleep which has already lead to an ‘epidemic’ of dream loss, it makes total sense therefore, that dream time and recall would be rising during the crisis. ‘A lot of it is just watching slightly sleep deprived people catching up on sleep,’ says Barrett, adding that this is also effecting how much REM (rapid eye movement) sleep we’re getting overall. ‘People who are letting themselves sleep a natural amount at night are getting more and more dreams.’

In an average cycle, REM is when dreams tend to be most vivid, following a period of deep sleep when the brain enters a ‘neural chemical bath that can counteract some of the anxiety we feel on a regular basis,’ (Good Housekeeping). It’s what helps us deal with stressful stimulus like upcoming deadlines and financial concerns by moving a portion of it into long-term memory.

However, because the pandemic has produced a large amount of ‘anticipatory stress’, we’re struggling to process it when we sleep. ‘Unlike a car crash, for example, where there’s a sequence of events that occur, the pandemic has been largely unfolding silently for many communities,’ says behavioural sleep medicine specialist, Britney Blair. ‘All of this leads to a kind of funky, odd content that makes a dream so memorable in the first place.’

But there’s actually more to our newfound dearth of dream inspiration than this. Alongside the looming threat of the virus which is understandably affecting the nature of the dreams themselves, it’s not solely those of us who are sleeping more who could be subject to imagining Johnny Depp making deconstructed life size human models out of Chicago pizza pies.

‘The other thing that’s happening is we have less stimulation during the day,’ Blair adds. ‘The majority of people have been completing the same limited routine inside their homes for months so the brain has less content to form into our dreams, which can also lead to weird material we may have not remembered ever experiencing before.’

Plus, the type of stimulation we’re primarily receiving right now comes from our phones, including media that’s potentially adding to our stress levels, so it’s no wonder really that some of us might be finding our nights more restful than usual. ‘It’s a normal response to not sleep in a situation of stress,’ says Megan Crawford, who studies chronic sleep problems. ‘It’s part of a fight or flight response, as we become anxious and our bodily functions can ramp up in order to fight or [flee].’

I had the most vivid dream about being on an airplane leaving Madison that crashed into the lake & I had to swim to shore then wander around a rich neighborhood trying to find help but no one would open their doors or come outside because I didn’t have a mask on. #pandemicdreams

— Sami Schalk (@DrSamiSchalk) April 26, 2020