Bad dreams turned out to be beneficial: studies have shown their impact on the psyche

Bad dreams can have both negative and potentially beneficial effects on the human psyche, according to a study conducted at the University of Kansas.

Scientists analyzed data from about 500 participants, including their dreams and their emotional state the next morning. The study focused on which emotions prevailed in dreams – fear or joy. Machine learning methods were used to process large amounts of text descriptions to assess the intensity of emotional experiences. The results were compared with the mood in which people woke up in the morning.

The analysis revealed mixed results. In the short term, intense fears in dreams were indeed associated with more depressed mood the next day. However, when looking at the long-term data, it turned out that those who had more frequent fears in dreams tended to cope better with emotional tension and stress in real life.

Researchers explain that during sleep, the brain “trains” to respond to threats in a safe environment, which can contribute to the formation of psychological resilience to stressful situations. Scientists also discovered an interesting pattern: when fear and positive emotions, such as joy, were combined in a dream, the negative impact on mood was less. This indicates that the emotional “diversity” of dreams can mitigate the impact of disturbing plots.

It is important to distinguish nightmares from ordinary unpleasant dreams. A nightmare is a dream that is so intense that it wakes a person up in the middle of the night and can be associated with mental disorders. On the other hand, an unpleasant dream, after which you wake up, is usually considered a normal phenomenon and indicates the natural processes of processing emotions by the brain, and not pathology.