These are anxious times – but how does this affect our sleep, and what can we learn from the exam crises and missed trains that haunt the small hours
Antonio Zadra, a psychologist, is sharing a memory of a horrific experience at sea. He had almost made it to shore, but knew he was about to die. In fact, these were his final 20 seconds of life. Just then, his eight-year-old son appeared at the water’s edge. He looked at Zadra, and Zadra heard the words: “Dad, no!” Two years later, remembering the fear and horror of the moment makes him well up. “I was thinking: ‘I am about to die and I am going to die in front of my eight-year-old son.” He recalls the vivid depth in his son’s eyes, the completeness with which he was able to look into them. And then, of course, he woke up and everything was OK, but not OK. The first thing he did in the morning was hug his son.
Zadra says this is his worst anxiety dream; one that still has the power to take his breath away. And, having read more than 10,000 dream reports for his work at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine at the University of Montreal, he knows that his dream contains one of the most common motifs of anxiety dreams: that of our own imminent death (others include chase and pursuit, and loss of control). But this knowledge did nothing to ameliorate the shock and anguish of the moment. Technically, the only thing that stops this dream from being classified as a nightmare is the fact that it didn’t wake him up.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ID0Xuc
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