But after one such zap of electricity, Jandial’s patient experienced a nightmare that had recurred for him since childhood.
Research has since confirmed that nightmares, and all dreams, arise from brain activity. “Now we know from different measurements of electricity and metabolic usage, the sleeping-dreaming brain is burning hot. It’s sparking with electricity. We might be asleep, but the brain is on fire,” Jandial says.
3. When you first wake up, or while you’re drifting off, is fertile time for creativity
Salvador Dali had a method for capturing his thoughts just as he was falling asleep, which Jandial recounts in This is Why You Dream. The artist would sit in a chair holding a large key above a plate on the floor. When he nodded off, the key would drop on the plate and wake him up. Then he’d sketch what he remembered from the last few moments of sleep — an inspiration for his surrealist paintings. Brain imaging studies support the potential of sleep-entry as a moment of insight, says Jandial.
Fortunately for those of us who prefer to fall asleep and stay there, thank you very much, you can also get inspiration from your dreams when you first wake up. “I get all my ideas when I wake slowly,” Jandial says. He writes down what he remembers in the first few minutes after waking, before checking the news or Instagram. It’s not all great stuff, “But when there are good ideas, it’s from that time. It’s not from two o’clock with my espresso,” he says.
4. Nightmares? Write a new script
Jandial says nightmares around occasional stressful events, like my dream about the jewelry heist — are usually not cause for concern. But if you’re stuck in a loop of recurring fearful dreams, there is something you can try: Imagery Rehearsal Therapy.
This is something you can do with a therapist. “If [a patient has] a recurrent nightmare of an explosion or an airplane crashing, they’ll go to the therapist to draw out the map of the dream, the dreamscape, if you will, and then they’ll rehearse that the airplane landed safely,” or that they arrived home from a drive instead of crashing, Jandial explains. After time, he says many patients see their nightmares change.
5. Dreams about cheating are normal. They don’t mean there’s something wrong with your relationship
In surveys, a majority of people report erotic dreams. And for people in relationships, these dreams contain “high rates of infidelity, whether people report being in healthy relationships or unhealthy relationships,” Jandial says.
