Since the coronavirus madness began, our societies have largely changed the way they operate.
In the United Kingdom, for example, you are only allowed to leave your home if you have permission to work, to buy living essentials such as food and pharmaceutical items, or to exercise once a day.
And strangely enough, the current lifestyles we have adopted have also started affecting our dreamworlds.
Many people on the internet have reported having weird dream experiences lately.
So if you thought you were the only one going mad, do not despair – we all are.
Twitter account @quandreams provides us with a collection with the world’s trippy coronavirus-related dreams.
One Twitter user wrote:
“So it’s not my imagination (despite little change to my routine)… more vivid nightmares the last couple of nights, including a nest of white spiders with detachable black tentacles! Sorry if you’re bug-squeamish.😳 “
So it’s not my imagination (despite little change to my routine)… more vivid nightmares the last couple of nights, including a nest of white spiders with detachable black tentacles! Sorry if you’re bug-squeamish.😳 How about you?https://t.co/VMAeqaCai2
— Grace Cho (@novasontrack) April 8, 2020
Another said:
“I dreamt I was drafted for the military, but was discharged when I refused to buy a calculator, and told to leave my uniform on the beach. I paddled old plastic through a dark swamp, filled with squids or snakes, and flowers were blooming with virus pollen”
I dreamt I was drafted for the military, but was discharged when I refused to buy a calculator, and told to leave my uniform on the beach. I paddled old plastic through a dark swamp, filled with squids or snakes, and flowers were blooming with virus pollen
— Jacob Tracy (@jcbkt) April 10, 2020
A third user wrote:
“I had a dream that social distancing applied to absolutely everything. This meant that I had to be super careful that the pork chops didn’t touch in the frying pan..was stressed out as the washing had to be spaced apart on the line.”
I had a dream that social distancing applied to absolutely everything. This meant that I had to be super careful that the pork chops didn’t touch in the frying pan..was stressed out as the washing had to be spaced apart on the line.https://t.co/h8iVi74xF9
— lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) April 9, 2020
And it seems that most dreams are connected to current every-day circumstances, with another person writing:
“Last night I dreamt I had to go to the store and nobody there believed in social distancing and everyone kept getting real close and touching me and the only way out was punch people in the face and fight my way out.”
Last night I dreamt I had to go to the store and nobody there believed in social distancing and everyone kept getting real close and touching me and the only way out was punch people in the face and fight my way out, so….. yeah….. I’d say quarantine is going fine.
— RJ Buckley (@rjbuckley) April 9, 2020
According to Deirdre Leigh Barret, an assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical school and author of The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Their Dreams for Creative Problem Solving — and How You Can Too, apparently this is nothing unusual.
In her interview for the LA Times, Deirdre pointed out that she has been observing a rise in virus-related dreams including ‘a lot of bug dreams.’
She noted that medical workers seem to be ‘having more extreme nightmares’.
As per psychologist and ex-president of the International Associaton for the Study of Dreams, Robert Bosnak, it seems to be affecting us all.
“I’m working currently in the US, Australia, India, China, and Japan. Story is the same everywhere. People are dreaming up a storm,’” Robert told InStyle.
In a study published ten years ago in Human Brain Mapping, Robert noted that dreams that are both in parts memorable and are packed with an ’emotional load, bizarreness, and vividness’ are connected to the hippocampus and amygdala parts the brain, also described as ‘the limbic system governing dread and rage’. And taking into consideration our current strange times, a link can clearly be seen.
Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., a psychologist, clinical assistant professor of medicine and the sleep and dream specialist at the University of Arizona says that he would like to see dreaming and dream-sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic reinforce the crucial importance of dreaming in people’s lives.
“My hope would be that we can leverage this experience to remind people how critical dreaming is,” he says. “Dreaming is a reflection of healing.”
What are your thoughts on this bizarre collective dream state we have found ourselves in? Let us know by joining the conversation in the comments and share this article to find out whether your friends and family have also had similar dreams experiences lately.
