Such a dynamic can lead to a vicious cycle where bad dreams disrupt sleep, leading to negative thoughts and worries that lead to a greater frequency of bad dreams and nightmares. Researchers also suggested that worrying over having negative dreams, including nightmares, may make it more difficult to fall asleep, while having negative dreams may increase the number of awakenings. The authors of the study pointed out that they actually expected to see the dreams of participants with insomnia contain more negative than positive content, a reflection of the higher levels of arousal and pre-sleep negative experience of a typical insomnia sufferer.
Why is there a link between negative dreams and insomnia? In particular, the dreams of insomnia sufferers tended to contain fewer positive emotions and greater negative content. In the dreams of insomniacs, there were significantly more negative elements than in the dreams of good sleepers. Insomnia and negative dreamsĪlthough it was a small sample size, researchers found that good sleepers were far more likely to characterize their dreams as more pleasant and containing more joy, happiness, and vividness compared to the dreams of insomniacs. To determine subjective sleep difficulties, participants completed a sleep diary and the Insomnia Severity Index questionnaire. The dream activity of participants was recorded through dream diaries and by forcefully awakening participants during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, so that they could describe their dreams during the third and final nights of the study.
The researchers collected objective sleep measures from polysomnographic recordings over five consecutive nights in a sleep lab. All participants were between 30 and 45 years of age. Another 12 individuals with healthy sleep patterns served as the control group. Researchers recruited 12 individuals with primary insomnia. A 2015 study published in Sleep Medicine set out to determine how the dreams of individuals with primary insomnia differed from those of good sleepers.
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