[HN Gopher] Sleep helps process emotions
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Sleep helps process emotions
Author : laurex
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-05-15 19:10 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.unibe.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.unibe.ch)
| mrsmee89 wrote:
| This is very much my experience.
|
| Especially during times of duress, I find that if I allow myself
| to be conscious of how I'm feeling, there's a really good chance
| that I'll wake up the next day with a clearer idea of the next
| step in the process. It's almost like there's a limit to how much
| I can process per "awake period".
| kosyblysk666 wrote:
| eureka!!!
| nly wrote:
| Sadly, negative emotional dampening in a single sleep cycle is
| limited.
|
| There's nothing more agonizing in the morning than the few
| seconds of half-consciousness where the memory of having lost a
| loved one is absent... only to have it all rush back in an
| instant. I hated this both when I split with my first serious
| partner, and when I lost my grandfather. Waking to a nightmare
| and wishing you were still asleep.
| version_five wrote:
| It's ironic that stress makes it harder to sleep then. I find
| exercise (running) to be very helpful, if I try to sleep when I'm
| upset or stressed I can't, or best case I sleep briefly if I'm
| really tired and then wake up and start worrying too much to
| sleep again.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Stress is not an emotion but a complex and very broad and vague
| mental and physical state.
| mirceal wrote:
| Emotions run on the same circuitry as thoughts / knowledge. I'm
| going to speculate that the same mechanism that works to
| consolidate memories is at work with emotions (and emotions are
| encoded in memories)
|
| The distinction between thoughts/emotions conscious/unconscious
| is entirely arbitrary and made up.
| deepsun wrote:
| And those who think a lot often have problems with emotions.
| loceng wrote:
| Or is it those highly sensitive and therefore more emotional
| - said neutrally - leads to more thinking?
| kekebo wrote:
| Sharing circuitry doesn't necessarily negate differences
| between systems
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Emotions run on the same circuitry as thoughts / knowledge.
| I'm going to speculate that the same mechanism that works to
| consolidate memories is at work with emotions
|
| Not really. The amygdala is much more involved with emotions.
|
| If you look into EMDR therapy for PTSD there is some
| interesting theory there. The short version is that extreme
| emotion prevents memories from being properly processed and
| stored, but techniques can be used to fix that.
|
| I've seen EMDR used to great effect on someone. I've also
| experienced REM while awake and reprocessing some memories on
| two occasions.
|
| I dont think anyone really understands this stuff, but there
| are explanations that make sense at times.
| ianandrich wrote:
| Huh. So sleep plays the role of EMDR?
| matwood wrote:
| Sleep or time? I find that time softens the edges of emotions
| which then makes them easier to deal with. Sleep is a way to
| accelerate the passage of time - assuming you can get to sleep.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Sleep (article)
| FailMore wrote:
| My own view on dreaming in REM sleep is very opinionated! And I
| think there is a lot to be gained from actively reflecting on the
| contents of ones dreams. The article gives a clue as to why:
|
| "How and why these emotions are reactivated is unclear. The
| prefrontal cortex integrates many of these emotions during
| wakefulness but appears paradoxically quiescent during REM
| sleep."
|
| The prefrontal cortex is responsible for a lot of our "executive
| functioning"; the areas of our brain that work together to make
| decisions when we are awake. While we are awake both our
| emotional and executive functions are active, but in REM sleep
| our executive functions shut down and but our emotional functions
| do not.
|
| What is so useful about this state is that it allows us to gain
| insight onto our underlying emotions without any concealment from
| our executive functions (which we often use to hide our emotional
| state from others while we are awake). If we focus on our _own
| behaviour_ as characters within our own dreams, and less on the
| extreme circumstances we find ourselves in, we will surprisingly
| often witness ourselves perform odd behaviours, which, due to the
| nature of the quiet prefrontal cortex, are revealing of oddities
| in our emotional wiring. These disturbances within our emotions
| are what a good therapist is trying to find, yet our dreams can
| really do a lot of the diagnostic legwork (I believe it is their
| function).
|
| A good example, which I include in a paper I wrote on the topic
| (https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz), was the dream of a friend of mine.
| She dreamt of a very dirty and smelly homeless man. In the room
| with this homeless man was a bed, but not a normal bed. This bed
| was dangerous and it would throw you into the air without
| warning. The homeless man told her he was feeling sad and he
| wanted her to come to bed with him (in a non sexual way). She did
| not want to fulfil his request, but felt she could not upset him
| and lay in the bed.
|
| If you look at the situation (one the requires a clear but polite
| "no") and her response (a reluctant yes), and we layer on our
| knowledge that this is a purely emotional response, we gain a
| great deal of insight into how her unconscious emotional
| responses might be impacting her life (excessive responsibility
| for the emotions of others).
|
| **
|
| It is also not surprising that the article finds that the
| dreaming brain has a bias towards unanxious interpretation of
| external stimuli. The brain is profoundly unanxious during REM
| sleep: the fight or flight neurotransmitter norepinephrine is
| ~80% below its _base level_ during waking, and even though we
| might dream of scary things, paradoxically, our amygdala (the
| area of the brain responsible for threats) is as inactive as the
| prefrontal cortex.
|
| There has been a great deal of research which compares dreaming
| to mind wandering. The level of stress that our brains are
| experiencing (norepinephrine levels + amygdala activation)
| dictate the contents of our mind wandering. If you fear flying
| and are sitting on an airplane before takeoff, your brain will be
| stressed and you will find terrible aviation outcomes popping
| into your head (the plane crashing on takeoff, etc.). These
| negative thoughts are designed to make you take avoidant action;
| getting off the plane!
|
| However, as mentioned above, in dreaming our minds are distinctly
| unanxious. This, I believe, means that the brains design
| situations where we should be _unavoidant_. The dream with the
| homeless man is a good example of this. It is a great situation
| to say no in (it was notable that my friend did not feel
| physically threatened /coerced by the homeless man when she told
| me about the dream). These situations which urge unavoidant
| behaviour often provide a fantastic backdrop to contrast our
| purely emotional behaviour, which, more often than not, is
| disturbed by fears we picked up in our childhood.
|
| **
|
| If you are interested in reading more please see my paper
| Dreaming Is the Inverse of Anxious Mind-Wandering,
| https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz.
|
| It was discussed on HN here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590
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