Is today’s stress affecting your sleep and dreams?

The coronavirus health crisis that has so terribly affected this nation and the entire world is clearly a cause for heightened levels of stress and anxiety for all of us. One clear result of increased stress for many people is the negative impact it can have on our sleep patterns.

Stress is an emotional, physical or mental tension caused by something that’s outside ourselves, something over which we usually have no control. Such stress can make it more difficult to fall asleep and to stay asleep, and can bring about more frequent, and often upsetting, dreams.

While researchers don’t know exactly why we dream, there is ample evidence that when we’re stressed, along with poorer quality sleep, there will often be not only more dreaming, but more dreams of a distressing nature.