People living with certain mental health conditions may be prone to nightmares, a study suggests.
Texas researchers surveyed 116 college students about their tendency to suffer from nightmares.
The team then examined links between nightmare frequency and four personality dispositions: neuroticism, nightmare proneness, thin psychological boundaries, and sensitivity to sensory processing.
He study found People prone to nightmares were more likely to be emotionally unstable and sensitive to stress, as well as having difficulty regulating their mood.
These traits could make sufferers more likely to internalize stress and cause their experiences to manifest as vivid, distressing images in nightmares.
Additionally, people with thin psychological boundaries (those who have trouble separating emotions from reality) may not be able to filter out distressing images and emotions while they sleep.
These traits have been linked to mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which could explain why people with these conditions report frequent nightmares.
However, neurotic participants (people with a higher tendency to feel anxiety and guilt) were no more likely to have nightmares than non-neurotic people.
People prone to nightmares were more likely to be emotionally unstable and sensitive to stress, new study suggests (file image)
William Kelly, author of the study and associate professor at the University of the Incarnate Word in Texas, said PsyPost: ‘It is not “abnormal” to have nightmares. There seem to be provisions that influence them.
“In our study, individuals who had nightmares more frequently also seemed to be more likely to have finer divisions between various mental experiences, as well as a tendency to have negative emotions more easily and experience them in various ways.
“It is as if there is a tendency for an unpleasant mental event to spread through the minds of certain people, like a storm stirring up disturbing images and emotions in dreams.”
Researchers said people prone to nightmares might experience a process called “concretization.” This is when abstract mental experiences take on more tangible forms, such as distressing images in dreams.
These individuals are then more likely to internalize the stress and transform it into disturbing dreams.
Meanwhile, people with weak psychological barriers may be more likely to see disturbing images in their dreams and have trouble filtering them out, leading to nightmares.
Additionally, the team found that people with sensory processing sensitivity (greater responsiveness to internal and external stimuli) were not more likely to have nightmares.
Kelly said: “We were surprised that sensory processing sensitivity was not related to nightmares as it was in previous studies, and seems to fit well with thin mental boundaries.”
“We still don’t understand this finding.”
The study had several limitations, the main one being the use of a sample size consisting primarily of college students. This means the findings do not take into account older people or those without school-related stressors.
The team said they hope to expand the research by studying the impact of nightmares on different populations.
Kelly said: “Nightmares are experienced, at least occasionally, by a relatively large number of people with and without mental health problems.” However, its causes remain a mystery.
“We’ve been trying to understand what are the key psychological dispositions that seem to influence nightmares.”