Month: June 2023

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Daydreaming is Our Baseline State, Not Something to Avoid

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We spend half of our waking lives daydreaming. This may or may not be a good thing – it depends what your daydreams are like.

A Harvard study on daydreaming entitled ‘A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind’ may be giving daydreaming a bad rap. In a culture dominated by a drive for productivity, there is a sense that allowing our minds to wander freely hampers focus and the ability to get things done. This is why derogatory terms such as ‘spacing out’, ‘intrusive’ or ‘non-relevant’ thinking and ‘cognitive control failure’ are used to describe this normal human activity.

Naomi Kimmelman presented these ideas at the recent conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD). She suggested that it is the kind of wandering your mind does that determines whether it’s helpful or not. Renowned daydream researcher Jerome Singer differentiated three styles of daydreaming: positive-constructive, guilty-dysphoric and poor attentional control. Cleary, the first category is a helpful state to be in, while the latter two are not.

Much of the research into daydreaming has focused on its negative attributes, but one study (McMillan, Kaufman & Singer, 2013) examined the question, how can something we spend half our time doing be so bad for us? In fact, their review of the research shows that in the brain’s ‘default mode’ we are consolidating memories, planning, problem solving, being creative and making meaning of the events of our lives. The authors highlight a review by Immordino-Yang et al. (2012) that stresses the importance of ‘constructive internal reflection’ for the development of a range of social and emotional skills such as moral reasoning, empathy, compassion and meaning-making.

The main thing to note from the plethora of daydream research in the past decade is that daydreaming is not inherently bad or good, but rather, it depends on how you daydream. For example, one study (Mar, 2012) found that daydreaming about close friends promoted a sense of social support, while daydreaming about strangers emphasized feelings of loneliness. The ‘guilty-dysphoric’ type of rumination identified by Singer is associated with depression.

It is a paradox that how you allow your mind to wander matters, when by definition, it’s a state of mind we don’t control. However, awareness of such states and deliberate active imagination practices may allow our wandering minds to stay in the creative states that are so helpful. Of course, we need to strike a balance between daydream and focused attention so we are able to rein in our meandering thoughts when we truly need to focus on the task at hand.

It helps to know that we can only focus part of the time. In another conference presentation about dreaming in the context of work life, Dr. Rubin Naiman noted that our minds naturally go through an oscillation between basic rest and activity (BRAC), even when we are working. During a work day, we will spend perhaps 70% of the time in a left-brain-dominant task-oriented mode and the rest of the time in a more right-hemispheric dreamy state. There is no point or reason to fight this or to think of ourselves as ‘lazy’ or ‘unfocused’ if our attention drifts off about a third of the time. It is normal, and impossible not to daydream, even while at work.

Both presentations underscore the importance of and ubiquity of daydreaming – it gives us a mental break, fosters creativity and allows us to view the world with a larger perspective. It slips us into a state of being rather than doing, a state that as a culture, we might want to value more.  I will close with a quote by Cheri Huber that Naiman shared: Please don’t do yourself the disservice of thinking there is anything you can do that is more important than just being.

Want to learn more about how to ensure your mind wanders along creative and helpful paths, rather than down the spiral of rumination and worry? We are offering a free (pay-what-you-can) seminar on Sept. 6, 2023 at 10am PACIFIC – and it will available as a recording if you miss it or can’t attend live. 

References

Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932-932.

Mar, R. A., Mason, M. F., & Litvack, A. (2012). How daydreaming relates to life satisfaction, loneliness, and social support: The importance of gender and daydream content. Consciousness and cognition, 21(1), 401-407.

McMillan, R. L., Kaufman, S. B., & Singer, J. L. (2013). Ode to positive constructive daydreaming. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 626.

Singer, J. L. (1975). The inner world of daydreaming. Harper & Row.

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To Sleep Better, We Need to Surrender to Our Dreams

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A podcast review by Dr. Leslie Ellis

The main reason people don’t sleep is that they have a bad relationship with dreaming. – Dr. Rubin Naimin

 

I was so inspired by a recent conversation between Nikos Patedakis and Dr. Rubin Naiman on the Dangerous Wisdom podcast, I want to share some of their surprising and inspiring ideas —such as how befriending dreams can be the key to getting a good night’s sleep.

 

Sleep and dreaming are a different, and wider form of consciousness than waking. Many with sleep troubles fear falling into sleep and dreams because it means letting go of our accustomed waking state and the sense of self that comes with it, according to Naiman, a psychologist, author, Fellow in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.

 

We need to change how we think about sleep

Naiman consults internationally about sleep and dreams and believes patients with sleep problems are thinking about sleep in the wrong way. “The statement, ‘I can’t sleep’ makes no sense… because the presumption is that the part of me that I call ‘I’, the waking self, should be able to sleep, and it can’t. That’s where people get stuck, they try leverage waking to get to sleep.” In fact, our very efforts to fall asleep tend to engage our waking selves more deeply.

 

So how does he suggest we descend into sleep then? It’s more of an accident than a deliberate effort, and it takes a willingness to descend into a different state where our sense of self and ego are not as central, and there is a greater breadth of consciousness available. Naiman said that over the previous few decades, our collective consciousness has shrunk, in part a product of spending more time narrowly focused, indoors, and looking at various screens rather than the natural world. So when we begin to fall asleep, and dreaming begins to widen our horizons, we may feel overwhelmed.

 

Naiman said: “Sleeping and dreaming both require a fundamental willingness to allow consciousness to expand, but this may be something many are not comfortable with. A contraction of consciousness allows for the kind of focus essential to survival in the waking, material world. The problem is that if we stay there, we think that’s all there is.” He goes on to lament the current epidemic of sleep loss, which he says is actually dream loss, and that attention to dreaming is a glaring omission in modern sleep medicine.

 

“The main reason people don’t sleep is that they have a bad relationship with dreaming.” Naiman cites evidence that when those with sleep troubles are first letting go into the kaleidoscope of dreams and a dissolution of waking consciousness, they react to that “as if it were a stampede coming from the horizon.”

 

Psychedelics as an appetizer for expanded consciousness

Dreaming is a different order of consciousness, one that is both feared and repressed, but also sought after. Because we are being deprived of the mind-expanding properties of dreaming, we hunger for it. Naiman says this may be why there is such a resurgence of interest in psychedelics: “We have forgotten how to expand consciousness through sleep and dreams, so it makes sense we are fascinated that a molecule or mushroom can do that. I’m not opposed to that, but these are the appetizers, not the main course.”

 

Patedakis views mind-altering substances as a bridge but not the final destination: “You need to learn what your mind can do. And then you need to learn how to do it within yourself.” Both speakers advise proceeding gradually into wider ways of seeing and being because plant medicine can bring overwhelm and disorientation to those not prepared for a direct experience of expanded consciousness. As a culture, we have been taught to fear or dismiss such things.

 

Academic focus on the material world ‘distorts and impoverishes’ our self-understanding

Naiman quotes Gary Schwartz and a group of scholars lamenting the nearly absolute dominance of the material over the subjective in academic study. This has “led to a severely distorted and impoverished understanding of ourselves and our place in nature.”

 

Even those who practice mindfulness and other potentially consciousness-shifting activities often do so to become better in their waking life. They want to know what their dream means so they can apply it to their personal situation, missing entirely that dreaming reflects a much larger perspective, one that takes us beyond ourselves into a wider, more spiritual realm.

 

Dreaming as antidepressant

Naiman also speaks of the psychological importance of dreaming. “It processes, sifts, digests and assimilates waking experience. If we are not dreaming, we’re not assimilating, and we’re not being nourished by our waking experiences.” This could explain the well-known link between dream loss and clinical depression. Ironically, the medications to treat depression erode dreaming even further because most antidepressants suppress REM sleep.

 

The answer to the epidemic of depression and sleep loss, according to Naiman, is not to medicate the problems but to turn toward our dream lives and allow them to help us become more comfortable with a wider sense of who we are. “If we have a better relationship with the dream world, we definitely sleep better,” says Naiman.

 

Expanding Liminal Space, Extending Sleep

Building a bridge between waking and sleeping by dwelling in the in-between, the gradual transformation inward as night falls, is a natural way to drift into sleep. “In nature, sleep actually starts when the sun goes down and there is a beautiful, gradual transformation of consciousness through dusk, and also again through dawn.” Naiman suggests that we surrender to the night and to the dark, allow it to naturally expand our consciousness, and view it neither as inferior nor applicable to waking life. In fact, sleep and dream life is the larger vessel in which the narrower consciousness of waking is contained.

 

Below are the links to both Nikos’ interview with Rubin Naiman, as well my conversation with Nikos on experiential approaches to dreams (which is referred to in this interview).

 

Rubin’s podcast episode: https://dangerous-wisdom.captivate.fm/episode/recovering-sleep-and-dreams

Rubin’s YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_E4tyFw-8c

Leslie’s podcast episode: https://dangerous-wisdom.captivate.fm/episode/attending-to-our-dreams-dialogue-with-dr-leslie-ellis

Leslie’s YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NyYEd3neIg

 

References

Naiman, R. (2017). Dreamless: the silent epidemic of REM sleep loss. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1406(1), 77-85.

 

For more on experiential dreamwork for clinicians, visit www.drleslieellis.com

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Current Nightmare Treatment Research Roundup: Addressing Pre-Sleep States, Individual Differences and Co-Occuring Mental Illness

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Our state of mind and body prior to falling asleep can affect the way we dream, and this can be a target for treatment for those who experience frequent trauma-related nightmares. If you are someone who has trouble falling asleep because you can’t quiet your mind and body, you are also more likely to have disturbing dreams.

 

A recent study by Youngren and colleagues (2022) has replicated existing evidence that the time it takes to fall asleep (also called sleep onset latency or SOL) and pre-sleep cognition (such as worry or rumination) significantly increase nightmare frequency. Somatic arousal is also implicated, but the results are more complex – self-reported physiological arousal did not impact nightmare frequency. However increased arousal measured by the DREEM headband used to measure physiological aspects of sleep did significantly correlate with more nightmares. The subjective and measured arousal levels did not correlate; it seems participants were not reliable judges of their own physiological pre-sleep arousal.

 

The researchers tested a small sample of 15 male inpatient veterans who had experienced trauma and frequent nightmares. They were seeking to strengthen the evidence for their NIGHT-CAP (nightmare cognitive arousal processing) theory, which proposes that the longer it takes to fall asleep, the more time there is for negative pre-sleep worries to prime a person for negative dreams. However, while SOL and pre-sleep cognitions independently predicted nightmares, the interaction between the two was not significant.

 

The authors note the importance of their findings to clinicians because “current treatment options for post-trauma nightmares remain sparse and are less effective than treatments for other sleep disorders, such as insomnia.” The study results suggest that a bedtime ritual of calming the body and clearing the mind could potentially help reduce nightmares.

 

A complicated picture: How pre-sleep arousal affects dreaming

The effect of the body’s arousal level prior to sleep on subsequent dreams is not clear or linear, however. Another recent study (Dumser et al., 2023) highlights individual differences. In this study of 16 women with regular nightmares, fear of sleep was, when averaged, significantly linked with increased nightmare distress, but there were notable individual differences. Pre-sleep arousal also yielded highly individual effects on sleep and dreaming.

 

The authors concluded: “These findings highlight the crucial role of fear of sleep in the etiology of nightmares and sleep disturbances, while pointing to the importance of pursuing individual, personalised models that explain heterogeneity in the process of triggering nightmares.”

 

Nightmares and Psychiatric Illness: Co-occuring or Causal?

Nightmares are a cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress injury and in this context, are becoming more frequently considered as a target for treatment. However, disturbed dreaming is also prevalent in other psychiatric disorders, notably depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and borderline personality. Yet nightmares are rarely a target of treatment in these cases.

 

A recent systematic review of the effect of nightmare treatment on mental health issues (Sheaves, Rek & Freeman, 2023) highlights the scarcity of research in this area, but also some indication that treating nightmares has the potential to help with a variety of symptoms. They found treating nightmares particularly helpful with threat-based disorders, pointing to a causal relationship. Moderate reductions in PTSD, depression and anxiety were found as a result of nightmare treatment. There is also a surprising result from two pilot studies that nightmare treatment might prevent recovery from suicidal ideation, despite strong evidence linking nightmare frequency with subsequent suicide attempts.

 

This and all other areas of nightmare treatment are “greatly understudied” so firm conclusions could not be drawn from the existing evidence. The authors suggest it’s possible that rather than being causally related to many mental health problems, nightmares may instead share similar causes. In PTSD, however, the impact of nightmares on related symptoms is more clearly causal and also bi-directional.

 

I am offering a more comprehensive course for clinicians called The Nightmare Treatment Imperative. Learn why treating nightmares is both essential and surprisingly simplein this online course for mental health professionals, dreamworkers, and anyone who supports those with nightmares.

 

References

Dumser, B., Werner, G. G., Ehring, T., & Takano, K. (2022). Symptom dynamics among nightmare sufferers: An intensive longitudinal study. Journal of Sleep Research, e13776.

Sheaves, B., Rek, S., & Freeman, D. (2022). Nightmares and psychiatric symptoms: A systematic review of longitudinal, experimental, and clinical trial studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 102241.

Youngren, W. A., Hamilton, N. A., Preacher, K. J., & Babber, G. R. Testing the Nightmare Cognitive Arousal Processing Model. In press, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.

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Dream Wisdom from Montague Ullman, Master of Dream Group Process

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Montague Ullman developed what is likely the most popular and democratic method of working with dreams in groups. Working with dreams in a group can open multiple avenues in a dream, deepen our capacity for empathy and illustrate how all dreams have archetypal dimensions that speak to us all.

(Sign up here if you want to hear more about joining a dream group this fall.)

The Ullman method is explained in considerable detail, with examples, in his book, Appreciating Dreams, a group approach (2006, Cosimo Publications, New York). I have gathered a sampling of some my favorite words of wisdom about dreams from Ullman to share with you.

 

On ‘Day Residue’

Ullman said the that events from the day that trigger our dreams are often not that important in their own right, but rather because, by association, they bring deeper emotional concerns closer to consciousness: “All of us are continually reworking unfinished emotional business from the past. Our dreams seem to be way stations along which these concerns pass, creating the possibility for recognition and exploration” (p. 21).

 

Do Not Dismiss Short Dreams

“A dream cannot be too short for the group to work on. This includes dreams that may consist of a single image. Even when only a small bit of a longer dream is recalled, it can have a holographic quality and touch on many aspects of the dreamer’s life” (p. 25).

 

Why Dreams Need to be Worked Through

Do not judge dreams from the point of view of the waking state as dull or unimportant. “Only when a dream is worked through its connection to the underlying emotional streams that enter into it, can its value be assessed. Its importance is seen not to lie in its appearance but in the channel it opens to the larger dimension of our being, seeking to make its presence felt” (p. 26, emphasis added).

 

On Metaphor and Bridging Waking and Dreaming Thoughts

“Awake, we do not think in the same metaphorical fashion as we do asleep. We do not ordinarily view our waking experience from the point of view of its potential for translation into visual metaphors” (p. 68) Ullman says the emotion that comes with dream images can help bridge the large gap between waking and dreaming thought. “It takes investigative effort to bring the dreamer close enough to the living feeling context of the period just before the dream.”

 

Dreams As a Direct Path to the Truth

“We all know what the truth feels like. Whether we embrace it with relief or recoil from it in pain, it feels real. Its very reality provides us with the opportunity to engage with it and grow in our struggle to come to terms with something new about ourselves. Dream work is a very direct way to provide us with such opportunities” (p. 95).

 

On Offering “Orchestrations” to the Dreamer

In the final stage of his dream group process, Ullman asks group members to take in all that has been said about the dream and offer comments that ‘harmonize image and reality’ as a way to ‘separate the melody from the cacophony of sounds that have filled the air’.

“Coming to an orchestrating idea that really moves the dreamer is an interplay of intuition, the ability to listen to a dreamer and discern the appearance and flow of feelings, openness to that material the dreamer has shared and all that has been shared, and finally, sensitivity to metaphor” (p. 95).

 

‘Stumbling blocks in the path of our evolving maturity’ that often show up in dreams:

  • How well do we handle feelings such as anger on the one hand and tenderness on the other?
  • How susceptible are we to feelings of guilt, self-depreciation and self-denial?
  • How aware are we of our own need for nurturing and support?
  • To what extent are we oriented to the needs of others at the expense of our own needs?
  • To what extent do we blindly accept personal, social, and institutional arrangements that limit or do violence to our own humanity?
  • To what extent do we deny or suppress what it truly alive in us?
  • To what extent are we being carried along passively by the tide of our life? (p. 97)

 

What’s notable about this list is that it suggests dreams encourage us to advocate for our own self in various ways: accepting one’s value, finding what is ‘truly alive in us’ and becoming active agents of our own lives. It might be in interesting line of inquiry for your next dream: how is this dream encouraging me to advocate for myself and to live a life that is in keeping with my deepest desires?

 

Are you interested in further dream group study with Dr. Leslie Ellis? Do you want to be part of a small, dedicated dream group starting in fall 2023? There will be limited space, so please add your name to this list if you want to hear more about this opportunity.