Polyphasic Dreams & Anxiety — A long-term health effect??
So. This is interesting.
Regular readers know that I have my share of mental glitches. (And this doesn’t bother me, because anybody who reads THIS regularly has their own share, obviously!)
Some might also remember my alluding to a nasty spell of depression that was wrecking my schedule last month — things are better now, thank you, and my schedule’s been back together for almost two weeks, woohoo. That’s the one, maybe the only, positive thing one can say about major depression: It comes in waves, so the bad spells go away, or at least lighten up, after a while. Major depressive disorder is chronic (I’ve had it since I was about eight), and sometimes I get jealous of people who are depressed for a reason, who stay in bed and cry for a few days or weeks or months and then never have to revisit that place again, at least for a good long while; whereas I always know it’s coming back, sometime, could be days or weeks but it’ll be back, and often without the slightest reason. BUT, as I said, I also always know that it will go away, given time, and often also without a reason; so that’s a bonus.
Anyway. Something else has been going on that’s weirder: I’ve been having anxiety symptoms. Which is not normal for me. Usually, up to a point, I thrive under stress. I like deadlines and projects and plans, for the most part, and I get much more upset by being bored than I do by being fall-over busy. And I’ve been busy, but not moreso than usual, really. So I called my friend, who is a psychologist, though she’s far too decent a person to be my psychologist (I’ve loved her since long before she took that awful degree(s), and we’ve made our truce: I won’t hate her like I hate most psychologists, and she won’t be psychologist-y with me. It actually works pretty well.) — and I asked her, as a person educated in the field and well familiar with neurology as well, what she thought might be causing tics, mild but persistent hallucinations and a resurgence of childhood phobias in someone not usually disposed to such problems, who isn’t undergoing any special stress or difficulty.
Her answer surprised me: She thinks it might be related to polyphasic sleeping. Specifically, she thinks that we might have found a potential long-term side effect!
Yes, I was/am so excited about that, that I almost forgot that I’ve been crazier than usual lately and not very much enjoying it. ;)
She mentioned that she’s heard of people using polyphasic sleep to provoke lucid dreaming, and asks if I’ve been having them. "No," I say at first, thinking of the sparklingly-lucid, dropped-naked-into-Narnia kind of lucid dreaming I used to have, while young and also sometimes while insane, and once while drunk. "Not even a little bit?" she asks, reminding me that there is such a thing as degrees of lucidity…and to my surprise, I realize that I have been having somewhat more lucid dreams than I would have considered normal, pretty much consistently!
Nap dreams, as others can probably verify, have a different feel than night-dreams. They seem…thicker, as if they’ve got more weight since they’re not stretched out so far, or maybe since there’s not so much sleep-time surrounding them. (Maybe that’s why I feel a bit more "awake" in my dreams now; because I haven’t been asleep but a few minutes.) They’re easier to grab on to, because of that weight, and nudging them ("I don’t like where this is going…let’s just…go over there…") and even waking up from them on purpose, is much easier than it is with a normal dream. I have no idea how my friend knew this would be so, but she is crazy smart, so there you go.
So her theory is, the extra lucidity to my dreams, which makes it easy to avoid things which scare me, may be putting a tourniquet on my brain’s ability to express, erm, whatever it is that brains like to express at night. I’m interfering in its art, apparently, and it, she thinks, is getting back at me — or, well, just getting the fix it needs — by pushing some of itself (the icky bits, of course) out into the waking world. THE BRAIN WILL BE HEARD, apparently. ;)
So, is that a neat theory or what? I have no idea how to confirm it, of course. I do have a vacation coming up, a short one, where I’ll be on the road and in another city (visiting said friend, actually) for three days, and then back home with company (guess who) for another four. I’ve been considering taking a "break" from my schedule during the three days, just to see what happens. I’m pretty sure I won’ t have trouble re-adjusting; previous breaks due to illness have been that long and been okay. But even if I did that, and my anxiety symptoms went away, I couldn’t possibly know that it wasn’t just the vacation that I needed! ;)
Oh well. Neat theory. It will probably take backing up by someone else before it becomes even a little credible, but for my part, I’m just rather geeked to have possibly discovered an Actual Side-Effect of doing this for 3/4 of a year!
Alright. Naptime, yo. Sleep like a thunderclap, friends — deep and over quickly!
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That is a very intersting idea. It sort of makes a lot of sense too, in its own way. Maybe a break will be needed for polyphasic sleepers so we can squeeze a few months of nightmares into one traumatizing weekend. :)
Interesting theory. I’m curious to see how it bears out.
My weekend was broken completely, here it is Tuesday and I STILL can’t get to sleep at naptime. I’m going to stick it out, though. The benefits far outweigh everything else, and hey, the best is that I make it through the day at work far more alert than I used to.
Do you recall having the same symptoms while doing uberman in college? Perhaps you are just getting old? The metabolism starts to slow around 30, general recovery. Maybe you are not a spring chicken anymore?
Gee, thanks, Sav! ;)
I don’t recall the same symptoms in college, no. But overall I was significantly less sane then than I am now, and SO many other things were different besides (including the sleep schedule I was on) that I’m not sure I could ever put up a clear comparison between then and now in any case.
I’m definitely not a spring chicken, heh. I’m turning into one of those tough old birds that bites and squawks and eventually dies from getting into a fight with a young rooster!
There *are* two normal dream phases during the core sleep. This should be enough for your brain to be heard.
The other thing is: most people, I heard, which do lucid dreaming on purpose do it to *fight* axiety. You can try of course, since you have some influence on the dreams, to dream *about* the monsters. This should help then, shouldn’t it?
I have much dreams during my naps, but they are not lucid in any way and I forget them as fast as usual night dreams. When I am out of the car and down the stairs, I mostly are able to remember at most one or two single pictures of the dream.
I think the problem is that I have only a *little* influence: Enough to steer the dream, but not enough to be really conscious of what I’m doing. Therefore, I tend to backpedal automatically from anything unpleasant!
It’s a neat theory, but I don’t know if one person’s testimonials could ever prove or disprove it; it’s pretty big. For my part, a few days after this post when I took a free-sleep day, I did have a few pretty vivid nightmares. It’s been a week now and the anxiety symptoms are gradually receding, but I would have expected this to happen anyway, as anxiety is not a normal state for me and I’ve been working in other ways to make my brain happy. So who knows?
Nice to have your opinion on it, though; you know a lot more about dreaming than I do. Any further thoughts are welcome!
PD