SLEEP: Processing Emotional Pain

In his book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, neuroscientist Matthew Walker explains that dreaming is not just a side effect of sleep. Dreams actually play an important role in our wellbeing. He writes that dreaming is like therapy that happens every single night. And he argues that instead of time healing all wounds, it is the time we spend dreaming that heals emotional and psychological pain. REM sleep (the stage of sleep in which you dream) is the only time when the brain is completely free from the molecule noradrenaline, which causes anxiety. And in this neurologically peaceful state, emotional and memory structures of the brain are activated within REM sleep in the form of dreams. What does that mean? The brain is remembering and processing emotions and events without any of the primary stress chemical. So those memories can be re-processed in a calmer, safer brain state.