Dreams Key to Processing Emotions
June 16, 2009 by Cherie Burbach
Filed under Women's Health
You know how you feel when you haven’t slept? You’re irritable. And chances are you probably feel as if the world is against you. There’s good reason for that.
New research has determined that sleep, and specifically dreams, are key to processing emotions. A study in which volunteers who had napped with rapid eye movement (REM) found that they were “better able to identify expressions of positive emotions like happiness in other people, compared with participants who did not achieve REM sleep or did not nap at all.”
In other words, a lack of sleep puts us on the alert for danger, negativity, or people who aren’t out for our best interest. REM sleep then not only allows us to process our positive emotions, but also “process any negative emotion attached to them, then strip it away from the memories.”
What a healthy thing sleep is to our mental health!
Image: sxc.hu.
