So read on, then come back to Dream Theories often to hear more of my meanderings about my personal dream research–and more from Dr. C., as she feeds my (and your) imagination about the physiology behind oursleeping brains’ most intriguing, if disturbing, patterns. If you look closely enough, even in today’s post, you’ll see the bones of the “fringe” science on which I crafted the parapsychology of my first two Legacy books. No, NOT Exploding Head Syndrome (though I don’t know HOW I missed that one!).

Don’t forget to ask Dr. C. your strange dream/sleep questions in the comments… She’s SO much fun to talk to ;o)

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Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.  ~William Dement

Lady Macbeth: Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow’r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? ~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

What do these two quotes have in common other than being by men named William who like to ponder the weird things people do in their sleep?  It is often assumed that parasomnias, or “…unpleasant or undesirable behavioral or experiential phenomena that occur predominantly or exclusively during the sleep period,” (Mahowald & Bornemann, Principles & Practices of Sleep Medicine, 4th ed.) have their roots in some sort of psychological distress, including guilty consciences.  However, the cause is more physiological than psychological.

If you’ve learned to drive a stick-shift car or been in a car with a failing transmission, you know how it stalls out or moves jerkily from one gear to another if something is off, either with the driver’s clutch timing or in the transmission itself.  Remember that hypnogram from last week showing the different sleep stages?  Sometimes the brain doesn’t shift smoothly from one stage to another, or it gets interrupted, and that’s when parasomnias can occur.

Stage N-3 (formerly stages three and four) is when the body gets its deep, physically restorative sleep, and the brain puts out big slow waves.  Disorders of arousal, which include sleepwalking, night terrors, confusional arousals, and even sleep-eating and sleep-sex, occur during slow-wave sleep or during transitions into or out of it.  As you can see from the hypnogram, we get more slow-wave sleep during the first part of the night, so that’s when these disorders occur.  Since people tend to get confused between them, let’s talk about what they are.

During a sleepwalking episode, the person may get out of bed, walk around, and perform complex motor behaviors.  There is little to no awareness of what’s actually going on, and they won’t remember it the next morning.  Often, the only clues to sleepwalking if a person lives alone is that objects may be moved around or go missing.  I know of one case where a pet fish went missing for three weeks, and then reappeared, still alive but not in great shape, in its tank. 

A person with night terrors will seem to wake terrified, scream, cry, or make other noises associated with extreme fear, and perhaps jump out of bed and try to escape from something.  Although their eyes are open, witnesses say they seem to “see right through” them.  They often resist comforting, and will eventually settle down and remember nothing the next morning.

Confusional arousals fall somewhere between night terrors and sleepwalking.  It used to be thought that in all three of these disorders of arousal, the person wasn’t dreaming, but one study found that people who experienced them did have some sort of dream imagery occurring that corresponded with their behavior.  These disorders occur most often in children, which makes sense because kids’ brains are going through frequent reorganizations, but they are present in four to five percent of adults as well.

When someone literally acts out their dreams, REM behavior disorder, or RBD, is the culprit.  Typically, when we’re in REM, our brains shut off our voluntary muscles so we don’t act out our dreams.  Sometimes the signals get mixed up, and the muscles don’t get shut off, so people will do everything from talk to thrash around to get up and run or fight.  Since this occurs during REM sleep, it’s more likely to occur later in the night.  One of the first cases I heard about was an older woman who loved to sing in her church choir.  She’d wake her family early in the morning with shouts of “Praise Jesus!” 

True nightmares, which differ from stress or anxiety dreams, also tend to occur later in the night during REM sleep.  These are dreams that contain disturbing imagery and have negative emotional and fatigue effects that last into the next day.  They often co-occur with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

My favorite parasomnia is an extremely rare one called Exploding Head Syndrome, where the patient wakes hearing a loud noise and afraid their head has just exploded.  No, it doesn’t make sense – how would you have awareness your head was missing? – but very little does immediately upon awakening.  I’ve never seen a case of this, but one neurologist in a course I taught had.  Sadly, I didn’t get the chance to catch up with him after to ask him how he treated it.

Parasomnias, especially in adults, can have a wide range of causes.  Remember, the group of disorders that includes sleepwalking are called disorders of arousal, so we often look for reasons why someone’s sleep may be getting disturbed, but only partially.  Sometimes another sleep disorder like obstructive sleep apnea, when the airspace closes during sleep, or periodic limb movement disorder, when the movement system kicks into gear and makes someone kick their feet, is to blame.  These disorders also tend to run in families, so there is a genetic component.

A wide range of substances including alcohol and its withdrawal, caffeine, and some prescription medications have been associated with parasomnias.  I hear interesting Ambien stories from patients who have discontinued it due to eating, talking on the telephone, and other activities that they don’t remember later, including driving.  One tip:  don’t ever combine Ambien with alcohol.  Not only is it physically dangerous, but it could also have embarrassing results (and that’s all I’m going to say about that to protect confidentiality).

There are a range of pharmacological and behavioral treatments for parasomnias for those who experience true distress or impairment as a result.  The behavioral ones focus on re-training the brain so it will be more likely to sleep through the night, or so the imagery it produces will be less disturbing.  I sometimes end up doing psychotherapy focusing on underlying anxiety or depression, although this isn’t always the case.  Unlike Lady Macbeth, most sleepwalkers aren’t doing so because they have some sort of psychological distress.

I can’t diagnose or make treatment recommendations, but I look forward to hearing about the strange things you’ve done or heard of someone doing at night!

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By day, “Doctor C.” is a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist.  That’s a long title, so she answers to any variations, including “Sleep Psychologist.” 

By night, she writes fantasy and science fiction, blogs about wine and life, and interacts with other wine lovers and writers on twitter as @RandomOenophile.  She’s a featured first-place winner in this year’s Mystery Times Ten, a Young Adult mystery anthology, for her fantasy story “The Coral Temple.” 

Yeah, I’m going to riff on animated and over-the-top, real-life characters throughout this post. And you’re not going to see any of my recurring dream buddies. Not a chance. I believe too strongly in this topic to pull my cyber panties down and give you a microscope into my psyche!

Well, okay. I’ll give you one real dream character of my very own. But I’m not gonna tell you which one. So, enjoy the side show and try to figure out which of these images really has come out to play, during my nocturnal wanderings ;o) All votes are welcome. You won’t guess it. You’re never gonna guess it… And I’m absolutely not including political or religious “greats” in this post. I may be a sick girl, but I’m not stupid.

Okay, back to business. First of all, we can invite anyone we want to our dreams. So you have to ask yourself who you’ve brought along for the party, and why. Do you feel negative or positive about these characters? 

Actually, is there just one famous person and you, or are you in a crowd of those you admire or publicly despise?Are you interacting with them, or standing back to watch. Are we talking  tv/movie/entertainment famous, or dead/living politicians, writers, great thinkers, etc? Oh, and where are you all getting together for this shindig?

As I’ve said, the emotions of your dreams are key. They’ll point you to the better understanding you seek of why the people in your dreams do and say what they do, especially your famous guests. Dream analysis will first tell you that these characters may represent aspects of our own personalities that we either aspire to improve or long to negate.

That’s where the emotions come in. Let them lead you to remembering and working on the characteristics you like most and least in your dream visitors.

Do you have a need for recognition for unrecognized abilities?

Does a core relationship need nurturing to grow stronger?

A yearning for stardom, but you’ve never developed your talents enough to get there?

Do you wish for glamor, but haven’t stopped to truly understand the darker side that comes with the accolades?

Is it iconic greatness that fascinates and motivates you?

Some would suggest that these kind of “famous” dreams are about our inflated egos. I disagree. Dreams are where our minds process our world and our thoughts about the things and people that mean the most to us. They’re where we should be looking most closely, without judgement.

Some of the characters we meet there could be reflections of us, but others could be our parents or friends. Our goals and disappointments. Our hurts and celebrations. Good or bad, they’re us in the end. And nowhere else do we get to be more completely us, than in the stories we paint entirely on our own. Our dreams.

Stop judging and start paying attention. What is it about these characters that’s drawing your sleeping mind’s focus? What’s happening in your life that’s triggered their visit? Are they really you, in the dream, or have your visitors taken the role of friends or loved ones (living or passed) that you need to work something out with. Are they your very real dreams and aspirations (or regrets), that you’ve yet to fully face?

I’m a author. I can tell you with complete certainty that the characters that wander around in our minds are always reflections of us. They’re to be treasured and nurtured, until we see them fully for who they are. They’re pieces of our soul. Pieces I try to understand better every morning, as I wake and start my busy, creative day. I hope you do, too!

Now, who wants to guess which of the above famous characters has regularly visited my muddled sleep???

And, don’t forget to come back to Dream Theories next Tuesday for more of Dr. C’s sleep and dream wisdom. After all, she’s the expert while I’m just a crafty artist who’s mining for material to base her next psychic fantasy on ;o)

Read on for some sleep basics (types and stages and helpful hits about sleeping better yourself). You’re sure to learn something new. Ask questions, get her talking about all that she knows, heckle, or whatever else entertains you ;o) I know I’m going to!

Next week: more of my Dream Theory insights based on the research I’ve done for my Legacy series. Dr. C will be back in two weeks, with all her knowledge and confirmation that I’m a quack and that she’s the sleep expert, and that you should all be listening to her instead of me ;o)

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Thanks, Anna, for inviting me to do this series of guest blog posts! 

People do weird things in their sleep.  It’s one reason I love being a sleep psychologist – I rarely hear the same stories twice.  Also, I feel I can make a huge and almost immediate difference for my patients, and I get to be a “Myth-buster” of sorts.  Yes, there are lots of myths going around about sleep and dreaming, so for my first post, I wanted to take the opportunity to “bust” some common misconceptions. All of these have been said by several of my patients.

Myth #1:  If I don’t remember my dreams, I must not be having any.

To address this one, we need to back up a bit and talk about some sleep basics. We have different stages of sleep from lighter to deeper, and when you go in for a sleep study, the doctors and techs can tell what stage you’re in by the kind of squiggly lines your brain is putting out on the EEG channels.  There are two main types of sleep:  Rapid Eye Movement sleep and non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep.  We progress through non-REM to REM in cycles.  Here’s a hypnogram to illustrate how we do it:

Here are the stages within types.

Non-REM sleep:

• Stage One–Lighter sleep.  When you’re falling asleep and you get that floaty feeling, this is the stage you’re in. It’s your doorway from wake to sleep. 
• Stage Two–You can think about this one as “regular sleep.”  It’s where we spend most of our time during the night.  Sometimes if you’re in Stage One or Two, you feel like you’re awake because you may still be aware of things going on around you. 
• Stage Three–This used to be stages three and four (as they are on the hypnogram above), but they’ve been combined.  This is your most restful sleep, and your brain puts out nice, happy slow waves.  A lot of times people miss this stage during sleep studies and if they have a sleep disorder that keeps them from being able to sleep long enough at a stretch to get there.

REM sleep:

• There is only one REM sleep stage, and that’s, well, REM.  As the name implies, your eyes move underneath your eyelids in horizontal movements that show up as up-and-down curves in a sleep study tracing, and your brainwaves almost look like you’re awake:
• This is the stage of sleep that your mind uses to figure things out and consolidate memories. Your brain also shuts your muscles off except the necessary ones (e.g., diaphragm for breathing, heart) so you won’t act out your dreams.  This is the stage when you have your most vivid dreams, and it increases throughout the night.  That’s why many people who remember their dreams report the most vivid ones as occurring early in the morning.

So let’s get back to the myth.  If you’re going to remember your dreams, you need to wake up during them.  Otherwise, your mind goes back to a non-dream stage and forgets it.  Note I didn’t say it goes back to a non-REM stage.  We can actually dream in any stage of sleep, but our most vivid ones are in REM.

Myth #2:  My quality of sleep depends on if I’ve dreamed or not.  No dreams means I’m not getting REM sleep, so it must be bad.

This one is backwards if you think about it.  Considering that you have to wake up during your dreams to remember them, not remembering them implies that you didn’t wake fully enough during them, so maybe you actually slept better. 

(Anna here: Dr. C sent a great picture of a REM EEG, or what REM sleep looks like on one of her super fancy techno gadgets…)

 Think about the last vivid dream you remember.  What woke you up?  Sometimes it’s the dream content itself, but for many of us in the modern age, it’s an alarm clock.  The bottom line is that this isn’t a good indicator of sleep quality, and unless you go in for a sleep study, it’s impossible to tell whether you’re lacking REM sleep, which is really rare in people without a sleep disorder because our minds need it.

Myth #3:  It’s not good to dream about _____________. For example, “If I die in my dreams, I’ll die in real life.”

I saw that Anna wrote about flying and falling last week.  Even if you have dreams with horrible, frightening imagery, it’s very rarely literal.  I’ll get more into how our brains pick out what to dream about in a later post.  I’ve actually died in my dreams but still woke up to go to work the next day, and my husband can assure you I’m not a zombie… after I’ve had a couple of cups of coffee in the morning.

Myth #4: We need less sleep as we get older.

We’re all familiar with the stereotype of Grandma and Grandpa lining up to hit the Blue Light specials at the restaurant at 5:00 so they can be in bed by 8:00.  It’s not that we need less sleep, it’s that our sleep patterns change.  There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is the circadian rhythm, or internal clock.  No, this has nothing to do with the noisy bugs we hear during the summer – those are cicadas.  During adolescence, the circadian rhythm shifts and sets itself later, so it’s actually natural for teenagers to want to go to bed in the wee hours and sleep until noon.  It gradually shifts earlier throughout our life span so that older people naturally have internal clocks set earlier.  If you think about it, when Grandma goes to bed at eight, she’s waking between three and four because her body is done sleeping, but it appears as though she’s sleeping less because by the time you’re awake, she’s been up for hours (and hopefully fixed you homemade biscuits for breakfast).

The second reason it seems that older people don’t need as much sleep is that they tend to sleep less at night but more during the day.  I’ve seen a pattern that I call “retiree syndrome” in people who, for whatever reason, no longer have external time demands such as a job or school, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be an older person.  Without these external demands or a routine and the discipline to carry it through (the hard part), people will sleep whenever they feel like it.  So while Grandpa is only sleeping four or five hours a night, he may be catching a nap or two or three during the day in the recliner.  If you add it all up, it’s actually close to the seven to nine hours an adult needs.

Another significant change as our brain ages is that we lose slow-wave sleep.  The proportion of stage three gradually reduces, so sleep may feel less restorative.  This, like other parts of the aging process, is kind of a bummer, but it’s still possible for people to wake feeling refreshed.

So there are your sleep basics and myths!  I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to talk about parasomnias, or what happens when the shifting between stages goes awry. 

Please feel free to ask any questions.  My only limitation is that ethically I can’t diagnose or make treatment recommendations in this medium.

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By day, “Doctor C.” is a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist.  That’s a long title, so she answers to any variations, including “Sleep Psychologist.” 

By night, she writes fantasy and science fiction, blogsabout wine and life, and interacts with other wine lovers and writers on twitter as @RandomOenophile.  She’s a featured first-place winner in this year’s Mystery Times Ten, a Young Adult mystery anthology, for her fantasy story “The Coral Temple.” 

Do you fall or fly, surrounded by vivid imagery and wrapped up in a story line? Are you feeling anxious or soaring? These are key indicators that you’re mind’s processing how you’re feeling about something that’s happening or about to happen in your life that you’re worried about. And if you’re always falling and never hit bottom? Maybe you’re feeling out of control, with no sense that you can take charge. You’re, quite simply, taking a leap of faith.

Far from crashing into the ground meaning that you’re going to die, it can often mean that you’re ready to make the choice you’ve been avoiding. A good or a bad choice? The setting and subject matter of the dream’s plot can help you cipher that. Which, again, begs for the same dedication I’ve been pushing for all along–keep those dream journals and remind yourself of everything else that’s going on while you sleep, not just the most startling of the images your mind plays for you.

Other things to think about:

• What are you holding on to just before you fall?
• What are you letting go of?
• What am I afraid of?
• What do I want, that I can’t have, until I let myself go?
• And, more importantly, how do you feel about the loss of equilibrium/control once we do let go?

Because, sometimes, we’re flying as we soar through the air, NOT falling ;o) It can still be scary and out of control and extreme, but when we choose to fly, we’re free. We rise. We float. We’re high above the cares and concerns, typically, of a falling dream. It feels wonderful, often gentle.

Flying in dreams is about freedom. Exhilaration. You’re in your natural element (because so many of us fly in our every day lives, right?). It could mean you’re finally liberated from whatever’s been troubling you (perhaps something that’s before now inspired a falling dream). Flying can represent consciousness–finally seeing what you need to do, and being spiritually ready to do that very thing.  It’s growth. It’s YOU.

What’s your sky?  How high can you fly? What are your limits? These are the things you can explore in your soaring dreams.

Also, are you thrilled that your shackles are finally loosened? You’re on your own. Are you ready? Are you ready to go where your mind is taking you?

Remember, no matter what I or anyone else says, these are your dreams. Your snapshot. Your mind. Take your dreams into your soul and figure it out. Find yourself there, and whatever you believe your world can be, it’s yours!

And… Next Tuesday… Come back to Dream Theories to hear more about sleep from an expert in the field. Dr. Cecilia is a Clinical Psychologist, a PhD, and a hard-working sleep therapist. What are the myths and realities behind the science of sleeping that will make or break what we believe about dreaming? I can’t wait to find out! “Dr. C” will be guest blogging every two weeks here at Dream Theories. She’s a sci-fi/fantasy writer, too, which is how we hooked up. She’s been a great resource for a lot of my research into the dream science I built into the first two Legacy books around. I know you’re going to love her!

Psychic Realm update tomorrow. See you there ;o)

Ok, some linky links to start the day off right:

• Remeber, it’s your emotions about your dream symbols that matter the most.
• The Huffington Post did a series on dreams and their meanings that you’ll want to read.

That said, let’s talk about you ;o)

Depending on the strength of what you’re feeling about those golden retrievers in your dreams, you could be celebrating a growing friendship or mourning a relationship that’s in trouble. What is going on in your life that’s calling these cuddly creatures to your dreams (or, perhaps banishing them)?

Your wolves…Are they majestic and beautiful? Or sinister, insatiable, evil? How does your mind depict them in the midst of whatever else is going on in your sleeping world? Are you being stalked? Herded? Part of the pack? Fighting to get in or out? More often than not, wolf dreams are a manifestation of fear, and you’re typically either facing what’s threatening you or being consumed by it. Then again, in Native American culture, the wolf is a warrior associated with wisdom and healing.

And those seals…How much are they struggling and working in your dream? Are they curious or slaves to whatever they’re doing? They can be playful and faithful (if what you’re aspiring for is love); depict the drive for prosperity and success (if you’re wanting closure for that which you strive for);  or represent spiritual understanding (if you’re looking for the true meaning of what’s harassing or overwhelming you).

There are no hard and fast rules for any of these interpretations.Your circumstances and your view of your world color everything you dream about, including the animal symbols (or familiars) that visit while you sleep. Dream interpretation is about looking deeper into your own reality and finding a personal mission that you hadn’t recognized before. It’s about intentionally seeing more of yourself, as you focus on the dream images that represent your innermost desires and fears.

Isn’t this fun?

We’re going to move on in next week’s Dream Theories to falling and flying dreams, but keep sending me those requests for animal dream interpretations, and I’ll be sure to include them, too, until we run out of critters!