It’s 2 AM. Social media lights up with posts that send a feeble flare.
After that night, I learned I was not alone. One of my friends on the west coast said they’d dreamt that the nation had descended into martial law and a time of extreme measures for survival. Another friend slumbered into a nightmare about getting yelled at in a drive-thru testing site for COVID-19. Others had stress dreams about work, traumatic events from their past, or accidentally infecting other people with COVID-19 by not properly socially distancing, and one friend’s nightmare mirrored the news of some cruise ships being docked indefinitely due to outbreaks, as she ended up as a passenger on an infected private yacht.
But the experience of nightmares, newly vivid dreams, or altered sleep patterns with COVID-19 isn’t universal. Some people may like the new vividness of dreams, said Dr. James Wyatt, who specializes in clinical sleep disorders and behavioral sleep medicine at Rush University Medical Center.
Guzman advises focusing on rest rather than getting back to sleep, because stressing about sleeping may spur anxiety that ends up keeping you awake. Others note that it’s important to take a holistic approach to determining what’s impacting your ability to sleep well, especially during the pandemic.
