Psychologist Aurore Roland is the dream specialist at VUB, where she researches nightmares. Her book Wat onze dromen ons (niet) vertellen (What Our Dreams (Don’t) Tell Us) investigates the latest scientific insights into dreams. “On average, every person has about four nightmares a year.”
How does someone become a dream specialist? Was that always your dream?
Aurore Roland: “As a clinical psychologist, I did an internship in a sleep lab, where I became fascinated by the field. Sleep is very multidisciplinary. There are a huge number of aspects to it. Through that internship, I discovered that there is such a thing as nightmare therapy and I learnt what dream research entailed. That intrigued me. Gradually, I entered the niche of dreaming myself.”
How do you find out what people dream and what exactly is going on in their brains?
“Until now, I was limited to what people told me, but soon we will have a sleep research lab at the VUB. That will open doors to investigate things we didn’t have the material for before. Even then, dream research will not be simple. One of the big problems is that we cannot yet tell in the brain whether someone is dreaming or not. Based on brain activity, we do know what stage of sleep someone is in, but we are not able to say for sure whether they are also dreaming. We have to wait for them to wake up and confirm: ‘I was dreaming.’ But not everyone remembers their dreams. That is why I would like to do brain research on people who have lucid dreams. They are aware they are dreaming. You could arrange for them to indicate via blinking that they are dreaming, then you could have them perform certain tasks in their dreams and start looking directly at the impact on brain activity.”
‘Freud had a good marketing strategy’
It’s remarkable that we don’t know what dreams look like in our brains. In your book, you explain that we really know very little with any certainty about the domain of the dream. Why is that?
“If you can’t tell whether someone is dreaming or not based on brain activity, that also makes it impossible to know with certainty what the impact of dreams is on the coping process of trauma, for example. A lot of follow-up research gets stuck on this. In addition, for a long time, much research has assumed that we only dream during REM sleep. But this is not correct. You can also dream during the other stages – except during really deep sleep. However, by sticking to that idea, a lot of research has gone on the wrong track.’
Many people remain attached to dream theory too, don’t they?
“Freud had a good marketing strategy! For a very long time, psychoanalysis was the dominant psychotherapeutic method. That’s where dream interpretation comes from. It doesn’t look at what happens in the brain but links a meaning to dreams. Sometimes dreams are even given a predictive power. Even though it’s not scientific, I find that many people are drawn to this. They are often people who are also interested in the mystical.”
“People who have intense nightmares more often experience negative emotions during the day too”
Are you always taken seriously when you introduce yourself as a dream researcher?
“That’s exactly why I introduce myself as a psychologist and sleep expert! But seriously, it tends to be lay people who make the link with dream interpretation. Fortunately, the field of dream research is taken seriously within psychology and sleep medicine, although it’s not a very large field and the impact of scientific journals on dreams remains small. It really is a niche, even within the field of sleep. To my knowledge, I am the only one carrying out research on it in Belgium.”
You said there is little certainty about the purpose of our dreams, but there are some theories that are given a lot of credence, even within science. Can you tell us about the continuity hypothesis, for example?
“As the term suggests, it remains a hypothesis, but there is little to argue against it. The continuity hypothesis says there is a link between what we dream and what we experience in everyday life. Our brains create dreams based on the information they get from our memory. And what we know from research on memory is that if you assign high emotional value to an event, it will be more prominent in your memory. Nightmares are a very good example: people who have intense nightmares more often experience negative emotions during the day too. But why the brain chooses a particular person or incident to dream about remains conjecture. Does our brain do it to process certain things, or is it just a coincidence because that information is more accessible in our memory? We are in the dark about that. We can, however, explain why bizarre things often happen in our dreams. The brain structures involved in logic do not work as well when we dream.”
Students might not want to hear this, but people sometimes dream about their exams years after graduation. Why is it that exams are such a common subject in dreams?
“Exams are stressful for many people. We want to do well and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. That makes exams a very emotional event, and emotional events take up a very important place in our memory. If you experience stress again later in life, it is possible that your brain will make the link to a stressful event in the past. As a result, exams recur in many dreams.”
“On average, every person has about four nightmares a year”
If what someone dreams can tell you something about our emotions and how we experience them, it could be useful to discuss dreams in psychotherapy. Does this happen?
“Research shows that few psychotherapists ask about their patients’ dreams. The vast majority will only address it if their patient brings up the subject themselves. Does it then have an effect? Patients who bring up their dreams believe it can give them something to discuss. It may increase self-insight, but research indicates no real impact on psychiatric symptoms. Moreover, there is a danger that a therapist will misinterpret a dream. For example, I have a recurring dream in which I cause a traffic accident. Freud might have told me that I once experienced a traffic accident and have repressed it. I don’t see it that deeply. I think I’m just afraid of causing an accident, no more than that. I would recommend that any therapist sticks to what the patient offers as an interpretation.”
You also give nightmare therapy. I didn’t know such a thing existed. Should I worry if I have the occasional nightmare?
“On average, every person has about four nightmares a year. We suspect it is stress-related. If you are going through a stressful period, you are more likely to have a nightmare. So it is quite normal. It’s different if you have very frequent nightmares. Even those people often don’t know that nightmare therapy exists; they are usually referred through a sleep clinic, for example, because they sleep badly and regularly wake up from their nightmares. Others are referred because they are in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Often their nightmares get in the way of being able to process that trauma.”
Is trauma always at the root of nightmare disorder?
“Often it is. Usually those people go to a therapist first. They think that therapy will make those nightmares go away, but that is not always the case. I find it more useful to do nightmare therapy first. That way you get your sleep back under control, and it’s much easier to process a trauma if you are well rested. But you also have people with frequent nightmares who have never experienced trauma. Often these are people with a difficult childhood. They had so much stress at a young age that their brain starts creating a lot of nightmares throughout their lives.”
“Often these nightmares are so incredibly frightening that people are afraid to talk about them”
How does nightmare therapy work?
“After an initial session, we start working on sleep. First I give some explanations. Many people don’t know their nightmares have a link to something they have experienced. The content does not always correspond completely, and certainly not if there is no trauma. Next, I teach relaxation techniques. People who regularly wake up from a nightmare go to bed with anxiety. They are afraid of having another nightmare. Then we start working specifically on the content of the nightmare. I ask them to write out the nightmare and read it aloud. That in itself can be helpful. Often these nightmares are so incredibly frightening that people are afraid to talk about them. Recounting them to a therapist is already a big step. Finally, I ask them to modify their nightmare. Often people always have the same nightmare – their brain plays out the exact same scenario every time, or there is a theme that recurs. Before going to bed, they have to imagine a new scenario. The chance that their brain will play the new dream literally is small, but the signal that the scenario could end differently often makes the nightmares less frightening.”
You are coordinating a study of nightmares among young people in a community detention centre. What does that involve?
“Many of those young people have experienced trauma. Until I pointed this out to the other researchers, no one had thought of questioning whether those young people suffer from nightmares. And they do. They sleep badly. When they are not disturbed by their own nightmares, they wake up to the shouts of their neighbour who has had a nightmare. That must be terrible. There is also very little psychological help available in those institutions. The idea of the study is to teach supervisors skills to improve the emotion regulation of those young people. The aim is not to provide therapy, but to help young people gain a little more control over their emotions. Dealing with nightmares is part of that. During a training day for the supervisors, I gave tips and advice. I’m still waiting for the results and am very curious about the outcome. Do they have fewer nightmares? Do they wake up less often? Are their depressive symptoms reduced?”
Even for people without nightmare disorder, waking up from a nightmare can be very intense. What is the best way to deal with it?
“Many people struggle to come back to the here and now. The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise can help. In the space you are in, think of five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell and one that you can taste. That exercise will help you break free from your nightmare and find peace again.”
