During REM sleep, one's eyes move rapidly back and forth under the eyelids, and muscles of the body are in a relaxed state. REM sleep is every 90 to 100 minutes, three to four times a night and it lasts longer as the night progresses, according to the Association for the Study of Dreams. They have order and reflect psychological aspects of our lives and personalities. Because Kramer believes that dreams can affect our moods in the next day, he and his colleagues have developed the Selective Mood Regulatory Theory of Dreams and Sleep. This theory states that people feel better when they get uninterrupted sleep for a significant period of time and have a series of unremembered dreams that may produce upsetting feelings.
Dreams can also reflect changes in environments.
People report having awkward, jumbled dreams. When I left Ohio and moved to Virginia, I had really weird dreams. Old people would be mixed with the new people, and we would all be in school together. I would decide who would be compatible with who. Frederick Brown, Penn State professor of psychology, refers to these as anxiety dreams.