‘Trapped in Boxes That Are Getting Smaller’: Why Your Anxiety Dreams Are Getting Worse
By: Robert Roy Britt
Tags: Psychology, Anxiety, Sleep, Covid 19, Mental Health

‘Trapped in Boxes That Are Getting Smaller’: Why Your Anxiety Dreams Are Getting Worse

Bad dreams infected with pandemic themes are evolving to postapocalyptic ‘Mad Max’ scenes

Image: artur carvalho/Getty Images

Dreams often reflect the things humans worry about and can be influenced by wars, natural disasters, or other crises, previous research has shown. Multiple new studies now reveal how the pandemic is infusing our sleep-time fantasies with an evolving series of anxieties and negative emotions.

Since the start of the pandemic, people have been experiencing more vivid, memorable, and bizarre dreams and more nightmares, both of a general nature and specifically related to the coronavirus, Covid-19, and the economic fallout of the crisis. And now dreams are shifting to postapocalypse scenarios, with dark premonitions of endless quarantines and lonely, collapsed societies.

In early spring, most pandemic nightmares involved catching the virus — dreaming of a fever or cough and knowing it was Covid-19 — or apocalyptic metaphors ranging from tsunamis and hurricanes to attacks by bugs or invisible monsters, explains Deirdre Barrett, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and author of the new book Pandemic Dreams. Over time, fresh fears fueled dreams linked to lockdowns, homeschooling, and loss of work, Barrett finds in an ongoing global survey.

Now, as schools and businesses reopen amid tremendous collective anxiety, dreams both positive and negative are focusing on what’s next.

“There are increasingly more dreams that depict a radically changed long-term future after the pandemic,” Barrett says. “These range from utopian to Mad Max postapocalyptic.”

In early spring, most pandemic nightmares involved catching the virus or apocalyptic metaphors ranging from tsunamis and hurricanes to attacks by bugs or invisible monsters.

Examples she provided to Elemental:

“I dreamt I was on the shore right by the ocean. There were huge humpback gray whales in the ocean. They were breaching and swimming around. I kept noticing more and more of them. And [I] understood they were there because we were leaving the ocean alone. It was a beautiful miraculous feeling.”

“I dreamed of never returning to life-as-normal, of being old and quarantined with my future grandchildren.”

“I was homeless, as was everyone else. Society had completely broken down. It was the end of the world and there were only a few people left. I didn’t know what happened to my husband or my baby. They just didn’t exist.”

“I dreamt I was being picked up by car from my place of work downtown because it was just too dangerous to walk on the sidewalk. From the window of the car, I saw people in varying degrees of starvation, disease, and even decay, seeking shelter or lying naked and exposed.”

“I had a dream that the world was ending. This dream did not feel like a dream but rather the future. It was too clear to be a dream. It was like particles of matter were being removed from my body as they removed the universe.”

“Trapped in boxes that are getting smaller. It is panic and claustrophobic.”

A study on the early pandemic dreams in Barrett’s research is published along with other pandemic-dream studies in the October issue of the American Psychological Association’s journal Dreaming, which Barrett edits.

One of the other studies was conducted by Michael Schredl of Heidelberg University and Kelly Bulkeley of the Sleep and Dream Database in Oregon. Examples of early pandemic dreams described in their survey of 3,000 Americans:

“I had a dream that a lot of my friends and family died.”

“I wake up remembering that someone I loved has died from coronavirus and I feel guilty that it was not me.”

“In a crowded area where some people were not wearing masks and observing social distancing.”

“We had a chance to go somewhere for a social event, but the whole time I was worried that we should be social distancing.”

“My dreams include my husband and work friends and grandchildren — trapped in boxes that are getting smaller. It is panic and claustrophobic.”

“I dreamed that I could not find employment due to this virus.”

The more intensely people had been affected by the pandemic — such as losing their job or contracting the virus — the more negative their dreams were and the more likely they were to be Covid-19-related, Schredl and Bulkeley write.

Meanwhile, Barrett’s analysis of dreams of 2,888 people around the world finds that while men and women are both experiencing more vivid and negative dreams, there are notable gender differences.

“Women are having more sadness and anger in their dreams compared to ordinary times, which is not an effect for men’s dreams,” she says. The likely reason: “Women are overrepresented among those who are suddenly stuck homeschooling children, taking care of sick relatives, and have lost their jobs disproportionately since the pandemic started.” Two specific dreams reflect this reality:

A nanny reported dreaming of the parents she worked for firing her and focusing their own efforts on their children.

A mother who was homeschooling her 10-year-old dreamed that the school contacted her to say that the child’s whole class was being sent to her condominium, where she must homeschool them all for the duration of the pandemic.

A separate study in Italy reached a similar conclusion.

“There are increasingly more dreams that depict a radically changed long-term future after the pandemic. These range from utopian to ‘Mad Max’ postapocalyptic.”

Shared mindscape

Another new study, detailed October 1 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, reveals common “shared” pandemic-related nightmares, with people describing scenes of accidental hugs, crowded parties, and villains who disregard social distancing guidelines — recurring dream themes that “echoed the apocalyptic atmosphere of the circumstances brought about by Covid-19,” says study leader Anu-Katriina Pesonen, PhD, a psychologist and sleep expert at the University of Helsinki. “The findings enabled us to speculate that dreaming in the middle of exceptional circumstances is a form of shared mindscape between individuals.”

The research found that more than half of dreams among some 811 people in Finland had pandemic themes. People who reported being the most stressed out also described more pandemic-specific nightmares.

Overall, these studies and other recent research on Covid-19 dreams support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, which holds that dreams reflect our waking concerns, Barrett says. And there’s one purely biological factor behind this increase in nightmares and dream recall: Some people have been sleeping more during the pandemic and waking naturally without alarms — factors that allow more REM sleep, the stage during which we dream.

“The biggest variable in the number of dreams, vividness of dreams, and length of recalled dreams is hours of sleep,” Barrett explains. “Many who are ordinarily sleep deprived due to working long hours and/or an intense social life were catching up on sleep, especially early in the pandemic.”

How to take control

For most people, having anxious dreams about the pandemic is normal. But if nightmares persist and weigh heavily on you, Barrett suggests discussing them with a therapist.

And as other research has shown, it is possible for some people to exert control over their nighttime imaginings through dream incubation — thinking about or visualizing what you wish to dream about as you fall asleep, be it a vacation spot, a loved one, or soaring aloft on your own power.

“Repeat to yourself what you want to dream about as you drift off to sleep,” Barrett suggests. “The technique makes for a pleasant experience as you’re falling asleep and greatly raises the odds that your dreaming mind will honor your request.”