← Am I Doing It Wrong?
Am I Doing It Wrong?
Why Do We Dream And Can We Control Them? Our Chat With A Dream Scientist
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- [00:01]
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- [01:53]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Hi, I'm Raj Panjabi Johnson, head of
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identity content at HuffPost.
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Noah Michelson
And I'm Noah Michaelson, head of HuffPost Personal.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
Welcome to Am I Doing It Wrong?
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The show that explores the all too
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human anxieties we have about trying to
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get our lives right. Noah, I have a fun one. Have you been dreaming wrong?
- [02:12]
Noah Michelson
That is a fun one. I've actually been really excited about this episode.
- [02:15]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Me too.
- [02:16]
Noah Michelson
I love dreaming. I dream a lot. I dream every night. I remember them a lot of times. But I don't know what does it even mean to dream wrong? I guess if you have nightmares, that's probably dreaming wrong, but I wonder if we can learn to dream better. So that's my question going into this one. I don't know if I'm doing it wrong, but I want to know if I can do it better. What about you?
- [02:39]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I Think I'm doing it right because I have a secret hack for nightmares, how to, like, get rid of a nightmare. And I would love to find out from an expert if it's legit.
- [02:50]
Noah Michelson
Well, we're gonna get to the bottom of it because we have the exactly right person for this. It's Karen Conkolly. She is the Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cambridge Consciousness and Cognition Laboratory, where she explores consciousness and the dreaming brain. And she specializes in lucid dreaming. What a cool job.
- [03:08]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I know. Let's get our dream on.
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Noah Michelson
All right. Hi, Karen. Welcome to the show.
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Karen Conkolly
Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
- [03:17]
Noah Michelson
Yeah. We're so excited about this episode. Let's just begin at the beginning. What is going on when we're dreaming, and do we have to be in REM sleep to dream?
- [03:27]
Karen Conkolly
Yes, that is a common misconception. You definitely don't have to be in REM sleep when you're dreaming. People dream kind of all night long, but partially, it depends on how you define a dream. Do you have to be immersed in another world or is even, like, a thought that you're having while you're asleep a dream? And so people can have immersive dreams in all stages of sleep, but they're most common in REM sleep.
- [03:49]
Noah Michelson
Okay, and how do you scientifically define a dream?
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Karen Conkolly
Well, yeah, I was just at a conference where everyone was arguing about this because there's kind of two competing definitions. One is, you know, this what you would think of mostly as a dream. This. You're in another world. There is a narrative. You have a dream body. There's characters or stuff going on. Whereas the definition that's actually most commonly used in dream science these days is just any subjective experience that you have during sleep. So even if you have a thought while you're asleep, now that's a dream.
- [04:24]
Noah Michelson
Wow. So interesting.
- [04:26]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
And I have to. I have to ask this. Like, all of the research you and your colleagues do, a lot of it is theoretical, right? Because, like, so much of it can't totally be proven because it's in our brain while we're sleeping. Would you say that that's correct?
- [04:41]
Karen Conkolly
There is definitely philosophical and theoretical dream, you know, science occurring, but I'm more focused on the neuroscience side. So we are trying to look at the brain and look at mostly behavior during sleep and see if we can learn about why we dream based on those things.
- [04:58]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's so freaking cool. Okay. Is there some kind of evolutionary or even beneficial aspect to dreaming? Like, do they do something for us?
- [05:07]
Karen Conkolly
There's A lot of theories about why people may have evolved to dream. So one theory is that dreams help us simulate, like, potential events in the future. Like simulate social situations so that we can navigate them better. So simulate threats so that we can better respond to them in the future. There's other theories that helps you process emotional memories so that, you know, if something scary happens to you today, you can learn the lesson that you needed to learn without getting, like, so scared every time you think of it. There's one theory that if you don't have vision while you're asleep, then your other senses, like your sense of touch and hearing, will just take over your visual cortex while you're asleep and you won't be able to see the next day. So there's a whole slew of theories about why we dream. And my latest rap is kind of that, you know, it's difficult to test any of them if you can't systematically manipulate dreaming. Like, in order to do science on something, you have to be able to manipulate your variable of interest. And a lot of dream science has been more observational. Like, let's see what happens when people experience this? What do they dream of? And, you know, we kind of need to be able to, like, intervene during the dream in order to really test some of these theories of the functions of dreaming.
- [06:20]
Noah Michelson
Do you think we're gonna get to a place where we can actually do that? I mean, is that something that seems possible? It seems like dreaming is just so amorphous. But I'm not a dream scientist. So what have you learned so far?
- [06:32]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, you know, I don't think that we're ever gonna be able to, you know, change dreams in this perfectly reliable way. Nor should we, because I think that, you know, they're that way for a reason. And it's kind of beautiful that they're so difficult to explain with our waking minds. But I will say that I was just helped organize a conference on Dream Engineering at MIT in January, and there was 180 minds in Dream research. And everyone is. It's a big movement in dream research to think about ways in which we could interact with dreams and try to change them. Mostly more for an experimental scientific interest or to help when people's dreams go awry, as opposed to just changing them willy nilly.
- [07:16]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
So we have a lot of questions that are going to start with I heard or my friend told me, which is like, because everyone's wondering about this stuff and people have weird dream experiences, is it true that some people dream in black and white versus Color.
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Noah Michelson
But wait, Raj, you dream in color? Yeah. Yeah, I dream in color. Do some people not dream in color?
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Karen Conkolly
So that was kind of a rumor. Or maybe it was real. It started when TV came out in black and white. And so TV was kind of the closest thing that people were approximating to dreams. And so when they started thinking of their dreams, they started thinking of tv. And, of course, people also were watching a lot of tv. And so some of their dreams seemed to have been in black and white as a result of watching so much black and white tv. And so now that TV is in color, very few people report dreaming in black and white.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
So now that everyone's on Instagram, it could be like, there's a filter. Like, mine's in sepia.
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Karen Conkolly
Yes. Yeah.
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Noah Michelson
I wear contacts, and without my contacts, I can't see. Same there. I have dreams where my contacts aren't in or one falls out and my dream is blurry.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's so cool.
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Noah Michelson
What is going on there, Karen?
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Karen Conkolly
That is really cool. I've never heard of that. That's a really interesting idea. Yeah, it's really interesting to think about that. I mean. Yeah, I think that it's so interesting to think about your perception when you're awake and the extent to which that's mirrored in your dreams versus not. Yeah, it's super interesting.
- [08:42]
Noah Michelson
Yeah. Okay, we have a listener question from Jerry. She said, I don't think I dream. At least I don't ever remember them. Is that possible? Does everyone dream, but some people just don't remember them? Or are there some people who never dream?
- [08:57]
Karen Conkolly
You know, so far, there's not, like, a super definitive way to answer that question, but it seems like people dream a lot more than they remember. And it's definitely super easy to forget your dreams. And so I do think that many people who say. Say that they don't remember their dreams actually are dreaming and they're just not remembering. And because it's kind of like, can you, like, turn your attention inward at that very moment that you wake up to rescue the dream before it slips away? It's a hard thing.
- [09:24]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
So, Karen, like, you're telling me this because scientists can see certain brainwave things, right. That indicate that you're dreaming. So you could be like, oh, this person's dreaming. And they could wake up and be like, I wasn't dreaming. But it's because they don't remember it.
- [09:39]
Karen Conkolly
So that kind of is a thing, but it's actually, like, not as definitive as that. Like, the person's report is, like, probably More reliable than the brainwave signature. So everyone's looking at like the neural signatures of what people report when they wake up. But it's not strong enough that people would say, oh, you were definitely dreaming even though you weren't.
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Noah Michelson
Okay, is there scientifically, like, do we know how long a dream lasts? Like, sometimes I feel like I have a dream for like, it's like two hours long. But do we know that actually dreams are only these bursts or can dreams be many different lengths?
- [10:18]
Karen Conkolly
I think they can be many different lengths. There are, you know, even though you can dream outside of REM sleep, there are correlations between how long somebody says their dream is and how long they've been in REM sleep. So you cycle through all the sleep stages every 90 minutes. And so at the end of the night, maybe you'll have like half an hour of REM sleep. So probably a long dream is like, you know, could take perhaps up to that length. But there are also people that say they're dreaming all night, have these continuous dreams. And so I do think that it could vary quite a bit depending on the individual.
- [10:48]
Noah Michelson
Right.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
I've read a lot, like, I've read a lot of literature that asserted that many dreams that we feel are long are actually like 10 to 20 seconds. That's possible too, right?
- [10:58]
Karen Conkolly
Yes, that's a very interesting inceptiony question. Time dilation in dreams. Yeah, there are a few studies where they have a lucid dreamer who's aware that they're dreaming. Go in their dream, they give a signal with their eyes that experimenters can monitor to timestamp an event. So they'll say like, I'll look left, right, left, right, left, right. And so you can see that in the objective marker. And then they tell the dreamer, count to 10, 10. And then after you count the 10 signal again. And so when you do this signaling approach, time is very similar to when you're awake. But of course that's like a special case of dreaming. And it could be that like a sleep onset dream or different types of dreams might magnify time in ways that we haven't really been able to measure yet.
- [11:41]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's so cool.
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Noah Michelson
Yeah, My head is like melting.
- [11:44]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Do you think it's too late for me to stop doing everything I'm doing and become a dream researcher? It's never, how much school do I need to do?
- [11:52]
Noah Michelson
It's too late. Let's just hang out with Karen and we'll just ask Karen.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
You do the hard work, Karen, and we'll just ask you questions.
- [11:57]
Noah Michelson
I Want to get into lucid dreaming a little bit later. But before we get to that, we're going to stick with some of the more, like, dummy questions we have. So I'm also wondering, are there certain conditions that affect dreaming?
- [12:09]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I'll talk about the weed, you talk about other stuff.
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Noah Michelson
Yeah. So I've heard, like, some people say, like, eating too close to bedtime can make you have weird dreams. Or my friend Will told me that there's something in the UK called cheese dreams that happen if you eat cheese before bed. So I'm wondering about that. Or, like, if your room is really hot versus really cold. Have you, as dream researcher, seen that certain things do affect it?
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Karen Conkolly
Yeah, the environment definitely affects your dream quite a bit. And I was actually just at the conference I was just at, I was hanging out with my friend Claudia, who worked on the cheese dream paper. So, yes, it is a thing. Potentially, the cheese dreams are the worst if you're lactose intolerant,
- [12:55]
Noah Michelson
I imagine that makes total sense.
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Karen Conkolly
Yes. So you're definitely, like, incorporating cues from your body and the environment into your dreams. I think the most notable example is, like, having to go to the bathroom. Like, a lot of people incorporate having to pee in their dreams, but if you have, like, something rumbling in your tummy, such as a lot of cheese, that could also affect it.
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Noah Michelson
Right. Oh, that's so interesting.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
I have heard from a lot of my friends that when they stop smoking cannabis or using cannabis, they remember their dreams again. And when they are continuously using cannabis, they don't remember their dreams. Do you know anything about this?
- [13:35]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, I'm not a huge expert on it, but it is the case, I believe that cannabis reduces the amount of REM sleep that you get. And so if it's kind of reducing the REM sleep and kind of dimming that. I've heard it from many people that once you quit, you have this rebound and you have tons of dreams.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
So interesting.
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Noah Michelson
Yeah. Another thing. So my mom has a bed in her guest room, and when I sleep in it, I have the craziest, most vivid dreams in that bed. And I also remember, like, in my cousin's waterbed, I had crazy dreams and my brother was saying that when he slept on a bed in an overnight train and he was moving, he had crazy dreams. Is there anything about movement that we know about dreaming?
- [14:20]
Karen Conkolly
I do know of one study where they had people sleep on a giant swinging hammock bed.
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Noah Michelson
Oh, my God.
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Karen Conkolly
But it actually wasn't about dreams. It was just about making their sleep deeper. And if it was synchronized with their brainwaves, then they slept deeper. But the environment that you're in definitely impacts your dreams. And like, ancient societies, like in ancient Greece, they would sleep in a specific temple to incubate a dream of a specific God to help them heal. And also, if you have someone sleep in a sleep lab, like, tons of the dreams are about the sleep lab because people are kind of incorporating that environment. Yeah, it's a huge. It's kind of a problem, but it's also cool.
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Noah Michelson
Crazy.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's really cool. And temperature, too. Right? So, like, whatever conditions we're in and maybe how we're feeling, obviously, before we go to sleep.
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Karen Conkolly
Yeah. The temperature can impact. I know. It can impact your sleep architecture. I haven't seen one on dreaming, but there could be a study on that. Yeah, it definitely. Definitely. All those things are. Are, like, ways to interface with your sleeping mind.
- [15:22]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Okay, I have to ask one that I'm sure a lot of, like, astrology folks and people like that want to know. Like, Lily asks, are all of those folk beliefs that if you dream X, it means Y bogus, or is there any reality to them? Like, a lot of cultures believe if you have, like, the teeth falling out dream, it indicates, like, a loss of control. I don't know if that's psychology or spirituality. Can you say anything about that?
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Karen Conkolly
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of temptation to interpret dreams in that way. And I think that, you know, I can't say for every culture, I think that. To me, I think that a dream is operating on the symbolism that you have in your own model of the world. And, like, in the, you know, at least in this big, you know, diverse culture in the United States, like, people's world models can be quite different. Like, I went to a lucid dreaming retreat, and he said, hug someone in your dream. And so I tried to hug someone in my dream, and the character responded, like, really weirdly. It was kind of awkward, and I was like, oh. Like, maybe, like, to me, like, this experience was awkward, whereas to him, it was so powerful. And so I think that, like, I. I think it's. To me, I think it's a lot more individualized than that. In many cases, trying to really understand what your dream is really about. I think you can kind of miss. Miss the truth in. In your dreams if you just look up. What does this mean? Or what does that mean? But that being said, like, I think that, you know, in cultures all around the world, people do have those kinds of beliefs. And, like, maybe especially if you live in like a really small culture with like, symbolism that you've really internalized that like perhaps it could be, you know, dreams could be interpreted in that way, you know, And I don't think science has really touched. Touched all that yet.
- [17:08]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I love the idea that, you know, just like these symbols floating around in your subconscious show up in your dreams. My sister in law, Angie, she's been having recurring dreams that Jimmy Fallon's chasing her. She's just like, he's terrible, he's gonna kidnap me. I like, she keeps having this dream. Obviously this isn't about Jimmy Fallon. Like, there's no. She's. I think we talked about it and I think they're all these like men in pop culture right now being canceled and we're finding out that they're doing terrible things and saying terrible things. And I think she's like thinking about it and she just found one male pop culture figure and is like, ah, bad.
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Noah Michelson
I also wonder if she watches Jimmy Fallon before bed because he comes out at like 11:30 and like, he's the last man that she sees before she goes to sleep.
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Karen Conkolly
I know one thing that I like to do is not. It's not like part of my scientific research, but if you have something like that in your dream that's recurring and like kind of central, like asking, like thinking to yourself, what would you. How would you describe this to an alien on another planet? Like, what are the first three words you would use to describe this to an alien? And if it was like, you know, male, powerful, something, you know, it could like, kind of be informative of what the. What that might mean to you.
- [18:22]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's very smart. That's very smart. I totally agree. Like, you just gotta kind of be like, what's this? What's happening in my subconscious?
- [18:28]
Noah Michelson
Right.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
Yeah.
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Noah Michelson
Karen, have you ever heard, I've heard this idea that our brains, when we're dreaming, cannot create something that we haven't seen before. So this idea that, like, if you see someone in your dream, you must have seen them somewhere because you can't make up a face that you've never seen any truth to that or anything that you've seen in research.
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Karen Conkolly
I have heard that. And you know, it's interesting to think about if there are any concrete rules about the dream world like that. I definitely don't think that that one is true. Because, like, the way that your face area even works in your brain is that it kind of like represents an average face and deviations from the average face. So it's definitely, like, possible to dream of a face that you've never seen before, in my opinion. But it's difficult to really test if that. If you. You. I don't even think that that's a test question that you could ever test unless you, like, really lock someone in a room and never let them see diverse types of any spaces.
- [19:25]
Noah Michelson
That's so true. Oh, my God.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
I have a. I have a fun one about stress dreams. I've. I've had reports from multiple friends, including Noah once told me that he, like, talks about spreadsheets in his dreams.
- [19:39]
Noah Michelson
I do.
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Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's necessarily, like, huge stress in my eyes. But, like, how do. How do just everyday stressors show up in our dreams, do you think?
- [19:48]
Karen Conkolly
Definitely. Dreams are very continuous with our current concerns and preoccupations. It's one theory of how we dream. It's called the continuity hypothesis, that dreams. You're just continuing to dream of your current concerns. And so if you have stressors or things that are preoccupying your mind, then they definitely show up in your dreams. And if you have, like, emotional memories, those are also particularly likely to show up because dreams might play a role in processing those emotions. But then at the far end of the spectrum, like, if you go to sleep and you're, like, actively, like, very stressed, like, maybe not like spreadsheet stress, but, like, you know, car accident stress or something like that, then, like, your brain kind of. Sometimes it won't properly shut off the stress hormones. So in REM sleep, your stress hormones, your cortisol is supposed to be, like, very low, but if it kind of misfires and you're having fragmented dreams, that might be, like, a really important contributor to developing ptsd, and it's kind of linked with your dreams. Your dreams are kind of not working properly.
- [20:47]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That makes so much sense.
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Noah Michelson
Yeah. I was telling Raj this because, you know, I'm stressed all day, and then I go to bed, and a lot of times I do have these stress dreams where. But they're not even exciting stress dreams. I'm not, like, being kidnapped or hijacked or anything.
- [21:01]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Jimmy Fallon's not chasing you.
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Noah Michelson
No, I really am a lot of times doing spreadsheets, and I'm like, this is so stupid.
- [21:08]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Your life is awesome.
- [21:09]
Noah Michelson
It's so awful. But I do think about, like, it's a way of me processing stress. Stress even when I'm asleep.
- [21:16]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. Because, you know, in a. In a healthy dreaming situation, you can kind of revisit those stressful memories, but with less stress in your body. And it's a way to, like, take the stress out of the memory kind of. It's like, here's the memory. But now we can think about yesterday's spreadsheets without crying because we've processed it. So that's like one theory about what dreams are doing.
- [21:42]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Hi, this is Raj from HuffPost's Am I Doing It Wrong Podcast. Noah and I have discovered so much from hosting this podcast, and we really believe that learning is a lifelong journey. That's why I'm so excited to share that. This episode is sponsored by Study.com Study.com offers over 220 online college courses that help students make progress toward finishing a college degree in a flexible and more affordable way. This includes general education courses such as English, Math, and History. Study.com is fully online and self paced, and courses transfer to over 2000 colleges and universities. The best part? Study.com is accessible from your phone or computer and it costs just $95 a month. Study.com helps students of any age or any phase in life finish their college degree faster and save money by earning college credit on their own schedule. Go to study.com podcast to browse courses and get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's study.com podcast.
- [22:44]
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- [23:07]
Noah Michelson
Sometimes AT&T business Wireless Connecting changes everything.
- [23:14]
Carvana Customer
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [23:16]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Well, that's cool.
- [23:16]
Carvana Customer
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [23:23]
Karen Conkolly
So what's the problem?
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Carvana Customer
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Paige from Giggly Squad
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Carvana Customer
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- [23:31]
Noah Michelson
Think.
- [23:32]
Karen Conkolly
Wow.
- [23:32]
AT&T Business Wireless Ad Voice
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- [23:33]
Carvana Customer
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [23:35]
Karen Conkolly
I think it's laminate.
- [23:36]
Carvana Customer
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- [23:37]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, that's good.
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Carvana Customer
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- [23:38]
Karen Conkolly
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- [23:47]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Do palette cleansers work? I like to watch one episode of my comfort show before bed, which is the office. And there's like nothing stressful going on in the office. So Whether I've had a stressful day or if I've been reading like a murder mystery or something and I need something in between cuz I will continue like weird shit into my dreams.
- [24:04]
Noah Michelson
Right.
- [24:05]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
What do you think about that? Could that be a way of like helping you not bring stress into your dreams?
- [24:10]
Karen Conkolly
I like the wording of a palate cleanser. I haven't heard that before is clever. But definitely what you're doing immediately before sleep I think is like the biggest kind of point of intervention in terms of what you're going to dream about. Because your dreams kind of spring from those thoughts that you're having as you fall asleep. So on one hand you could, you know, consciously consume content that's like more aligned with how you want your night to start. But on the other hand, like, even after you close your eyes, like you kind of start having like memories and thoughts like come up that relate to your day. And like, if you like notice that you're starting to ruminate or worry or something like that, on one hand maybe you say, okay, I need to process this, I'm going to dream about it. But on the other hand, if you feel like it's like a pattern and you're not working through it, you can kind of see if you can take that time and incubate a dream that's more, you know, that's more conscious, that's more helpful or something like that. And those moments before sleep are really important for determining what you're gonna dream about. And it's kind of like a time that people could reclaim, especially since there's like a lot of doom scrolling that happens before sleep. Yeah, so true.
- [25:18]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Incubate a dream is so. That's such a cool.
- [25:21]
Noah Michelson
I want to get into that too. Yes. But first let's get into nightmares.
- [25:25]
Karen Conkolly
Okay.
- [25:26]
Noah Michelson
Are nightmares different than dreams or are nightmares just dreams that are scary?
- [25:31]
Karen Conkolly
A definition of a nightmare that some people use is a dream that wakes you up. It's so negative that it wakes you up and it's kind of crazy to think about that. I mean, physiologically your sleep is ongoing, but it's literally the dream itself that's so bad it takes you out of sleep. So yeah, it's different in important ways because it's kind of stressful. It's stressful for your body. Your body doesn't know that that's not real. If it happens all the time, it's something that could can be addressed and a lot of people don't talk about it like with their healthcare providers or Try to get help. But if you have, like, a lot of recurring nightmares, it's something that, you know, you could do something about and that could really help you.
- [26:08]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I don't have, thank God, recurring, but when I do have them, sometimes. Sometimes I wake up crying.
- [26:13]
Noah Michelson
Yeah.
- [26:13]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Like, they're so scary and terrible. And then you. You take a second to be like, oh, my God, not real. Not real.
- [26:19]
Noah Michelson
Right.
- [26:19]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
But I want to have fewer of them.
- [26:22]
Noah Michelson
Yeah. Karen, if we do have them, what is a way to have less of them?
- [26:27]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah. Like, one of the biggest therapies for nightmares is called image rehearsal therapy. And so it works a lot, especially if you have a repetitive nightmare. But you could also do it if you just have one off nightmare, where you revisit your nightmare and you can even write it down, and you write down a new ending. So if you felt powerless or you felt, like, scared in your first, you know, your original nightmare, then you could rewrite a new ending where you feel powerful and safe and mentally rehearsing this new ending for five minutes throughout the day, like, helps your brain realize that when you're in the nightmare, like, it doesn't have to go in that direction. And sometimes in stressful times, like, people are going to have nightmares, but it's more like if you're regularly having nightmares and it's not, you know, even necessarily in response to something that happens, or you're having them multiple times a month or something.
- [27:15]
Noah Michelson
Are there some people who are just more prone to nightmares just because, you
- [27:21]
Karen Conkolly
know, people obviously who have experienced trauma are more likely to have nightmares, but also, like, people who are just more sensitive in general, people who are, like, maybe more sensitive to, like, you know, perceptual stimuli or their emotions or just, like, life in general, like, sometimes they'll have more nightmares. And like, a scary nightmare can kind of, like, set you down a negative spiral if you keep having them. But also, there's some suggestion that those sensitive people are also more likely to have positive emotions and really big, beautiful dreams. And so it's kind of like, it's not necessarily a bad thing if you have nightmares. Like, it might also be like the flip side of a coin where you have this gift to have these really strong positive emotions in your life.
- [28:04]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I have a technique.
- [28:05]
If I have a nightmare and it wakes me up, I don't go back to sleep right away. I go and read something or whatever. Because I found when I go right back to sleep and I continue the same dream, is that real?
- [28:16]
Am I crazy?
- [28:17]
Like, if I go to sleep 30 seconds later, I'll sometimes continue the nightmare. Psycho. I totally wake up, and then if I wait an hour and go back to sleep, I don't have the dream. Yeah, I don't remember it.
- [28:26]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, that's a really smart idea. Some people do reenter the same dream. And. Yeah, it's also a good idea just in general for insomnia. Like, if you're in bed at night and you, you know, can't fall asleep or you don't want to. Taking a break and getting out of bed and reading and then going back is a smart, smart sleep idea.
- [28:42]
Noah Michelson
I'm gonna admit something now that I don't think I've told a lot of people. One of my favorite movies is A Nightmare on Elm street with Freddy Krueger. And one of my first crushes was Freddy Krueger. Even though he's so, like, demented and disgusting. I know, but I found him, like, really kind of hot in a way. Anyway, we can deal with that on another episode.
- [29:02]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's gonna be another episode. Yeah.
- [29:03]
Noah Michelson
But one of the things about that movie is this idea that if you die in your sleep or die in a dream, you die in real life. Tell us about that, Karen. And also, if that's not true, which I feel like that's not true, can dreams or nightmares physically be harmful for us if they don't kill us?
- [29:23]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah. So I personally can attest that I have died in several dreams and am still here. So that is not always true. Yes. Also, we'd have to have dead people tell us the answer to that question, but get the Ouija board out. Yeah. So if you have one nightmare, like, you don't need to worry. But if you have, like, repetitive nightmares a lot, it can cause health problems. So they're. They're actually linked with, like, all cause mortality and like, you know, even, like, Parkinson's cognitive decline. It's like. And it's a little unclear, like, are you degenerating or. And the nightmare is a side effect of it, or like, probably part of it is that the nightmare is very stressful and it's just a stressor that's an additional stressor. And like a big one. If it's waking you up, you're running from a bear. Like, if you're doing that three days a week, that's a lot of stress in your life that you wouldn't have if you weren't having those nightmares. So it's definitely something to talk to a doctor about. And I think a lot of clinicians aren't totally prepared to take that seriously. But we're trying to initiate a movement that is really important, and there are therapies and there are ways to help that could really, like, benefit people and make them healthier. My friend also just wrote a book about this. It's called Nightmare Obscura with all the, all the tips and tricks for.
- [30:43]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Great title. I'm gonna try to lighten it a little bit right now because. So sad. Lucid dreaming. A lot of people say that they. Lucid dream. Can you tell us what that is and if that's real?
- [30:55]
Karen Conkolly
Yes. Lucid dreaming is when you're aware that you're dreaming while you're still inside the dream. And usually you can control it to a greater or lesser degree. And it is totally real.
- [31:07]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Yeah. I've woken myself up in a dream. Yeah.
- [31:11]
Noah Michelson
Is this something that, like, science in general, scientists, like, you all agree is real now?
- [31:16]
Karen Conkolly
Yes. So originally, people were skeptical. Lucid dreaming's not that it's not real, but that it's happening basically as you're waking up, and that's why you think that it's happening. But in the 80s, two scientists independently realized that you could objectively verify that lucid dreams are real. And the way to do it is to monitor somebody with sleep monitoring equipment and then tell them when you're aware in your dream tonight, you're going to give us a signal so that we know that you're really there. So a classic signal is to look left, right, left, right with your eyes. And this is like a really dramatic eye movement sequence that doesn't happen naturally. And so if you, you can tell from their brain waves and their muscles that somebody's paralyzed and they're completely asle and in REM sleep, and yet there they are giving that signal from the dream world. And so it proves that lucid dreaming is real.
- [32:04]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
So freaking cool.
- [32:05]
Noah Michelson
That is so cool.
- [32:06]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
So freaking cool.
- [32:08]
Noah Michelson
So how do we learn to do it? I mean, if we want to be lucid dreaming, what, what are the first steps or what should we be doing?
- [32:16]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, there's a lot of different techniques to help people have lucid dreams. My favorite one is to do this kind of meditation as you're falling asleep, where you focus on your sense of vision behind your closed eyes, focus on your hearing, and then focus on your body sensations and alternate kind of meditating on these different sensations as you fall asleep. And so for me, if I, if I feel like I have insomnia or something like that, I'll do this. And then I'll realize like oh my God, I, I just saw something or oh my God, I just heard someone talking. And so it like is an ability to practice becoming lucid in the little dreams that start to crop up as you fall asleep. And this technique also increases lucidity and full blown dreams. It's called senses initiated lucid dreaming. But there's tons of different techniques and actually all of them pretty much work the best if you do them in the middle of the night. So at the beginning of the night you kind of have your most deepest sleep and you're not in REM sleep. And so at the end of the night you have a lot more REM sleep and that's when lucid dreams happen the most. And so if you wake up at like 4am and stay awake for like 20 minutes and do a lucid dreaming meditation, then when you fall back asleep, you're a lot more likely to have one.
- [33:29]
Noah Michelson
Ah, interesting.
- [33:30]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
It's really cool.
- [33:31]
Noah Michelson
Uh huh. Are there benefits to lucid dreaming besides just being like, that was really super cool?
- [33:38]
Karen Conkolly
I think so for sure. I mean for one, it's just a really interesting way to interact with your own mind. Like if you want to learn about yourself from introspection, it's kind of all feels like thoughts, like you're thinking. But in a lucid dream, like you look around and everything around you is a part of yourself, even though it feels separate. And so you can like open a door and be like, what's behind that? Like where did that come from? Or you can ask your deepest existential questions like what's the meaning of life? Or what should I do in the future? Or what does my subconscious look like? Or can I meet my higher self? And so it's like for me, I think it's a really interesting way to learn about yourself, but you can also use it for practicing skills or overcoming fears or conquering nightmares.
- [34:20]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
It sounds like a drug free ayahuasca trip.
- [34:22]
Noah Michelson
Yeah.
- [34:23]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Do you notice it sounds like some of these hallucinogen drugs without the drugs which is like that sounds awesome.
- [34:28]
Noah Michelson
Yeah, it's really cool.
- [34:29]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I have an adorable question from Noah's husband Benji that I'm also wondering, do animals dream? Because my kitten, sometimes I know he's like dreaming of running in a field or like tuna and like Jumi.
- [34:42]
Noah Michelson
I'm sure we see his little feet moving in his. Exactly.
- [34:46]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Is that the cutest freaking thing?
- [34:48]
Noah Michelson
But also we just assume he's dreaming. So I don't know if that's real.
- [34:51]
Karen Conkolly
Do you think that's real. I totally think it's real. I think if you look at, like, a puppy twitching, especially when you can totally tell what it's doing, it's a little inevitable. But there was a recent study that provided even more evidence for that, which is that it. It looked at mice, and when you're in rapid eye movement, sleep, your eyes move around your head, but mice move their eyes without also moving their head. So when a mouse moves its eyes, it moves its head. And so the study found that when mice have rapid eye movements, the cells that indicate which direction their head is looking in their brain also move correspondingly. So it kind of showed that probably the mice are dreaming.
- [35:29]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's so adorable and smart and fun. Do you ever wake Jumi up if you think he's having a nightmare?
- [35:36]
Noah Michelson
No.
- [35:36]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Oh, I wake up. I wake the baby. I wake Grizz up if it looks like he's struggling. And I'm like, baby, are you having a bad dream?
- [35:42]
And he's like.
- [35:43]
Like, leave me alone.
- [35:44]
Noah Michelson
Right?
- [35:45]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Yeah.
- [35:45]
Noah Michelson
Do you think, Karen, that there's any benefit to us writing down our dreams, having dream journals, that kind of thing? I know a lot of people do it, but why would someone want to do that?
- [35:56]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah. So I. I'm way into that. First of all, if you want to have lucid dreams, then remembering your dreams is a really big part of that. To just get to know what your dreams are actually like so that you can kind of be more aware of them and help you become lucid. It's also interesting in general just to, like. It's another way of getting to know your mind and what's going on in there. And I think that, like, you know, mindfulness was kind of like a revolution. And I think that becoming aware of your dreams and kind of learning the ways in which you can and are engaging with them consciously or unconsciously is like a next step in that revolution. So, yeah, I think dream journaling is great.
- [36:35]
Noah Michelson
I'm really bad at remembering my dreams, and I want to get better at it. And so the idea is, like, you just keep a notebook by your bed. Yeah. And, like, literally write them down immediately.
- [36:43]
Karen Conkolly
I actually write them on the notes app in my phone, so they're kind of mixed in with all my regular. But then you can just. You can Google, you know, you can search a word, and then you can see all the dreams that you've ever had containing that word. So I think it's really smart.
- [36:56]
Noah Michelson
Yeah.
- [36:56]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I only remember for the first ten minutes I'm awake. So, like, a Dream journal would benefit. And I think it's cool to maybe find out what your. Some of your underlying concerns are to take to therapy. Like, I think there's a lot hidden in there totally. That maybe we don't. We're kind of repressed, which, like, kind of cool if we could be like, hey, it appears that I'm worried about this thing.
- [37:16]
Noah Michelson
Yeah.
- [37:16]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
You know.
- [37:17]
Noah Michelson
You know what dreams I really hate? I hate the dreams when you're driving and you have no control and, like, you launch off a bridge or something.
- [37:25]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
I've had so many launch off a bridge dreams.
- [37:28]
Noah Michelson
And that really feels to me like that just is about a lack of control over something.
- [37:33]
Karen Conkolly
But, yeah, it's a common dream theme. Losing control of a car. A lot of people have that. Yeah.
- [37:38]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Or like, running, and you're not running fast enough.
- [37:40]
Karen Conkolly
True.
- [37:41]
Noah Michelson
Absolutely. Or being in front of class naked, or you didn't study for a test. I mean, there's so many tropes. Right. It's almost cliche. And it does feel like very human condition of, like, these are just things that we are trying to work through.
- [37:54]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
It's kind of comforting that we're all just stressed about the same thing.
- [37:56]
Noah Michelson
Exactly. Karen. This was so fun. I mean, I guess the last thing I'll say is, like, this show is called Am I Doing It Wrong? And Raj and I are always like, how do we do it better? Do you have an idea? Like, can we do dreaming better? Is there something we should be thinking about when we're dreaming?
- [38:14]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Or some way we can use dreams to enhance our lives?
- [38:17]
Noah Michelson
Yeah, Yeah.
- [38:18]
Karen Conkolly
I think there's totally an opportunity to do dreaming better. I think caring about what you're consuming and focusing on as you're falling asleep is the easiest entry point. I think there's guidelines for sleep hygiene in general, like. Like having consistent bedtimes and, you know, not doing other stuff in your bed besides sleeping. And, you know, you can look up all those. But I think that all of those, like, healthy sleep activities are helpful for dreaming. And then, of course, like, engaging with dreams intentionally, like lucid dreaming or incubating dreams consciously, I think, are all opportunities to do dreaming better and healthier.
- [38:58]
Noah Michelson
I love that.
- [38:58]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
That's so freaking cool.
- [38:59]
Noah Michelson
Yeah. My mom always said. Did my mom say this? It seems weird that my mom would tell me this, but in my head, I think it's my mom that beds are for sleep and sex.
- [39:08]
Karen Conkolly
Right.
- [39:08]
Noah Michelson
And that's it.
- [39:09]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Yeah.
- [39:09]
Noah Michelson
Yeah, Maybe mom said that. I don't know.
- [39:11]
Karen Conkolly
Also, sleep hygiene guidelines said that it's A real thing.
- [39:15]
Noah Michelson
Okay.
- [39:15]
Karen Conkolly
Yes.
- [39:16]
Noah Michelson
Yeah. We never had TVs in our bedrooms growing up. I don't have one now.
- [39:20]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Oh, I don't have one now. We don't have one.
- [39:21]
Noah Michelson
We never ate in bed. Yeah, just sleeping sex. Well, not when I was growing up. Just sleep. You know, I'm gonna stop talking. Karen, thank you so much, the support.
- [39:31]
Karen Conkolly
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [39:36]
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- [40:01]
Noah Michelson
AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
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- [40:36]
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- [41:15]
Noah Michelson
Okay, it's time for better in five. These are the top five takeaways from this episode.
- [41:19]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Number one. Dreaming can be beneficial for us. It lets us process emotions and even
- [41:24]
rehearse stressful situations without having to actually live through them.
- [41:27]
Noah Michelson
Amen. Number two. Your dreams are definitely affected by what you're doing or watching before you go to bed, and also the conditions around your bed.
- [41:36]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Number three. According to science, there probably aren't universal meanings for dreams, but it can be useful to pay attention to what you're dreaming about and what it could mean
- [41:46]
Noah Michelson
Number four, nightmares can be traumatic even physically, but there are ways to short circuit them, including not going back to sleep directly after you have one.
- [41:55]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Watch an episode of the Office instead.
- [41:57]
And number five, lucid dreaming really is possible and it could be a cool way to explore your subconscious. Drug free.
- [42:05]
Noah Michelson
Okay, Raj, so have you been dreaming wrong?
- [42:08]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
You know, a little. I'm okay with that. I feel like I've been fixing, fixated on avoiding nightmares, which is important. But I kind of love the idea of being more intentional about paying attention to dreams and maybe having really nice ones. I can experience other things than my reality.
- [42:24]
Noah Michelson
Yeah.
- [42:25]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Which is. Can be stressful at times.
- [42:27]
Noah Michelson
For sure.
- [42:27]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Yeah. What about you?
- [42:28]
Noah Michelson
Especially right now. I was so interested in what Karen said about how everything we do before we go to bed affects our dreams. Like from the temperature of our room to like doom scrolling. So I think that I don't know if I've been doing dreaming wrong per se, but I liked at the end where she was like, you can do it better. Here are some ways to do it. Yeah, I would love to try lucid dreaming. Like that seems really cool.
- [42:50]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Yeah, it does.
- [42:51]
Noah Michelson
Like maybe I could finally hook up with Freddy Krueger and he wouldn't kill me.
- [42:55]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
You know, I want that for you in your dreams.
- [42:59]
Noah Michelson
And I think that Benji would be okay with it because it's just a dream.
- [43:02]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
It's just a dream. He would.
- [43:03]
Noah Michelson
But no. I thought this was such a fun episode and I think it's something that most people deal with every day. So if we can do it a little better or find some meaning like you said in some of it, make
- [43:14]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
our awake life better potentially, why not do it? Yeah.
- [43:17]
Noah Michelson
Yeah. Okay. Anyway, until next time, as long as there are things to get wrong, we're gonna be right here to help you do them better.
- [43:24]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Sweet dreams.
- [43:28]
Am I Doing it Wrong? Is a co production between HuffPost and Acast.
- [43:31]
Noah Michelson
Our producers are Eve Bishop, Carmen Borka Kari and Malia Agudelo.
- [43:36]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rutter.
- [43:39]
Noah Michelson
Special thanks to HuffPost's head of audience, Abby Williams.
- [43:42]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
Head of Video Will Took as well
- [43:44]
Noah Michelson
as Kate Palmer, Marta Rodriguez and Terry d'. Angelo.
- [43:47]
Raj Panjabi Johnson
And we're your hosts, Raj Panjabi Johnson and Noah Michelson.
- [43:59]
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Noah Michelson
I'll send you text America's Best network
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Karen Conkolly
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Noah Michelson
See verizon.com for details.
- [44:58]
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