Washington: When COVID-19 hits the world again, there are reports that many people have started seeing unrealistic and vivid dreams which are scaring them even now.
Reports said that many of our brains were overwhelmed, and they transferred the stress to our sleeping state due to COVID threat.
Dr Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School in the US, has collected some 15,000 dreams in an online survey of the public. She noticed a significant uptick in people describing dreams about forgetting to wear a mask or being out in public and seeing others not wearing a mask.
As per the sources, many people have seen dreams about not wearing a mask and suffering from anxiety.
Dr Barrett suggests that initial dreams, which tended to express fear of catching the virus, decreased as dreams about social anxiety rose. "Many dreams became 'I forgot my mask' and a social shame came over the dreamer. They were more concerned about getting out of there before anyone noticed that they had made a mistake," she added.
According to the research, here are some of the dreams people have seen over the year:
• Some see that the pandemic is now the backdrop of most of her dreams and they sometimes include a "casual, matter-of-fact" fear of coughing.
• Some see that they stay at home, and only their parents wear masks, and all members of the family wash hands in the dream.
• Some people see their pet animals wear masks, but they don't.
• Some see that they are in a shopping centre, and all of a sudden they realise they have no mask.
After hearing all the dreams, Dr Barrett said that she haven't come across dreams like this so far. "Often there is a real time delay... we often dream about periods of our past, not always the present," she explains.
She also said that there is a chance that once the pandemic is over, we will have dreams casting back to this time. "I wouldn't be surprised if two to three years from now, we see dreams like someone is out in a restaurant and people are wearing masks and when they wake, the dreamer associates it with the pandemic," she explains.
As per the sources, one of the newest themes in pandemic dreams that Dr Barrett has recorded is vaccines.
She said, "Once the vaccines were approved, we started to see that in dreams but they are overwhelmingly negative. For example, someone goes to get their vaccine and they realise the syringe has a cyanide label on it."
Her research suggests that more than 90% of the pandemic dreams are negative. But in recent months, a small number have reported positive dreams about life after the virus.
"And for some people, throughout the pandemic sleep has remained a place of respite from COVID," she added.
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