People living with certain mental health conditions may be prone to nightmares, a study suggests.
Researchers in Texas surveyed 116 college students about their tendency to suffer from nightmares.
The team then examined the links between nightmare frequency and four personality dispositions: neuroticism, nightmare proneness, thin psychological boundaries, and sensory processing sensitivity.
The study found people prone to nightmares were more likely to be emotionally unstable and sensitive to stress, as well as struggle to regulate their moods.
These traits could make sufferers more likely to internalize stress and have their experiences manifest as vivid and distressing imagery in nightmares.
Additionally, people with thin psychological boundaries – those who have trouble separating emotions from reality – may not be able to filter out distressing imagery and emotions while they sleep.
These traits have been linked to mental health disorders like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which could explain why people with these conditions report frequent nightmares.
However, neurotic participants – people with a greater tendency to feel anxiety and guilt – were no more likely to have nightmares than non-neurotic people.
People prone to nightmares were more likely to be emotionally unstable and sensitive to stress, a recent study suggests (stock image)
William Kelly, study author and associate professor at the University of the Incarnate Word in Texas, told PsyPost: ‘It is not “abnormal” to have nightmares. There do seem to be dispositions that influence them.
‘In our study, individuals who had nightmares more often also seemed more likely to have thinner divides between various mental experiences, on top of a tendency to more easily have negative emotions and experience them in various forms.
‘It’s as if there is a tendency for an unpleasant mental event to spread across the mind in certain people, like a storm stirring disturbing imagery and emotions in dreams.’
The researchers said people prone to nightmares might experience a process called ‘concretization.’ This is when abstract mental experiences take on more tangible forms, such as distressing imagery in dreams.
These individuals may then be more likely to internalize stress and transform it into disturbing dreams.
People with thin psychological barriers, meanwhile, may be more likely to see disturbing imagery in their dreams and have trouble filtering it out, leading to nightmares.
Additionally, the team found people with sensory processing sensitivity – heightened responsiveness to internal and external stimuli – did not have an increased likelihood of nightmares.
Kelly said: ‘We were surprised that sensory processing sensitivity did not relate to nightmares as it did in previous studies, and it would seem to fit well with thin mental boundaries.
‘We don’t understand this finding as yet.’
There were several limitations to the study, with the main one being using a sample size of mostly college students. This means the findings don’t account for older people or those without school-related stressors.
The team said they hope to expand on the research by studying the impact of nightmares on different populations.
Kelly said: ‘Nightmares are experienced, at least occasionally, by a relatively large number of individuals with and without mental health concerns. Yet, their causes remain mysterious.
‘We have been attempting to understand what the key psychological dispositions are that seem to influence having nightmares.’