The coronavirus pandemic can cause anxiety and anxiety, even influencing our dreams. This is the case of Noémie, who for two weeks has had a lot of nightmares linked to the virus, to the point of physically exhausting her when she wakes up. Sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc explained how dreams work and tried to give her advice to our listener on Thursday in the program Sans rendez-vous on Europe 1.
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Noémie's question
For the past two weeks, I have had a lot of nightmares related to the coronavirus, while during the day I manage stress well. How can I fix it?
Catherine Blanc's response
"This is the whole function of the dream and the nightmare. What we experience on a daily basis automatically generates lots of personal questions, in interaction with others and survival, his abilities and disabilities, his feeling of power and helplessness. All of this creates internal conflicts and anxieties that our subconscious is trying to manage, and the night is the time to manage all of the ambivalence and anxiety that our daily lives produce.
In wartime, there was a time when we tried to make the soldiers not sleep so as not to be surprised. By having a reduced sleep, they did not have the possibility of sleeping and therefore of managing all that generated the war, like the fear of dying or the guilt of killing. Our unconscious needs to do a self-analysis at night, and our dreams and nightmares are there for that. "
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Do our nightmares still revolve around our daily lives, or is it linked to this particular period of generalized stress?
"Our nightmares feed on our daily lives to tell things that go far beyond what is played out in our daily lives. The subject of major concern for Mélanie Gomez (the presenter of Sans rendez-vous) and Doctor Jimmy Mohamed ( our columnist), for example, is the coronavirus, because they have a role to play in feeding information for one and caring for patients for the other, so they are questioned by themselves about their skills , to see how far they can get there. This is their main concern.
But more broadly, one could say that this questions our existential question of competence, which is put to the test in a time of great pressure. It’s for example the fear of playing when you’re an actor, the fear of carrying your character to the end of the play or film. "
Is it normal for our listener's dream to exhaust her enormously?
"Yes, brain activity is an important activity. It is in the time of REM sleep that we dream, so it is a time when we are between sleep and wakefulness. Our whole body suffers from the situation: the heart rate , breathing ... What we are looking for night after night is to solve our equation. The problem is that night after night there is no solution, the next day is always the same with the same difficulty. "appeasement not being found, there is physical and psychological exhaustion."
Can you try to control your nightmares, or try to dream of something else?
"People who have the knowledge of their dream can already interpret them, they tell each time a new episode which leads to an exit. So to be able to decode things allows to calm down. Otherwise we can get into a state of zenitude before to go to bed, to make proposals for pretty thoughts hoping to keep them throughout the night. "