How to Stop Stress Dreams

Waking up from a stress dream is unpleasant. 

On top of interrupting our sleep, these dreams also affect our mental health, leaving us feeling anxious and overwhelmed. 

Many people experience stress or anxiety dreams but don’t know what they mean or their significance. This article will explain everything you need to know about these dreams, including what causes them and how to prevent and recover from stress dreams.

Key takeaways

• Stress dreams are intense dreams that arise due to anxiety or stress.
• These dreams usually occur during the REM sleep cycle and are triggered by various factors, including stressful events, sleep reactivity, and cognitive preparation.
• Stress dreams usually have varied meanings. For instance, dreaming that someone is chasing you is thought to mean you’re trying to escape a given situation in life.
• People suffering from anxiety feel like they have more stress dreams because they can recollect details of a dream more vividly.
• Some effective ways to stop stress dreams include image rehearsal therapy, training yourself not to wake up during these dreams, psychotherapy, and good sleep hygiene. 

Register for Insight Timer Courses and Talks to learn how to cope with or prevent stress dreams. Sleep better with Insight Timer’s meditation app and our free sleep meditations.

What are stress dreams?

Stress or anxiety dreams are intense, vivid dreams caused by anxiety or stress from things like:

• relationship problems

• work pressures

• significant life changes

• financial struggles

They generally occur during the rapid eye movement (REM) cycle. 

Unlike nightmares that wake you with a jolt of fear, stress dreams wake you after progressively heightening your stress levels. They’re linked to increases in cortisol and often have a feeling of impending or heightened doom.

Is it anxiety or stress? Internationally known mindfulness expert Judson Brewer, MD Ph.D., explains how to tell the difference between stress and anxiety.

How to shake off a bad dream

Stress dreams feel like real life. And, if you’ve ever had one, you know: Getting back to sleep after having these dreams can be difficult, especially since they can linger in our minds. Thankfully, there are ways to relax our bodies and minds and fall asleep easily. Some effective ways of shaking off stress dreams include: 

• Focus on breathing. Deep breathing after having a bad dream helps regulate our nervous systems.  
• Channel your attention away from the stressful thoughts you experienced in the dream. For instance, you could think of the positive things that happened during the dream or something you look forward to the next day. 
• Use a mantra to calm down. There are many types of mantras to try, including the vishnu mantra, krishna maha mantra, and rudra mantra. Check out Insight Timer’s mantra meditations to get started.
• Meditate. Meditation helps us relax, consequently, ensuring we sleep well. If you need help meditating, we have a growing library of guided meditations.

Need to get back to sleep now? Our free sleep meditations can help. 

How to stop stress dreams

Learning how to relax after stress dreams is important, but we can’t fix poor sleep if we don’t stop these dreams altogether. Here are some practices to prevent stress dreams and have a good night’s sleep to improve your well-being:

Journal stress dreams out with image rehearsal therapy

Researchers have found that our daily lives affect our dreams and vice-versa. By journaling our dreams, we can ensure this effect is a positive one.

For image rehearsal therapy, we recall our stress dreams, journal them, alter the content to something positive, and then rehearse these new positive dream scripts daily to reduce the intensity and frequency of bad dreams.   

Image rehearsal therapy is arguably the best-supported psychological treatment for bad dreams. 

Try not to wake yourself up when having stress dreams

According to Isabelle Arnulf, a neurologist and president of the French Society for Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine, the meaning of our dreams is irrelevant. The key is getting to the end of the dream. If we get to the end and don’t wake up, we’re less likely to remember it.

Having this level of control while you’re in a dream state, however, is not usually something that people can do without practice. Lucid dreaming is a kind of dream state where we are actively dreaming but still retain a sense of conscious control. Start exploring lucid dreaming with our expert teacher content.

Embrace relaxation techniques

There are many methods to relax our mind and body and de-stress throughout the day and thus manage our stress dreams: exercise, meditation, deep breathing, and limiting caffeine intake. It’s especially important to wind down before bed and help our brain relax so our sleep system can take over.  

Take a look at our growing selection of meditations specifically for relaxing.

Psychotherapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy applied to stress dreams involves learning to recognize:

• anxious triggers
• negative mental biases
• pessimistic thoughts 

All of these things can lead to recurring stress dreams and we should work on replacing them with effective coping strategies. 

A Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine study found that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques can effectively decrease the frequency of distressing dreams. 

Alternatively, you could go for mindfulness-based stress reduction strategies such as yoga and meditation.

Practice good sleep hygiene

Creating and sticking to good sleep hygiene is an excellent pathway to quality sleep. This entails setting a strict sleep schedule, forming healthy sleep habits, following a bedtime routine, and optimizing your bedroom so it’s comfortable to sleep in. Harnessing positive sleep behaviors will help you sleep soundly and wake up well-rested. 

Discover more than 1,000 free sleep meditation practices that help calm the mind and relax the body in preparation for sleep.

Why am I having stress dreams and what do they mean? 

Stress dreams are a normal response to stress in our day-to-day lives. Knowing what is causing our anxious dreams and the meaning behind them can help us stop them.

Stress dream causes

The common stress dream triggers include:

• Stressors or stressful situations: These may be academic pressure, health conditions, relationship issues, financial problems, the death of a family member, or work problems.
• Sleep reactivity: Sleep reactivity is a condition characterized by someone getting disrupted from their sleep easily by stress. It may be caused by genetics, environmental factors, mental health conditions, and neurological factors.

• Cognitive preparation: Stress dreams aren’t always bad. These dreams may enhance your psychological adaptation by helping regulate your mood.
• Trauma: A traumatic event is where someone experiences a threat, terror, or horror and they are helpless, fearful, or horrified. It’s well-documented in studies that people who have endured a traumatic experience go on to have sleep problems such as stress dreams. 

Common types of stress dreams and their meanings

While some experts think the meanings of dreams are irrelevant, other systems and practices acknowledge the power of dreams to provide insight into our hearts and minds.

Here’s a look at some common stress dreams and what they are believed to mean:

• Someone is chasing you: Dreaming that someone or thing is chasing you comes from running away from a situation in your waking life.
• Imminent death: Feeling like death is imminent in your dream signifies a symbolic ending for something in your life — not your death.
• Drowning: Drowning in your dream means you’re feeling completely overwhelmed by something in your life.
• Running late: Dreaming you’re late for an event symbolizes struggling with the pressure of dealing with a life-changing event or moment.
• Teeth falling out: Losing teeth in your dream comes from a big change in your life, recent loss, or grief. According to Frontiers in Psychology, it indicates physiological issues with the teeth such as nocturnal dental stimulation (teeth grinding) or irritation.

Does anxiety cause bad dreams?

People suffering from anxiety are more likely to wake up during or just after having a stressful dream, and they tend to remember the details of the dream more vividly, according to this study. This ability to recollect the details of a dream makes it feel like they have more upsetting dreams — but there’s no scientific evidence that it does.

However, it does affect how we experience stress dreams. Clinical psychologist Dr. Michael Nadorff says that anxiety doesn’t directly affect the rate at which one experiences distressing dreams, but it heightens the severity of these dreams.

Work anxiety affecting your sleep? Learn how to combat this anxiety by de-stressing at work with this Insight Timer article. 

You don’t need to feel stressed during the night

Stress or anxiety dreams are common, yet many people feel stifled by them. We don’t have to let them ruin our sleep quality. Use relaxation techniques to get back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night, and get better sleep overall by stopping stress dreams altogether with methods like mindfulness meditation. 

Set the foundations for restorative sleep with our growing library of sleep meditations representing traditions from all over the world and the latest in sleep research. 

FAQs about stress dreams

How can you differentiate between a stress dream and a nightmare?

Stress dreams wake you up after progressively heightening your stress levels. On the other hand, nightmares are disturbing dreams that awaken sleepers with a jolt of terror. 

What’s the most common stress dream?

Some of the most common anxiety dreams are scenarios involving being late for an important event, being chased, finding oneself in an embarrassing situation, or losing a tooth. These dreams may vary depending on your circumstances and personal experience. 

Can stress dreams wake you up? 

Yes. Most people wake up from stress dreams feeling anxious or worried, given how intense and real these dreams feel. 

Can anxiety trigger stress dreams? 

Anxiety hasn’t been proven to cause more stress in dreams. But people with generalized anxiety disorder experience more stressful dreams, and they tend to remember the details of these dreams more vividly. 

How can you prevent stress dreams? 

If you have stress dreams frequently, the chances are that you don’t look forward to sleep time. Fortunately, there are effective ways of preventing these dreams. These include embracing relaxation techniques and mastering good sleep hygiene.

Disclaimer: This article is for information only and should not be considered as medical advice. If you have concerns about anxiety or any other conditions mentioned in this article, please seek a medical or mental health professional for help.

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