Sleeping for Emotions and Creativity

Oh sleep...something I am always so very thankful for and love to learn and share about. Much I have written already, but two especially intriguing things I want to talk about today...how essential our dream sleep is for emotions and creativity.

Emotions...

Sleep is needed for processing our emotional experiences. From day to day, relatively little details of our activities may actually transfer into dreams at night. But, up to 55% of emotional themes were shown to continue into dreams. Our dreams within the rapid eye movement (REM) periods of our sleep cycles are especially important for the processing of emotions. In fact, our emotional centers in the brain can be up to 30% more active during REM sleep than when awake. Described as 'overnight therapy', REM sleep, with its associated drop in stress-related brain chemistry, is necessary for processing emotions in a relatively safe environment. 'Time IN DREAM SLEEP heals wounds.'

And this very same sleep is needed to recalibrate our emotional circuitry for our following awake moments. People have been shown to experience up to a 60% increase in emotional 'reactivity' when sleep deprived. With diminishment in the logical thinking areas of our brain, we become less able to place experiences in a broader context. Not enough time in REM sleep and our ability to correctly interpret facial expressions is diminished. What does this say for all the people with inadequate sleep who are working in roles that require (for the safety of themselves and others) accurate reading of body language in other people?

Creativity...

‘A problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.’ Sleep, particularly that same dream sleep of the REM phases, is most helpful in integrating new information and bringing it together in novel ways with other experiences. How about we put together this week’s guitar lessons with memories of playing on the beach with family as children and see what creative ideas we can come up with? This is what dream sleep offers us.

Creativity thrives when we are given adequate opportunity for REM sleep. In fact, wake people up from REM sleep phases, as apposed to NREM, and they can interestingly solve up to 35% more puzzles. You see, the brain allows for less order and more novel associations during dream sleep. Children even begin learning and using grammar rules about language before they are formally taught because of what they experience while awake and assimilate while dreaming at night.

But, as I have written about before, because dream creating REM sleep is prioritized during the later sleep cycles of a full night of sleep, should we cut short our sleep by an hour or so, we are proportionally letting go of more of this creative opportunity. This all links back to why getting adequate quality and quantity sleep is essential all around.

Much of what I share here comes from the book ‘Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams’ by Matthew Walker. I write this all up as a way to remember for when I talk about this and other experiences of well-being with my students. My hope is that it may be helpful shared here, as well.

Previously, I have shared...'For a Good Night's Sleep' at For a Good Night's Sleep | LinkedIn and 'Sleep is Fascinating: Imagining Eight Hours of Sleep' at Sleep is Fascinating: Imagining Eight Hours of Sleep | LinkedIn

Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. New York. Scribner