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While you were sleeping
Dreams may
cause terror in
people’s lives
Creating a peaceful mood is one way of avoiding nightmares, according to Dr. Wing Yun Kwok of Shatin Hospital.
By Cissy Ren
In the Han Dynasty in Chinese history, there were officials whose job was to monitor sleepers when they were having dreams, according to Dr. Wing Yun Kwok, director of the Sleep Assessment Unit in the Shatin Hospital.
Research on people’s sleep and dreams is now being carried out in local hospitals.
Said Dr. Wing: “People spend one-third of their time sleeping, and disorders may arise at the same time.
“Hence, the Sleep Assessment Unit was established in 1989 in order to do research and provide therapies for sleep disorders.
“Among more than 10 similar units in Hong Kong, ours is the first one to study and treat peoples’ sleep and dream problems professionally.”
He said that it is specially necessary to study people’s sleep and dreams, because disorders that happen during the night-time are not as obvious as the ones that happen during daytime.
There are different types of sleep disorders, ranging from insomnia to sleeping too much.
Sleep and dream problems can cause terrified situations in people’s lives.
Dr. Wing said, “There was a female patient who liked playing mahjong. One night, she dreamed about winning lots of money, but others refused to pay her.
“So she grabbed the neck of one of the players so as to get the money back.
“But when she suddenly woke up, she found that she was grabbing her granddaughter.
“Fortunately, she realized she was dreaming and woke up. Otherwise, we could not imagine what would have happened.”
People may be aware that they are dreaming while they are dreaming, and this is called “lucid dreaming”.
The phenomenon of lucid dreaming can be explained by the sleeping process.
Cheung Him, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the sleeping process comprises four stages.
Stage 1 is called “drowsiness”, which refers to the period when people feel sleepy before they fall asleep.
Stage 2 is “light sleep” while Stage 3 is called “deep sleep”.
Stage 4, in which periodic dreams take place, is called “Rapid-Eye-Movement sleep”. Terminologically, this stage is called “REM sleep”.
Other scholars divide Stage 3 into two parts, namely, “deep sleep” and “very deep sleep”. In this classification system, there are five stages of the sleeping process.
Said Prof. Cheung: “If people wake up during the REM period, they will be able to remember their dreams.
“People have dreams because of the activation patterns, which correspond to reality in their brains.”
Different kinds of patterns appear when a person is sleeping.
Some of these may have similar structures to things that the person has seen or experienced in his or her real life.
Therefore, he or she will easily recognize the content of the dream and be able to remember it.
Said Prof. Cheung: “Although activation patterns run so randomly that it is hard to control dreams, things people have seen, thought, and experienced during daytime will affect their dreams.”
There may be related things in dreams, but not always in the expected ways. Sometimes they even relate in opposite ways.
Prof. Cheung said, “For instance, I keep thinking that I will have lots of money during the daytime.
“When I’m sleeping, the possibility for me to have dreams about money will increase because activation patterns related to money appear from time to time in my brain.
“But in my dream, I may be robbed and lose all my money instead.”
Since the content of dreams runs out of control sometimes, nightmares may arise as a result.
Said Prof. Cheung: “The characteristics of dreams, regardless if they are considered as ‘sweet dreams’ or ‘nightmares’, are somehow interpreted subjectively.
“For example, a woman dreams about a man running after her. This can be interpreted in different ways.
“If the man wants to kill her, obviously it’s a nightmare. But if he is chasing her and going to propose, it turns to be a nice dream.
“However, if the man is not the one she loves, it’s not a sweet dream after all.”
Nonetheless, there are ways of overcoming nightmares.
He said, “Since the danger in nightmares is not real, fears can be defused by coming back to reality.
“People can deal with it in different ways. They can eat something, talk with a friend, or read a few pages of a book.
“The worst action one can take is sitting still and facing a dark room, which reminds them of the fear and danger in the dream.
“So it’s better to do some other things that help overcome the physical reactions of nightmares — heart beating faster or hands perspiring.”
It has been widely argued whether lucid dreaming is the most effective way of overcoming nightmares or not.
However, Dr. Wing disagreed.
Said he: “It’s better for those who have nightmares to control their moods, trying not to feel nervous.
“A peaceful mood is the best way of avoiding nightmares.”
He added that the most attractive thing of lucid dreams is that people can see clear and realistic scenes in their dreams, as they know they are dreaming.
Furthermore, people can elaborate their creative works while dreaming, some of which could help improve their real lives.
For instance, the structure of benzene came in the format of a chemical diagram in a dream.
Said Dr. Wing: “But I don’t think it’s necessary to learn lucid dreaming as a skill or remember every dream.
“It’s more important for researchers and doctors to help people who have sleep disorders.”
The Sleep Assessment Unit provides therapy for four kinds of sleeping and dreaming disorders.
The first kind of disorder is “insomnia”, which refers to people’s inability to sleep.
The second one is having too much sleep, so-called “hypersomnia”.
The third kind is “pacosomnia”, which means people may engage in actions and movements while they are dreaming.
The last one is a kind of disorder caused by changing time zones, which is called “sleep wake schedule disorder”.
“We are happy to help those people, no matter if it is to help them fall asleep or overcome their nightmares.
“The only problem is that we have to stay awake while watching other people sleeping and dreaming,” said Dr. Wing with a smile on his face.