做噩夢：大腦的解壓方式

導讀：許多人壓力大的時候晚上往往會做噩夢，雖然半夜被噩夢驚醒的感覺并不好，但這或許是大腦在幫助你釋放壓力……

We all know the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart and sweaty palms. Relax， you say to yourself—it was just a bad dream. Well， it may be that you really should relax， because nightmares might actually be good for you.

According to New York magazine， bad dreams can improve your mental health. A bad dream tends to be based on a real-life concern， for example， an approaching test or a fear of a person. To eliminate these worries the brain turns the dream into a story in the form of a bad dream.

How does this help your mental health？ A bad dream enables you to distance yourself from your anxieties， and turn something youre worried about now into a memory. The result is that when you wake up youre able to move forward and face the future.

A study featured in The Atlantic magazine， showed something similar. In a survey of more than 700 French students taking a medical school entrance exam， over 60 percent had negative dreams about the test the night before. These included not finishing on time， leaving a question blank， or being late. Those who reported dreams about the exam， even bad ones， did better on it than those who didnt， suggesting that nightmares do in fact prepare us for the future.

“We think nightmares are so common that they have some purpose to process stressors，” Anne Germain， director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Center at the University of Pittsburgh， told CNN.

So， the next time you lie awake at night after a bad dream， remember that it may be the brains way of putting your fears behind you and readying you for the future. Although a nightmare may make you afraid in the short term， it might be helping you to move on from the bad stuff you might be facing in the real world. Perhaps we should try to accept our nightmares rather than allow them to keep us awake. After all， lack of sleep causes far more problems than nightmares do.

我們都知道那種半夜驚醒的感覺——心臟怦怦亂跳，手心里全是汗。你會這么對自己說：沒關系，只是一場噩夢罷了。沒錯，或許你的確應該放松下來，因為噩夢事實上可能對你有益。

據(jù)《紐約》雜志報道，噩夢能夠改善你的心理健康。一場噩夢多半來源于現(xiàn)實生活中的憂慮，比如，一場即將來臨的考試，或者害怕一個人。為了排除這些憂慮，大腦會將這些事情以噩夢的形式呈現(xiàn)出來。

這如何幫助你的心理健康呢？一場噩夢能讓你遠離焦慮，將你現(xiàn)在所擔心的事變成回憶。最終當你醒來時，你就能夠繼續(xù)前行，面對未來。

《大西洋月刊》刊登的一項研究表明了相似的結論。在接受調查的700多名即將參加一場醫(yī)學院入學考試的法國學生中，超過60%的人在考試前一晚做了不好的夢，包括時間到了沒有寫完卷子，漏寫了一道題，或遲到了，等等。這些稱自己做了關于考試的夢，甚至是噩夢的學生，比那些沒有做夢的學生在考試中發(fā)揮更出色，這表明噩夢的確幫我們?yōu)槲磥碜龊脺蕚洹?/p>

“我們都覺得噩夢沒什么特別的，但其實它們能夠處理壓力源。”匹茲堡大學睡眠與生物鐘學中心主任安妮·杰曼在接受美國有線電視新聞網(wǎng)采訪時表示。

因此，下次當你半夜從噩夢中驚醒時，記得或許這是大腦在讓你放下恐懼，幫你為未來做好準備。盡管噩夢短時間內會讓你害怕，但它或許能夠幫助你從現(xiàn)實世界中遇到的壞事中走出來。我們或許應當試著接受自己做的噩夢，而不是害怕得睡不著覺。畢竟，睡眠不足引發(fā)的問題要比做噩夢多得多。

Word Study

eliminate /?'l?m?ne?t/ v. 排除;消除

Credit cards eliminate the need to carry a lot of cash.