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According to new psychology findings, the strategies we used to regulate our emotions can influence our dream experiences. The study, published in the journal Dreaming, found that cognitive reappraisal appeared to reduce dream intensity by lowering negative state and trait emotions.

Negative emotions from our waking lives seem to make their way into our dreams. Some researchers have proposed that dreaming might serve to downregulate our negative emotions. More recently, scholars have noted that dreams tend to contain not just negative emotions, but other intense emotions from our waking lives, including positive ones.

Study authors Sam Siu-Sing Wong and Calvin Kai-Ching Yu wondered how our emotion regulation tendencies might influence dreaming. Presumably, if dreaming helps us regulate emotions from our waking lives, there should be some link between our dreaming and our emotion regulation tendencies. There is indeed some evidence that the coping strategies we use can influence our dreams. For example, research suggests that suppressing unwanted thoughts while awake can cause these thoughts to “rebound” during dreaming.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-87423-001

Would love to read the actual study if anyone can bypass the paywall

Omg, since healing a lot of childhood trauma my nightmares have been so tame it's been amusing to wake up and realise they were probably supposed to have been scary. I feel like I'm constantly being a Gary Stu to myself.

"You're overrun by scary unkillable man eating monsters while on The Wrong Train in this huge and disgusting Rotten House, what do you do? Do you cry? Do you panic? Wanna run in slow motion or die?"

"Okay, no, I open the wall next to me and it's stuffed with cake. I eat the cake. All the monsters turn into gold rings that grant magic powers and now the only nightmare is that the delicious cake in my hands is making it hard to pick up all the golden rings"

Dreams reveal our actual reactions [triggered by dream simulations]. No conscious control.

Good litmus test for fixing whatever issues we think we do not have…

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This title, has an awkward comma in it.