Q: I have been having more unpleasant dreams lately. Do my dreams reflect my current reality?
A: Dreams often do reflect on your current reality and especially in these times with heightened anxiety and uncertainty. My guess is that you are experiencing additional stress and challenges in your normal waking day understandably, therefore, you are noticing more unpleasant dreams that could also be affecting your sleep quality at night.
What you can do to help turn those unpleasant dreams into more pleasant ones is work on improving your positivity and optimism even though that could be challenging during these uncertain times. While you cannot directly control your dreams, when you have a relatively low stress and productive day, you are going to be indirectly controlling your dreams to be more reflective of your day. In addition, you don’t want your sleep to be compromised especially with insomnia.
You can always remind yourself to have pleasant dreams when you lie down to go to sleep for the night. Sweet dreams.