Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Stress and its effects on the mind and body

Stress affects people in different ways. There are some standard symptoms, but there are a few things which are a bit more specific to certain people. For instance, stress can affect sleep. It can result in insomnia and general tiredness. For me, it affects my dreams.

I first noticed a link between the two when I repeated first year engineering. I was very stressed about the situation and started having nightmares a few times per week. This stopped almost miraculously when I received my offer for the teaching degree that I had applied for transfer to.

But it's not just nightmares which happen when I'm under stress: I also act out dreams. To date, I have:


  • Texted in my sleep
  • Used tissues when dreaming about crying
  • Performed martial arts moves on my furniture
  • Jumped out of bed
  • Removed my clothes 


The most interesting one was the last on that list, but specifically an incident where I went to bed wearing two layers and woke up wearing only the outer layer.


My brain is a strange and fascinating thing.

2 comments:

  1. (Spelling pedant to the rescue:

    In the title? It's effects. EFFECTS. With an E.)

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  2. My boyfriend does the same when he's stressed or if he's too hot in bed. It generally leads me to wake up abruptly and chase him back into bed or get him to stop climbing the wall. It makes life interesting that's for sure :) he also talks computer code and does programming in his sleep, typing in the air though not on a computer...

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