Dreaming is vital to our mental health – and it is possible to use them for our own good

Dreams are pure emotional and cognitive gold. Those often surreal, fragmented images and plot lines that can instantly evaporate when we open our eyes, allow us not only to explore the themes and challenges of our day, but to step into the what-ifs of tomorrow.

Whether we remember our dreams or not, our brain and dreams are multi-tasking to the nth degree while we sleep. Together, they are shunting keeper memories into our memory bank, ditching others that don’t make the grade and strengthening positive emotions. They are weakening negative or traumatic ones, bolstering our stress resilience, cognitive function, problem-solving capabilities and our mental health. All of which explains the emotional rollercoaster that can come with sleep deprivation and insomnia (I’ve been there). Because when we’re sleep-deprived, we’re dream-deprived, robbed of those invaluable sleep-dependent perks that give us a depth of insight and emotional processing that’s out of reach to our waking selves.