There’s nothing quite like waking up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, convinced for a split second that whatever nightmare you just escaped was actually real. I’ve been there. Most people have. And while the number of hours we sleep gets plenty of attention, the quality of those hours is where things get really interesting.
The thing is, our bodies don’t know nightmares aren’t real. When you’re being chased by something terrifying in your dream, your nervous system fires off stress responses as if the threat is actually outside your bedroom window. That’s not nothing. Over time, this can mess with your sleep quality in ways that ripple into your waking life, affecting everything from your cardiovascular health to your ability to function like a decent human being.
A neuroscientist and dream researcher named Karen Konkoly recently sat down with the HuffPost podcast “Am I Doing It Wrong?” to talk about exactly this. And what she had to say about the minutes before sleep is genuinely worth paying attention to.
The Problem Starts Before You Close Your Eyes
Here’s the thing that caught my attention: Konkoly argues that what you do in the hours leading up to sleep might be the single biggest factor in what kind of dreams you have. Not genetics. Not your mattress. Your bedtime routine.
“What you’re doing before sleep is, I think, the biggest point of intervention in terms of what you’re going to dream about because your dreams spring from those thoughts that you’re having as you fall asleep,” she explained.
Think about that for a second. Your brain is essentially rehearsing whatever mental footage you feed it right before you drift off. And if you’re like most people, that probably means you’re lying in bed scrolling through your phone, absorbing a steady diet of bad news, heated arguments, and anxiety-inducing content. The term for this is “doomscrolling,” and it’s become basically universal. We’re all doing it, myself included, and it’s not doing us any favors.
A Simple Fix Worth Trying
Konkoly suggests something she calls a “palate cleanser” for your brain. Instead of finishing your day with stressful headlines or doom-laden social media feeds, consume something neutral or calming. A rewatch of a show you already love, something light and familiar like “The Office,” works perfectly. The goal is to give your brain something low-stress to work with as it winds down.
You could also try calming music, a podcast that doesn’t make you think too hard, or anything else that signals to your nervous system that it’s safe to relax. The idea is simple: you’re not trying to banish bad dreams entirely, because that’s probably not realistic. You’re trying to stack the deck in your favor by giving your brain better raw material to work with.
And if you’ve ever seen “Inception” and thought the idea of dream incubation sounded wild, you’re not alone. But Konkoly believes we can at least influence the general direction of our dreams by being intentional about what we consume mentally before sleep. It’s not about controlling your subconscious like some movie plot. It’s about setting yourself up for the best possible chance at rest.
Your Sleep, Your Experiment
The connection between what we consume mentally and what we dream about makes intuitive sense once you think about it. Our brains process and file away the day’s inputs while we sleep. If those inputs are anxious, stressful, or frightening, it’s not surprising that our dreams might follow suit.
What I find most useful about this perspective is that it puts some agency back in our hands. You can’t control every variable in your life, but you can control what you watch, read, or scroll through in the hour before bed. Small changes, consistently applied, might just mean the difference between waking up refreshed and waking up exhausted from a night of mental chaos.
That’s worth experimenting with, I think.
