Matthew Walker (2017, p. 215) picks up an exploration of this interpersonal relationships sub-function where Erich Froom leaves off. Walker complements Fromm’s clinical insights with research evidence and neuroscience findings regarding the partnering of REM with dreams:
. . . we can think of REM sleep -like a master piano tuner, one that readjusts the brain’s emotional instrumentation at night to pitch-perfect precision, so that when you wake up the next morning, you can discern overt and subtly covert micro-expressions with exactitude·. Deprive an individual of their REM-sleep dreaming state, and the emotional tuning curve of the brain loses its razor-sharp precision. Like viewing an image through frosted glass, or looking at an out of-focus picture, a dream-starved brain cannot accurately-decode facial expressions. which become distorted. You begin to mistake friends for foes.
While Fromm traces out the implications of this sub-function for mental health (as evidence both in the therapy office and in daily life), Walker (2017, p. 217) points to the damaging impact of failed interpersonal sensitivity on many important human service functions:
Now think of occupations that require individuals to· be sleep-deprived, such as law enforcement and military personnel doctors, nurses, and those in the emergency services–.not to mention the ultimate caretaking job: new parents. Every one of these roles demands the accurate ability to read the emotions of others in order to make critical even life-dependent, decisions, such as detecting a true threat that requires the use of weapons, assessing emotional discomfort or anguish that can change a diagnosis, the extent of palliative pain medication prescribed, or deciding when to express compassion or dispense an assertive parenting lesson. Without REM sleep and its ability to reset the brain’s emotional compass, these same individuals will be inaccurate in their social and emotional comprehension of the world around them, leading to inappropriate decision and actions that may have grave consequences.
Just to ensure that we don’t regard this threat to interpersonal attunement as just a matter of REM-state, Walter (2017, p. 216) reiterates the importance of high-quality dreams by referencing research findings:
Confirming the importance of the dream state, the better the quality of REM sleep from one individual to the next across that rested night, the more precise the tuning within the emotional decoding networks of the brain the next day. Through this Through this platinum-grade nocturnal service, better REM-sleep quality at night provides superior comprehension of the social world the next day.
Interpersonal relationships can also be explored in other ways when we are dreaming. In our dreams, we can create an alternative social reality. We must live in this reality and relate to other people in a new way. We fully experience (cognitively and emotionally) all of this in our dreams –and can gain some new insights about our relationships with other people.
One of my dreamers describes a dream in which he is living in a community that is run by women. The men are forced to leave (abruptly) and must find some place to eat and sleep out in the forest. My dreamer describes his own feeling about being “kicked out” as a man by very strong women and his experiences of surviving (and ultimately thriving) when living in the forest with other men.
