Laying present fears to rest
做噩梦：大脑的解压方式
We all know the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart and sweaty palms. Relax, you say to yourself – it was just a bad dream. Well, it may be that you really should relax, because nightmares might actually be good for you.
我们都知道那种半夜惊醒的感觉 —— 心脏怦怦乱跳，手心里全是汗。你会这么对自己说：没关系，只是场噩梦罢了。没错，或许你的确应该放松一下，因为噩梦事实上可能对你有益。
According to New York Magazine, bad dreams can improve your mental health. A bad dream tends to be based on a real-life concern, for example, an approaching test or a fear of a person. To eliminate these worries the brain turns the dream into a story in the form of a bad dream.
据《纽约杂志》报道，噩梦能够改善你的心理健康。一场噩梦多半来源于现实生活中的忧虑，比如，一场即将来临的考试，或者害怕一个人。为了减少这些忧虑，大脑会将这些事情以噩梦的形式呈现出来。
How does this help your mental health? A bad dream enables you to distance yourself from your anxieties, and turn something you're worried about now into a memory. The result is that when you wake up you're able to move forward and face the future.
这如何对你的心理健康有所帮助呢？一场噩梦能让你远离焦虑，将你现在所担心的事变成回忆。最终当你醒来时，你就能够继续前行，面对未来。

A study featured in The Atlantic magazine, showed something similar. In a survey of more than 700 French students taking a medical school entrance exam, over 60 percent had negative dreams about the test the night before. These included not finishing on time, leaving a question blank, or being late. Those who reported dreams about the exam, even bad ones, did better on it than those who didn't, suggesting that nightmares do in fact prepare us for the future.
《大西洋月刊》刊登的一项研究显示出了相似的结论。在接受调查的700多名参加一场医学院入学考试的法国学生中，超过60%的人在考试前一晚做了不好的梦，比如：时间到了没有写完卷子，漏了一道题，或者迟到了等等。这些称自己做了梦，甚至是噩梦的学生比那些没有做梦的在考试中发挥更出色，这表明事实上噩梦的确帮我们对未来做好准备。
"We think that nightmares are so common that they have some purpose to process stressors," Anne Germain, director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Center at the University of Pittsburgh, told CNN.
“我们都觉得噩梦没什么特别的，但其实它们能够处理压力源。”匹兹堡大学睡眠与生物钟学中心主任安妮·杰曼在接受美国有线电视新闻网采访时表示。
So, the next time you lie awake at night after a bad dream, remember that it may be your brain's way of putting your fears behind you and readying you for the future. Although a nightmare may make you afraid in the short term, it might be helping you to move on from the bad stuff you might be facing in the real world. Perhaps you should try to accept our nightmares rather than allow them to keep us awake. After all, lack of sleep causes far more problems than dreams do.
因此，下次当你半夜从噩梦中惊醒时，记得或许这是大脑在让你放下恐惧，帮你对未来做好准备。尽管噩梦短时间内会让你害怕，但它或许能够帮你走出在现实世界中遇到的坏事。你或许应当试着接受自己做的噩梦，而不是害怕得睡不着觉。毕竟，睡眠不足引发的问题要比做梦严重多了。