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Laying present fears to rest
做噩夢：大腦的解壓方式
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.
我們都知道那種半夜驚醒的感覺 —— 心臟怦怦亂跳，手心里全是汗。你會這么對自己說：沒關系，只是場噩夢罷了。沒錯，或許你的確應該放松一下，因為噩夢事實上可能對你有益。
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.
據《紐約雜志》報道，噩夢能夠改善你的心理健康。一場噩夢多半來源于現實生活中的憂慮，比如，一場即將來臨的考試，或者害怕一個人。為了減少這些憂慮，大腦會將這些事情以噩夢的形式呈現出來。
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.
這如何對你的心理健康有所幫助呢？一場噩夢能讓你遠離焦慮，將你現在所擔心的事變成回憶。最終當你醒來時，你就能夠繼續前行，面對未來。
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》刊登的一項研究顯示出了相似的結論。在接受調查的700多名參加一場醫學院入學考試的法國學生中，超過60%的人在考試前一晚做了不好的夢，比如：時間到了沒有寫完卷子，漏了一道題，或者遲到了等等。這些稱自己做了夢，甚至是噩夢的學生比那些沒有做夢的在考試中發揮更出色，這表明事實上噩夢的確幫我們對未來做好準備。
"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.
“我們都覺得噩夢沒什么特別的，但其實它們能夠處理壓力源。”匹茲堡大學睡眠與生物鐘學中心主任安妮·杰曼在接受美國有線電視新聞網采訪時表示。
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，下次當你半夜從噩夢中驚醒時，記得或許這是大腦在讓你放下恐懼，幫你對未來做好準備。盡管噩夢短時間內會讓你害怕，但它或許能夠幫你走出在現實世界中遇到的壞事。你或許應當試著接受自己做的噩夢，而不是害怕得睡不著覺。畢竟，睡眠不足引發的問題要比做夢嚴重多了。
