Dreamless Nights? What Your Brain Is Trying to Tell You

Celeste was an athletic young woman, active and engaged in a busy and, at times, stressful professional life. When the day was done, she slept like a log. However, she rarely dreamed.

While competent at her job, she started to feel increasingly numb when work became more stressful. At times, she might find it tough to relate to others or feel like life was on a conveyor belt—happening around her while she rode along—a somewhat detached observer. I wish I could have told Celeste in the past what I’m about to share with you now.



Your sleep isn’t just about how tired you feel—it’s about how your brain regulates itself overnight. While you may have heard about the importance of “deep sleep,” there’s more to the story. Similar chemically, norepinephrine is a brain chemical that increases alertness, focus, and blood pressure in the course of everyday events—like paying attention in a meeting—and sometimes more so when we are faced with challenges or stress—perhaps if you are called out during that meeting.

Both adrenaline and norepinephrine are necessary to function, but too much can wear you out. While norepinephrine and adrenaline clear the body in about an hour, they can trigger long-term disruptions. For example, they activate cortisol, the “stress hormone,” and impact blood pressure, the immune system, the gastrointestinal microbiome, and the sleep/wake cycle for potentially days later.

All these little maintenance tasks are critical for both mental and physical well-being. They get taken care of in different sleep stages we cycle through overnight. Generally, there’s rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—the parts where you dream—and deeper, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.

Different stages of sleep are required for different maintenance. Depending on what you went through on a given day, the brain will optimize its protocols accordingly. NREM sleep is very important, and you may have heard about optimizing that sweet, “deep sleep,” but to be a healthy, functioning human being, we also need dreams! The brain’s hippocampus region is a hub for memory.

In NREM, the hippocampus transfers episodes from our day to areas of the brain for learning and long-term memory, but in REM, it works with an emotion center, the amygdala, to sort out emotional components of memory. Think of it like this: During deep sleep, the hippocampus is like a teacher, primarily focused on helping students (brain areas) memorize facts for a test. During REM sleep, the hippocampus works more like a counselor, collaborating with the amygdala to help students process how they feel about what they’ve learned and integrate it into their emotional understanding.

Because norepinephrine shortchanges our time in REM, integration takes place less, reducing emotional learning from experiences. In this way, a person could repeatedly encounter similar emotional situations without developing adaptive emotional responses because emotional learning isn’t being properly locked in during sleep. Imagine being able to recall what happened but confused about how you felt about it.

The memory itself is intact, for example, “I went to the beach with my family,” but the emotional significance feels blunted or unclear—“I know this should have been a happy experience, but I don’t feel anything when I recall it.” That’s the impact acute stress can have on our memory: a disconnect between facts and feelings. In extreme cases like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some research suggests that the facts of the traumatic event are remembered, but the emotional response remains overwhelming and unprocessed.

Additionally, many people display reduced emotional empathy or difficulty understanding the emotional states of others in social situations. That’s because emotional memory helps us integrate and understand emotional experiences beyond our own. Here are several things you may want to consider if you or someone important to you could use more REM sleep: Locus coeruleus function and recovery from stress hormones improve relatively quickly during meditation, and you can enjoy benefits for hours or days after a session.

The brain rewires itself and becomes more efficient with longer practice. CBT is an approach to improving your mindset by identifying and updating unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors, swapping them for more helpful ones. An example of a negative mindset would be a student who misses a few basketball shots their first time on the court and comes to think, “I’m bad at basketball,” dreads getting the ball, and starts avoiding the sport altogether.

A common cognitive distortion many of us might relate to is “all or nothing” thinking—believing if we are not all good, we are nothing. CBT might challenge the player to consider if they are completely hopeless or whether there is a middle ground where improvements are possible. CBT techniques were developed by clinical psychologists to efficiently help clients suffering from anxiety and depression, but they are widely adaptable to anyone looking to become more resilient.

Common approaches to unpleasant feelings include minding your “self-talk”—for example, “My heart’s beating harder, I can’t take this anymore!” could be reinterpreted as “Good, I’m getting amped up to crush this!” You could also create “coping cards” for overwhelming moments—for instance, “When he or she uses that tone with me, I will take a 5-minute break and breathe deeply before responding.” Other medications, such as antihistamines, benzodiazepines, or zolpidem (Ambien), don’t work on the same mechanisms as norepinephrine but may indirectly influence the nervous system to move from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest.” These may offer short-term sedation benefits—but check with your physician.

Because these drugs work on symptoms, not the source, your body may still be in a tug-of-war between locus coeruleus—still generating norepinephrine—and other signals from the medication. REM sleep may thus still suffer. These also hold the potential for tolerance.

Benzodiazepines, particularly, carry risks of dependence or addiction, with tolerance developing quickly and withdrawal symptoms introducing new problems. They’re not recommended for long-term use as they can actually worsen sleep quality over time. Melatonin supplements also help us to fall asleep—a good start—but not a guarantee of more REM sleep.

In fact, at higher doses, melatonin can paradoxically disrupt sleep cycles and cause morning grogginess, headaches, and even vivid dreams or nightmares that can fragment sleep quality..