

He says for many people, such as young parents or those who work long hours, the time before bed may be the only chance they have to reflect on the day. Professor Sean Drummond is a clinical neuroscientist who specialises in sleep and mental health. It would also be linked to the level of emotion … that can accompany these thoughts," Dr Jobson says. A person with OCD often makes significant efforts to try to suppress or stop their unwanted thoughts (obsessions). Often, black bats are connected to the afterlife and the black bat can suggest that you are likely to overcome feeling drained. In OCD, intrusive thoughts cause serious distress. "These memories are often being linked in a network, and hence activating one can result in others being activated. When a black bat is seen upside down in the dream it can indicate that you can overcome darkness and focus on transformation through changing your perspective. So why can it feel like all these thoughts come at once? In these cases, people may perceive the thoughts as more distressing, ruminate or even suppress them (and the latter can potentially have the opposite effect and increase the frequency of these thoughts). While some people may simply recognise negative thinking and move on, Dr Jobson says these thoughts can be perceived differently when someone is particularly concerned about something, or by people with clinical disorders such as insomnia, anxiety, depression or PTSD. "Typical thoughts that I see through my work would include 'I'm not good enough', 'I'm stupid/fat/ugly et cetera', 'I have to please people to get them to like me'," she says. It can also be conditioned when we internalise voices such as those of critical parents, teachers and peers, as well as advertising that leaves us feeling like we're not up to standard. Ms Vertessy says this kind of thinking doesn't just occur before bed. This basically means our brains are really good at focusing on negative stuff, regardless of our positive experiences. This rather pessimistic way of thinking is referred to as the brain's negativity bias, which American neuroscientist Rick Hanson describes as "like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for positive ones". littlenam 2 years ago Just keep believing it all means something, and it will. Mulling over how awkward you were at that party is likely your brain is assessing the "threat" of not being accepted. You have the courage to acknowledge your thoughts and directly address a kind of darkness within the human spirit that most people outside of this particular platform do everything in their power to militantly ignore. It's a similar story if you fret over social acceptance, as being ostracised is processed in the same area of the brain that processes physical pain. So if you find yourself agonising over blunders made at work, it's likely you are assessing your performance and looking out for your livelihood. "In hunter-gatherer times, and indeed now, if we weren't paying attention to the cliff or tiger ahead of us because we were distracted by a beautiful sunset, it could spell our demise," Ms Vertessy says. It may feel like your brain is tormenting you, but according to clinical psychologist Deborah Vertessy, we do this out of the primitive need to protect ourselves. So why does our brain seem to cherrypick these random, and somewhat negative, thoughts as we are trying to fall asleep? We're protecting ourselves While there is no single name for this experience - so let's call it "bed brain" - there are ways to combat these kinds of sleep-depriving thoughts. Or simply how you don't call your dad enough. Or that time you were Facebook stalking your partner's ex and accidentally sent them a friend request (smooth). Like that time you blanked on a colleague's name halfway through introducing them to someone. Just as you're trying to wind down, it decides to play a compilation of some of your most embarrassing, regretful and cringe-worthy memories on shuffle.
