Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
It’s no secret that fear increases pain and suffering from any health problem. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just sleep away our fears? What if there was a way to conquer our fears that involved nothing more taxing than lying down calmly to sleep at night?
It sounds preposterous, but a recent study in online medical journal Nature found that it is indeed possible to change people’s fear reactions while they sleep.
The key? Scent, that powerful trigger for memories both good and bad. The researchers began by inducing fears in their subjects while they were awake. Next, these newly-induced fears were paired with a scent, making the scent a trigger for the fear memory. Later, while the subjects slept, they were exposed to the scent to activate memory of the induced fear.
The result: Simply introducing particular fears during the subjects’ sleep cycle ultimately led to a significant lessening of those same fears.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...n/201404/can-you-really-sleep-away-your-fears
It sounds preposterous, but a recent study in online medical journal Nature found that it is indeed possible to change people’s fear reactions while they sleep.
The key? Scent, that powerful trigger for memories both good and bad. The researchers began by inducing fears in their subjects while they were awake. Next, these newly-induced fears were paired with a scent, making the scent a trigger for the fear memory. Later, while the subjects slept, they were exposed to the scent to activate memory of the induced fear.
The result: Simply introducing particular fears during the subjects’ sleep cycle ultimately led to a significant lessening of those same fears.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...n/201404/can-you-really-sleep-away-your-fears