我为什么总做同一个梦？
我的第一份工作是在影像店，这刚好也是我的第三份工作。
It's been around 10 years since I last scanned a bar code on a DVD rental case or explained that, no, a Blu-Ray disc will not play in a DVD player, yet I still dream about Blockbuster. It's the same dream every time: It's always closing time, but I can't get the door to lock and customers keep coming into the store, and they're renting a ton of movies, so there's always a lot of scanning to do. Sometimes the scanner gun stops working, so I have to find another one and, naturally, I can't.
离我最后一次扫描DVD租借条形码，或者这样说吧，都还用DVD播放蓝光影碟的时候，已经有十年了。然而到现在，我还是会梦到它，而且每次内容都一样：总是临近打烊，我锁不上门，顾客还一直进来，甚至成吨成吨的租片儿，于是我要扫更多码。有时候扫码器出故障了，我就会再找一个，但自然地是我找不到。
I normally wake up from this dream, which just tapers off, feeling incredibly anxious and stressed because the dream is weirdly intense. And also because it's been a decade since I even worked at Blockbuster. So why am I still dreaming about it?
梦渐渐消失，我也正常醒来，但会感到特别不安和压抑，因为这个梦出奇地强烈。也因为这已距我在影像店工作已经10年了。所以为什么我老是梦到它呢?
Anxiety dreams, like my Blockbuster experience, differ from nightmares in that they don't cause you to wake up; they just increase your stress level, according to Vice. (But maybe if one of those scanner guns turned into a piranha ...) Like nightmares, however, anxiety dreams still kick in during REM sleep.
像影像店这种焦虑的梦，其实和噩梦还是有区别的，因为它们不会吓醒你，它们只是一直增加你的压力。(但如果那些扫码器有一个变成食人鱼的话可就……然而焦虑的梦却还是会像噩梦一样，一直在快速眼动睡眠时打扰你。
That I have anxiety-inducing dreams isn't particularly rare. In fact, most recorded dreams involve some type of negative emotion. Dr. Michael Nardoff, a clinical psychologist speaking to Vice, explained that more than half of all dreams involve some kind of negative emotion, regardless of if we remember them or not. Historical data backs this up. The 1966 book "The Content Analysis of Dreams" found that one-third of dreams contained some kind of "misfortune," with 80 percent of men and 77 percent of women experiencing dreams with some kind of "negative element."
我老做这种焦虑的梦其实并不稀奇。事实上，大多数有记载的梦都有点消极意味。临床心理学家Michael Nardoff博士说道，不管我们记不记得，超过一半的梦都含消极情绪。再看看历史数据，1966年出版的《梦的内容分析》发现，1/3的梦都包含着某种“不幸”，80%男性和77%女性都会做些带有某种“消极元素”的梦。
Given the time the book was written, that isn't too surprising. Between the Cold War and political turmoil, people in the late '60s had reasons to be anxious. We're not too different now. The World Health Organization reports that there was a 50 percent increase in the amount of people with depression or anxiety between 1990 and 2013. The upside is that general anxiety isn't necessarily going to result in more anxious dreams.
看看这本书写成的时间也就没什么好惊讶的了。冷战和政治动荡时，60年代末的人们总是有理由不安的。但现在不一样了，世界卫生组织报告称，1990年到2013年间，抑郁焦虑的人增加了50%。但好的一面是，这种一般焦虑不一定会发展成更焦虑的梦。
"It's not just being more anxious that makes you likely to have anxious dreams," Antonio Zadra, a psychologist, told The Guardian. "It's being more anxious and finding yourself in a stressful situation."
“不仅仅是情绪上的不安让你做些焦虑梦，”心理学家Antonio Zadra说道，“发现自己身处压力很大的环境中也会越来越焦虑。”
Of course, anxiety dreams can make you feel more stressed when you're awake, too, leading to a vicious cycle of being stressed regardless of when you're awake. It could cause you to avoid sleep altogether, and the result can be ill effects of chronic unrest. This can include REM rebound, where your brain prioritizes REM sleep and induces it sooner in the sleep cycle. This can, as Vice notes, result in more bad dreams than usual.
当然醒着的时候，这些梦也会让你压力巨大，从而陷入被压力折磨的恶循环。它还不能让你和别人一起睡觉，长期休息不好，最后情况会越来越糟。这就包括快速眼动反弹这种情况，你的大脑会优先选择快速眼动睡眠，甚至诱导它在睡眠周期中更快进行，从而导致比平常更多的噩梦。
So what's an anxious dreamer to do?
所以一个“焦虑的做梦人”要做些什么来缓解压力呢?
1. Try image rehearsal therapy (IRT). This process requires you to write out your stress dream and alter it in ways that make it less negative. This process is to be done several times a day for 10 to 20 minutes, according to recommendations published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. IRT "acts to inhibit the original nightmare, providing a cognitive shift that empirically refutes the original premise" of the dream.
1.试试意向排演疗法(IRT)。这个操作需要写下让你有压力的梦，再把它改的没那么消极。临床睡眠医学杂志建议，一天做几次，每次持续10-20分钟，IRT“的作用是抑制最初的噩梦，提供一种可识别的转变，可以有经验的将最初的噩梦拒之门外。”
While IRT is recommended for helping to alleviate nightmares, it could easily help alter the flow of anxiety dreams. For instance, I could rewrite my Blockbuster dream so that the door locks. This might simply stop the dream in its tracks.
虽然IRT受推荐以帮助缓解噩梦，但它也可以轻易改变焦虑梦的走向。比如，我可以重复写下关于影像店的梦，直到门锁上。这就可能简单地阻止了这个梦的进行。
2. Don't do anything. Provided the dreams aren't truly causing you too much distress, you may just want to allow the dreams to run their course. According to The Guardian, psychoanalysts could see something like IRT "as a contamination of good material" that could lead to a better understanding of what's happening in your brain and your life. Indeed, a Jungian psychologist told The New York Times that changing up a dream robs the dreamer of an "opportunity to really get some meaning out of it."
2.什么都别做。真正导致你压力大的元凶不是这些梦，你可能只是想让它们按自己的轨迹进行。心理分析师可能会认为IRT“玷污了好材料。”，这些材料能让你更好的理解自己的脑子和生活发生了什么。一位荣格派心理学家也认为，改变梦境夺走了做梦者“从梦中得到某些意义的机会。”
3. Address the potential root cause. Perhaps better considered as a continuation of not doing anything, figuring out what's happening in your life to trigger the dream could stop it from happening.
3.解决潜在的根本原因。也许一直什么都不做，找出生活中是什么事情触发了梦，就能阻止梦的发生了吧。
Given that my dream occurs in the first job I ever had, I've always assumed that the dream was connected to some kind of professional stress, whether it be that I felt I wasn't doing a good enough job, or not taking enough breaks or something else along those lines. I'm keeping an eye on that idea, to see if there's a connection between a tense day at work and a recurrence of the dream. But unless the scanner gun really does turn into a piranha in one of my dreams, I think I will let this dream run its course.
鉴于我的梦老是和我第一份工作过不去，我一直都认为这个梦和某种职业压力有关，是觉得自己没有做一份足够好的工作，还是在那期间没休息好，又或是别的事情。我也一直想看看，一天紧张的工作和梦的反复是否有联系。但只要扫码器没变成食人鱼，我想我还是会继续这个梦的。
