The Brain Never Sleeps: How Dreams Heal, Rewire, and Reveal with Karen van Kampen

“When you rewrite a nightmare’s ending, you’re not avoiding it. You’re transforming it—and that rewiring gives you back control.” - Karen van Kampen

Science writer Karen van Kampen explores how dreams help us process emotion, boost creativity, and build resilience—with tools for dream recall, reflection, and healing.

Have you ever woken up from a dream wondering, “What was that about?” Or felt like your mind was trying to tell you something—just out of reach?

In this episode, I welcome back science writer Karen van Kampen to explore what dreams are really doing for us. Karen is currently writing The Brain Never Sleeps, a forthcoming book with Simon & Schuster Canada that dives deep into the science of dreaming, memory, and emotional well-being.

Together, we talk about why your dreams matter—not just as strange midnight cinema, but as active tools your brain uses to sort through stress, solve problems, and generate creative insight. From managing nightmares through imagery rehearsal and targeted dream incubation, to using apps like Elsewhere for AI-assisted interpretation, Karen walks us through cutting-edge research and her own experiments in dream-guided creativity.

We also explore what happens when your brain starts weaving together old memories and new worries—how dreams help us process emotion, consolidate memory, and prepare for life's difficult moments. Karen even shares a unique “dream salon” experience, where artists painted her dream on a page from Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. It’s as poetic as it is scientific.

Key Takeaways:

• Dreams reflect our waking stress: What preoccupies us by day often shows up in dream form—symbolically or directly.
• Nightmares can be transformed: Tools like imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) and targeted dream incubation (TDI) help reframe bad dreams and reduce anxiety.
• Creative sweet spots exist: The moments just before sleep and after waking are powerful times to access ideas and insights.
• Apps like Elsewhere and Dust are using AI and sensory cues to guide dream themes, increase dream recall, and help reduce nightmares.
• Dreams act as a reframing tool: They reveal emotions and patterns we might not notice consciously—offering perspective, healing, and creative breakthroughs.
• Dream interpretation isn’t one-size-fits-all: Karen uses Freudian, Jungian, and personal approaches to reflect on her dreams from multiple angles.

Bio

Karen van Kampen is a Canadian science writer and the author of The Golden Cell: Gene Therapy, Stem Cells, and the Quest for the Next Great Medical Breakthrough. Her work has appeared in publications like The Globe and Mail and National Post. She’s currently writing The Brain Never Sleeps (Simon & Schuster, 2026), a deep dive into the science of dreams, memory, and emotional health. Karen explores how our dream

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Transcript

0:04

This is It's an Inside Job, and I'm your host, Jason Lim. This is the show where we explore the stories, strategies, and science behind growing resilience, nurturing well-being, and leading with intent. Because when it comes down to it, it's all an inside job. Well, welcome back. This week, we're diving into the fascinating world of dreams and how they offer profound insights into our mental health and our well-being. I mean, have you ever wondered what your nightly adventures are trying to tell you? Well, I'm thrilled to welcome back Karen Van Campen for our second episode together. Now, Karen is an accomplished author currently working on a book with Simon Schuster Canada about the science of dreaming, exploring the connection between our dreams and well-being, and how we can use our nightly fictions to improve our waking lives. Karen is also the author of The Golden Cell, Gene Therapy, Stem Cells, and the Quest for the Next Great Medical Breakthrough. Her writings have also appeared in numerous publications, including the Global Mail and the National Post. So in this episode, you'll discover how your daily stresses and worries might be manifesting in your dreams, and some practical techniques for managing challenging dream experiences like nightmares. We're also going to be talking about actionable strategies and emerging tools to enhance dream recall and harnessing those dream states for self-reflection and even to tap into your own creativity. We're also going to be talking about new perspectives on dream interpretation, exploring the differences between analytical approaches and how connecting dream elements to your waking life while how it can spark fresh ideas and curiosity. We'll also be discussing how dreams serve as powerful tools for memory consolidation. Emotional processing, and problem solving, and how they can be used creatively and reflectively in daily life. But the biggest takeaway of all? Well, that's the core insight into how dreams truly empower us to understand and improve our waking lives. And well, that's something you'll need to listen to till the very end to uncover. So without further ado, let's slip into my second Conversation with Karen Van Camden. Well, I'd like to welcome Karen back to the show. Karen, welcome. Hi, Jason. Great to see you again. Great to hear you. I've been looking forward to this part two and continuing our dream discussion because I find it such a fascinating point. And just before we start recording, you know, dreams, I had mentioned that I think dreams obviously are something important to the human biological machine that we are. Otherwise, it would have, I guess, disappeared. And it's us trying to interpret it. And why not bring the guru of dreams on? So perhaps for our new listeners who may not know you, could you briefly introduce who you are and what you do? Sure. So I'm a writer. I'm based in Toronto. And I have always had a fascination with sleep and dreams. My dad's a sleep doctor so I grew up in a house that was really obsessed with sleep and sleep quality and and how to get a good sleep and dreams have always fascinated me since I was a kid they've you know I I used to fall asleep when when I I used to have this uncanny ability to fall asleep if I was you know if it was turbulence during a flight or if I was uh you know in a snowstorm as a kid, I would just fall asleep. And I found that dreams provided this escape and also this comfort. And a few years ago, I read this article that we're as dream deprived as we are sleep deprived. And it got me wondering, you know, why do dreams matter on their own? We understand we hear a lot about why sleep matters. But why do dreams matter? What does it mean for our health and our mental health. So that set off this whole year of researching and talking to dream researchers and dreamers and learning all about the dreaming process and why dreams matter. And there's a whole Pandora's box there. Once we open it up, maybe rabbit holes, we find ourselves in a war of tunnels. Well, the last time we spoke, we talked a lot about how dreams and the quality of our dreams and the nature of our dreams can reflect our mental and emotional well-being or ill-being. And so this is sort of a dot, dot, dot conversation in part two. So where would you like to begin our conversation in part two here. So last time I think we spoke um almost a year ago now and I've learned so much about dreaming I've been interviewing all these different dream scientists and writers and dreamers and it really I've learned a lot about how to look it's different ways that you can look at dreams so basically you know dreams are experiences just like we have waking experiences we have dream experiences and in terms of the thing that really interests me is how dreams are related to our mental health and well-being and if you if you think about stress let's say you're in the middle of the day you're stressed out it could be for personal reasons for work all different reasons and you know there's not this on off switch when we when we lie down it's not that we let go of our stresses and our worries and our anxieties and there's a lot of evidence that shows our preoccupations and our worries and our concerns they take center stage in our dreams so if we're worrying about something during the day if we're stressed out it's it's pretty likely that this will show up in our dreams in some form we don't know how what form it'll show up in but it makes sense that there's not this end to our stresses when we lie down at night. Just to get a little more specific, what do you mean what form it will show up in? For me, dreams are always being sort of a visual component with an emotional tag to it, depending upon what it is. Right. So one example is, so on and off since I was a kid, I've had this dream of falling. So I'm in this dark space and I'm on this metal beam and it's this rusted out scaffolding of this building. And I picture myself somehow losing my footing and I'm falling. So I'm falling through the air. And just before I hit the ground, I wake up. So I was asking one of the dream researchers who I was speaking with, you know, what does this mean? And this is sort of an example of how he said, you know, that's maybe you're feeling helpless in your life, like helplessness or uncertainty, it could come out. So let's say it's something to do with maybe work or something to do with, you know, embarking on something new. It might not play out in your dreams the way that it's playing out in. Usually it doesn't play out in your dreams the way it plays out in real life. But I always think it reflects a theme. It sort of tells us where we should be focusing our attention. It tells us, you know, maybe something is bothering us or maybe we should take a closer look at something. So that would be an example. And as an aside, I found out, so when I asked this dream researcher, you know, what should I do when I have this falling dream? And he said, waking up is the ultimate avoidance strategy. So every time I wake up, I'm not getting conclusion or resolution. So he said, what you need to do is try and change it. So don't, like, I shouldn't try and escape my falling dream. So I said, okay, what if I imagined not falling was my question to him. And he said, no, you're still avoiding, don't avoid falling. So then I said, what about if I, if I imagined this big fluffy mattress on the ground, and then I fall onto the mattress? And he said, that would be a good resolution, a good situation, because you're not avoiding it. You're just changing it. You're rewriting an ending. So that could be an option. But in the sense, are you, are you referring to lucid dreaming where you're conscious of the fact that you're dreaming so because you know i've i've been in my dream where i've tripped and i've just bounced out of my dream because i've flinched or something right i'm out right but you're talking about the interpretation of the dream during a conversation of some sort or so one way of dealing with bad dreams recurring dreams nightmares is something called imagery rehearsal therapy and i think we might have touched on it last time It's basically, before you go to sleep, you think about you try and re script your dream. And so it could be, say, the ending of your dream is for me, it's always the ending for that particular dream. But for other people, it might be a detail in your dream, which is frightening or scary. So it's trying to re script the dream before you go to sleep. That is one way. But lucid dreaming, right? So you could practice becoming lucid. And then like become and understand that you're dreaming and then once you're if you're able to do that which is really hard i've never been able to be completely lucid but um then you can try and and and change your dream while you're dreaming but what i was talking about is basically before you lie down okay is right and then there's this other um. Thing that you can do is so actually we'll get into it later you know what i'll talk about it after yeah so since we're talking about we've we've opened up the conversation as using dreams as tools i was wondering how do you personally use dreams as a tool in your sort of daily life if we just kind of start practical and quite general with all this how i do yeah so i find something it's really simple so you you know we read all about um all of these tools and techniques and it can get very complicated. And some I've tried. One thing that I do that really works is I just I keep a paper and a pen by my bedside table. And I got my bedside table. And if I'm working on, it actually helps for two reasons. If I'm unable to sleep, then I get up, I turn on my light and I write down whatever's on my mind. Because it might not be even a worry, it might be something that I'm trying to tell myself, okay, don't forget tomorrow, you've got to do this thing. And then it prevents me from sleeping and it actually interrupts my dreams. But another thing is I leave the paper and pen there because when I wake up in the morning, you know that feeling when you're first waking up and you're in that kind of dreamy brain state, you're just sort of awake, sort of asleep. Maybe I can hear, you know, a car driving by my window or I'm starting to notice my surroundings, but I'm kind of feeling in that still that dreamy state. I kind of try and hold on to that especially if I'm working on a new project or a story and then when I've got an idea because my mind's free enough to think about something new but has enough awareness that I can follow the thought then I wake up and I write it down so I find that really a really good way to sort of use your dreams that's one way yeah yeah. It's it's and it's an excellent tool. But just as a side, as a side comment, how long did it take you to sort of be cognizant you were in that sort of dream waking state in between states or its own individual state to to think, OK, try to stay in the state and answer this question or finish the idea? Okay. So as an example, this morning, I woke up maybe like 20 minutes before my alarm, which I often do, and which is pretty common. And you're sort of aware that you need to get up soon. And I kind of lay there, maybe it was about 10 minutes. And I was just going over certain things in my mind and the story I'm working on. And then I looked and it was about 10 minutes later that I got up and started writing down some, some ideas. And it's just this creative sweet spot. So that's actually something we could talk about is I talked to you a little bit, I think, about last time Adam Haar and colleagues from MIT and Harvard, they did this experiment and they're doing a study and they're also doing a lot to do with targeted dream incubation. They actually uh coined the term so basically we've been incubating on a dream topic for thousands of years around around the world different cultures different societies what's new is to try and so incubating to try and um decide what you're going to dream about so that's not new but what is new is to use technology to use an external stimuli like sound or touch to try and help you guide your dreams. So Adam was kind enough to help me set up this. At home dream experiment with TDI. And it was so much fun. So basically, for their study, they got subjects to try and imagine trying to dream trying to think of a tree. So as you're falling asleep, sleep on set those first few minutes of sleep when you're you're moving. Traversing from waking into light sleep in that really sort of dreamy stage, they would um he set me up so that this recording would happen and just as I'm starting to drift off a recording of my voice that I did said remember to think of a. Tree and so it did this I did five naps and it did this intermittently at different times uh during sleep onset and it was so cool I found that when you when I first lay down my thoughts of a tree were very concrete so I was imagining so I thought okay I've got to think of a tree I can do this I can do this and so I started thinking of you know oh there's this maple tree on my front lawn that just won't grow or you know this forsythia tree in the backyard oh I just got the yellow leaves and I started thinking about that but then as you know and it was only a few minutes and then my thoughts became more abstract and more creative and I thought of what happened was I thought of these cedars that we had planted from this old log cabin that our family used to own and we planted them and they've grown to 12 feet in our backyard but then it reminded me of this cabin that we used to go to in all the wonderful times so that thought of the tree then took me into this whole you know thought process of a different place and I was experiencing a different place and just as I was I felt like I was just about to start to really get into dreaming then the recording would say remember to think of a tree. And then you find that you start thinking so creatively and abstractly about this chosen topic. So it's really interesting. Wow. It's very cool. So would this be considered a sort of a low-tech tool or a high-tech tool when it comes to dreaming? Well, I say low-tech because he helped me set it up at home. So I did the recording. I used the website and did the recording and did it myself. And it was just an ad hoc sort of thing that I just so I could test it out. So they are so Adam and his lab mate, Thomas Vega from MIT, they have created Dust and it is this art and science collective. And they've also they're also right now creating this app. And so that's going to be this high tech tool. It's very cool. If you just Google Dust systems and it'll come up in about three months. They're going to be doing beta testing if people want to sign up and try for it, try to test it out. And so there's going to be different programs. And I know they're working on helping people increase their dream recall, guide their dream thoughts, as well as try and reduce stress dreams and nightmares. So that's the high tech dream tool that's coming from them. I would just want if we go back to the the the tree yes per se I mean have you applied it to some sort of specific conundrum or question or problem you've had and has it actually helped you practically in some way other than the experiment itself I mean around your writing and your creativity and such yeah. So it's interesting you asked that. So I, when I, over the past year, of course, I'm thinking so much about dreaming. And I keep asking myself, you know, what is a dream, you can look at dreams so differently, what are they? What role do they play? What is the dreaming process? And so I noticed, like, there's a lot of evidence that shows whatever you're sort of thinking about in that those for the sleep onset, the first few minutes of sleep, often, your brain tags it to revisit later in the night. And so I kept thinking you know what is a dream and I guess in a way I was just sort of guiding my dream thoughts or just guiding my thoughts as I was falling asleep and so I started thinking about. When I so when I work in my office I have this terrible habit of writing down ideas on these little scraps of paper I have all these wonderful completely blank notebooks that I could use but I don't know I just seem to always write all these ideas on these little pieces of paper and so I dreamt that these pieces of paper were actually dreams and I was sewing them together to create this quilt of dreams and then suddenly I snipped the the so the the thread that was keeping them together and then they just started to drift off and I was watching my dreams so I do use it to sort of. Questions to think about things in a different way and there's been so there was a study that that found um you know sleep onset is this creative sweet spot so. It's this this generator of you know. We can have these wonderfully creative and new and fresh ideas during these first few minutes of sleep um uh salvador daly used to do this he had this method i don't know if you heard about it was called slumber with a key no no but i've seen i've seen his is uh have you seen it no i haven't seen the tool but i've seen his paintings i mean they are very surreal and dreamlike and ethereal and in many ways right yes exactly that's what i think too and so he used to sit like he used to sit in this chair this one specific chair and he used to hold a key in his hand and underneath his dangling hand holding the key is was this plate and so he would let himself drift off and when he dropped the key he would wake up and from this sort of in between sort of dream state early stage of dreaming and then he would write down his ideas or however he would put down his ideas so it's i mean it's been happening for years and it's so interesting to use that those first few minutes and really see what what new ideas you can generate you know it's it's funny so sometimes you know a couple hours before i before i you know catch my z's i'll watch some netflix and such but i have to actually be quite cognizant if i'm watching a very exciting movie or a tv show or crime show what have you i won't think much about it i'm. Tired I kind of crawl under the sheets and I fall asleep but I'd have to say a majority of the time. That show or that movie I'd seen revisits me in the dream and it somehow interweaves it with my daily activities and stuff right so I mean it's just sort of it was sort of serendipitous I just kind of walked into that experience of what you're talking about but you are much more cognizant as to what you want to focus on in those few minutes before you fall asleep so that becomes part of your things. I think that's a very... Great tool. I'm going to start using because I see my brain does it automatically. So whatever, what's whatever, just before I go to sleep, it will interpret that I didn't really thought much about it. Right. I'm thinking, that's why I'm so restless when I'm sleeping. Right. Because it's, you know, I'm, I don't dodging bullets or chasing a criminal or something. I don't know. But exactly. That's so and that's what I always think, you know, it's, it also sort of reminds us to, to try and attend to whatever's bothering us before we go to sleep I always think you know if I lie down and I have a worry or something that I'm turning over and over and again in my mind I'm going to have a restless sleep it's going to affect my overall sleep it's going to affect my dream sleep it's going to affect my dreams and the more I learned this year it just makes sense because if we're stressed during the day this is you know it's likely this is going to show up at night and it just made me think of it when you were talking about your dream, I love, like, I'm as interested in the reality as the fiction of my dreams. I'm just as interested in what my dreaming brain will pluck and take from my waking reality and decide to explore as much as what my imagination will create, like these strange dream scenarios. Because I just think that we learn so much about ourselves, And we get different glimpses of ourselves, different perspectives, whether it's pure fiction or reality. It's showing what we're thinking and what matters to us and what we're focusing on in our dreams. I just find it so interesting. No, I find it very fascinating because, as you said, our dreams tend not to be a direct translation of that day's experience. But it may be translated into an image or translated into some sort of metaphor or something along that, something, some sort of poetic nuance of what our experience was. And so I... So part of that is also the idea of dream interpretation. And in our conversations, you talked about how AI-powered dream interpretation can sometimes help us. I was wondering, how does that differ from sort of the classic Freudian or Jungian dream interpretations? I was wondering if we could maybe go down that lane a little. For sure. um so i tried out this app and it's called elsewhere and it is really interesting it's really cool to use so it's got all these different features um it lets you log your dreams it actually creates sketches of your dreams and something i'm really interested in is it does these different dream interpretation modes so i tested it out and then i spoke with kelly boakley he's a dream researcher and he lives outside of Portland, Oregon, and he's an advisor for elsewhere on the content side. So he helped with the analysis, the interpretation piece. And so we took one of my, I took one of my dreams and I put it through elsewhere. So what you can do is you can choose the interpretation mode. So I thought, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to try the Freudian interpretation mode and the Jungian interpretation mode. And it was so much fun. So I took this dream. Do you want me to tell you about the dream? Yeah, sure. Why not? If you don't mind sharing it. Do we have time? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're good. We're good. Okay. So basically, I had this dream that I was in this rental car. I'd rented a car. And unfortunately, there was a hole in the bottom of in the floor of the car. And I was suddenly driving through this snowstorm. And it was, you know, whiteout conditions I could barely see. And then my dream flipped and I was in this bar. It was this bar with all the windows were covered in paper and it was like mismatched tables and chairs and there was a dartboard and beer, neon beer signs. And, you know, all it was just this slice, this place. And then I look over and there's this man and he's wearing like a World War II gas mask. And I have no idea why. I don't know who he is. And just as he's starting to approach me there's this waitress who comes over oh first of all sorry I forgot to say I ordered beer and um the way you order is you just hold up your hand you just say like two for two beer or four or whatever you want and so I held up two and they come in these little juice glasses and this is a place I've actually been and so this waitress comes over and gives me my drinks and says you have to pay and this man wearing this gas mask is coming towards me and I looked at her and I said okay so I try and pay but my credit card is denied I tap but it just it fails and I looked at her and I said oh I know why I'm dreaming about this because I'm worried about money because I'm trying to rent a car for a vacation and it's a lot of money and she says to me it doesn't matter you still have to pay me like I you might know why but you still have to pay me and then just as he's pulling off the gas mask i wake up. So i talked to kelly about the dream and then i also put it through elsewhere to get the different right so it was so freud he believed that um and you i'm like we've talked about freud together so he he believed in uh dreams are um repressed wishes right yeah whereas young he believed that You could look at the surface of dreams. Dreams reveal what we think and envision about our own lives. So you can take them for face value. And maybe, you know, they're strange and bizarre, because our rational mind is out of touch with our psyche and dreams help us sort of come to grips with both of those bring them together. So I did the Freudian analysis, and some really cool stuff came out. So Freud thought that, what did it say? That the act of driving, even in a snowstorm, may say something about my journey or control over my life. So maybe I'm trying to like figure out where I'm going or something. Okay. Right? And then, but the Jungian interpretation saw the rental car as this temporary state that I was in because it's a rental car. But for me, whenever I'm thinking about my dreams, I tend to just connect them to whatever's going on in my waking life. I kind of explain them away that way to myself. So I woke up and just thought, oh, okay, I was renting a car. I spent hours online trying to rent a car. That's the reason why. And I never thought anything of it. And years ago, when I was a kid, we actually were driving through the Canadian Prairies in a whiteout snowstorm in a rental car. And the only car on the lot that was left was one with a hole in the in the floor so I was like okay that's why it actually happened but the cool thing about doing these tools is that you get completely different perspectives and it's not that there's one that's right it's not right or wrong it's just giving you a different way of of looking at your dreams so you know I always think we're like the best interpreter or of our own dreams we we can take or leave what what interpretations are given to us and see what makes sense for us but it just gives us a different way of of looking at our dreams is sort of how i look at it that's very um yeah no i just find it fascinating just uh just to riff on that it's almost like a reframing technique where you saw sort of the practicalities of it was a memory of what have you i remember this right and it was you just kind of logically link in it but. When the the elsewhere app throws it through it through freudian or union you know what have you and it's different interpretations it's it's it's almost a way of reframing and that in itself can spark new ideas a sense curiosity to see right yeah yeah i just wanted to riff on that from a psychological point of view of the reframe exactly it yeah i exactly and i always think it sort of adjusts my lens on the same experience that I have that that I had the dream is the same but yeah it's a reframe you're adjusting your lens and you're thinking about it totally yeah I agree it's so cool when that happens and it's the exact same situation but you have a totally different perspective on it you can go and see some sort of abstract art but everyone sees the same thing but they can pull different meanings from it it's almost what when someone says oh can you see that? And you kind of take a moment to kind of let it land and see that angle. Or it's like looking up at clouds, right? Someone will see an elephant and you see something else. But if you take the time as they describe it to you, oh yeah. And it comes out, right? It's almost that pareidolia effect where we see human faces and everything. I love it. And then you get these totally different ways of seeing. And then it changes your way of seeing. After that, I find it kind of opens up your mind in a way like the um, The man with the gas mask, the Jungian interpretation was it could be a shadow archetype. So this could be representing that. Or it could be maybe I'm concealing a part of myself. Whereas I just thought, OK, I'd watched a movie about World War II recently. And so I connected it that way. But I'm never sort of this year has really made me dig deeper into different ways of seeing dreams and then seeing myself and seeing different things. Things, different themes or ideas that I keep sort of chasing in my dreams. It's really neat. I interrupted you. You were going to talk about, I think, a third interpretation or you were going to add on top two of your dream. Oh, right. Okay. So the other thing I wanted to tell you about was, so I was really interested. Something that I do is I don't know how yet to become fully lucid to completely control my dream, but I, I'm almost on the cusp of it. So when I'm dreaming, oftentimes I will tell myself, I will tell a dream character why I'm dreaming something. And so when I met this waitress and my card was denied, when I tried to pay for the beer, you know, I said, Oh, it's because I'm worried about money. That's why I'm dreaming about you. That's why I'm dreaming of this. And she said, well, you still have to pay me. And so the Jungian interpretation was, um, And this, it highlighted this tension, it said, between awareness and obligation. So just because I'm aware of something doesn't mean that I can skirt around the obligation of the fact. So I found that really, really interesting, right? Like why, how I was trying to do that. And then I'd love to, I really want to try and keep working on taking that moment and realizing, okay, I'm in a dream. So I'm at that moment where I'm gaining awareness of the dream state. And then can I... Start to control and guide, I should say, guide what's going on in my dream. But I'm always so interested to see what's going to happen that I say to myself, okay, I know it's a dream, but I just want to see how this plays out. So it's just funny. I never seem to keep going with the lucid. Yeah, it's the reason I want to just jump in there because I've felt the same thing because sometimes I'll be in sort of whatever dream arc, it's taking me through some sort of story arc i i don't know right and you see maybe people passing you on a street or and and your your dream or your your dream mind is focused on whatever it is in front of you but sometimes i catch myself being just a slight cognizant like like trying to catch vapor right with your hand and i for a moment i i'm cognizant that i'm dreaming but instead of focusing on the dream i'm curious to thinking my my i'm thinking what am i thinking i'm thinking how does my brain, generate all these details right because they're they're kind of foggy but when i look to the right let's say i'm walking down a street and i see a tree or i see someone instead of focusing on the main theme of the dream my curiosity will just pivot to the right or to the left whatever it is. And I'll take a look at that person's face. And all of a sudden, it comes out of the details. Or I'll look at a tree and I'll see the texture of the bark of the tree or the leaves. And that's the only time I really capture myself being lucid, if I can use that in a loosely defined way. But then I get drawn back into the dream. My consciousness just evaporates and I'm back into a dream state. But I'm always curious, Karen, how the brain can generate such vivid and vibrant details just for that moment. I don't know how it's doing because I'm not consciously doing it evidently. But then I slip back into a dream state and I continue down the story arc of whatever craziness my brain's going through. But I just wanted to kind of have that side note. That's the only time I find some level of lucidity. Right. It's so that's, I do the same thing and you have it for a moment. It's almost in your grasp. And then it just can. And then for me, it just, I let go. And I just love those vivid moments that you, that you can hold on to sometimes. And especially if you wake up, like if you don't wake up with your alarm, let's say you just sort of wake up naturally and you're kind of sort of in that dreamy state, or maybe you're still holding on to the last dream that you were dreaming. And you can hold on to that vivid picture in your mind. I love doing that. In the first part of the episode, one of the first things we explored was how dreams serve as a mirror for our waking mental health and well-being. Karen shared her research highlighting how daily stresses and worries often pop into our dreams. She even gave a great example using her own recurring falling dream. We also touched on practical techniques for dealing with those unsettling nightmares, including things like imagery rehearsal therapy and even venturing into lucid dreaming. For Karen, dreams are a powerful personal tool for self-reflection and gaining emotional insight. We then shifted gears into dream techniques and recall tools. Karen shared her own bedtime ritual of writing down thoughts to capture those fleeting ideas right as she transitions between wakefulness and sleep. We talked about an intriguing experiment with targeted dream incubation. Consciously guiding your thoughts before sleep can influence dream content. Karen also gave us a peek into the future with Dust, a high-tech app by Adam and Thomas Vega designed to boost dream recall and reduce nightmares. I even found myself thinking about how these techniques could apply to my own creative process, especially considering how much pre-sleep media consumption influences my dreams. Now, our conversation naturally led us to dream interpretation, Apps vs. Traditional Theories. Karam recounted her experience using the Elsewhere app to analyze a vivid dream involving a rental car and a man in a World War II gas mask. It was fascinating to hear how the app offered both Freudian and Yumean perspectives, and how Karam personally connects these dream elements to her waking life. I noted how these different interpretations can really act as a powerful reframing technique, which can spark new ideas and a deeper sense of curiosity. Finally, we delved into our shared experience with lucid dreaming and further dream interpretation. Karen explained her interest in understanding why specific past events appear in dreams, leading us to discuss the Next Up model of dreaming by Robert Stickgold and Antonio Zadra. Essentially, how recent experiences and old memories, well, how they intertwine to create our dream narratives. So now let's look back into the stream for my second part of my conversation with Karen Von Campen. So the whole year, I just kept going back to one question that really motivated me along the way and really got me wanting to write this book is, you know, why is it that I am going to dream about something from my past? Why did I choose last night to dream of something from say high school or some moment what was it and I learned that you know we know that dreaming helps us consolidate memories it helps boost learning and one of the ways that it does this is through associations so let's say that something happens to us recently and we dream about it are in order to strengthen that memory one idea is that it is associated with a memory that's already stored. So then maybe we take something from our past and there's somehow it's associated with something that happened recently. And there's this next, it's called Next Up, this model of dreaming. And it's by Robert Stakehold and Antonio Zadra. And it is so fascinating about how we make these associations. And that's when all this creativity happens and this learning. And it sort of helped me understand why possibly i will dream something of far deep in my past at a certain one like one night why why that night it's so interesting but do you find you know doing all this research has it do you find that the dreams you've you've been better um how can i say this have your dreams been better at solving problems for you or hinting towards an answer to a question? I mean, if you understand what I'm getting at, I'm trying to scratch out the question here. I understand what you mean. So I think this year has really given me a deeper appreciation and a deeper awareness of my dreams. So yes, there's been times where I've taken, I've, you know, set my intention, and I've tried to work on something. And so as I'm falling asleep, I'm thinking about something using dreams as, you know, this creative brainstorming tool to try and. You know, brainstorm an idea that I'm working on. The other thing that really what it's done is given me a different perspective and appreciation of dreaming. And, you know, I kept trying to understand, you know, why is it that dreams themselves, why do they matter so much? So we understand, you know, there's in sleep benefits to dreams, and then there's post sleep benefits to dream. So while we're dreaming, you know, we understand that during dream sleep, It helps boost learning, consolidate memory, help us process difficult emotions. Potentially help us prepare for life's dangers, whatever form they may take. It could be just a difficult conversation at work that we're preparing for. So there's all of these things going on. And then there's also the post-sleep benefits of dreams, which I've really learned a lot about. How can we use dreams? once we've woken up how can we take our dreams and use them and uh in our daily life and one way to look at it as is you know dreams are an experience like waking experiences dreams are it's dream experiences and when we dream we believe them to be true they seem real to us with the dreaming brain operating in this different mode and we you know are swept along with whatever's happening in our dreams. And we are completely convinced that whatever's happening is plausible, no matter how strange and wild it is. But, you know, how can we use our dreams when we wake up? And that's the thing that I've really gotten in touch with. So I'm trying to, you know, take my dreams and say, what themes are there? What, who keeps showing up in my dreams? Or what ideas am I am I pursuing what do I need to pay more attention to so that's changed for me over the over the year have you found that you have repetitive dreams. I do. I have that falling dream, uh, every few months where I just picture myself falling. And, um, I haven't had it though since, uh, so I have to try that, that trick where I'll put a mattress and land in the mattress. Um, sometimes I have, um, just sort of annoying logistical dreams. Like I'm doing things like annoying, like making a PowerPoint presentation or things that I'm working on during the day and I'll keep doing those routine tasks. Do you know what I mean? I totally, it's like, I'm trying to work out something and then I reset and I, I do it again for me. If I can catch myself, okay, time to go for a bio break, just get up, right. Scramble the neural net there. So when you lie down again, it's, it's, you're starting from scratch, right? I, Oh God, I find that so frustrating. Yes. Yes. I've been there multiple times. Um you know what else actually i just thought of it something that has changed is so i did that this is a low-tech dream tool or technique if we want to talk about the dream sharing please. So i had this really interesting experience um i participated in my first dream sharing group and it gave me such a different appreciation and perspective on dreaming and on my dream and so what it is is um so mark blackrove and julia lockhart they're based in wales and they have it's called dreams id and if you want to google it dreams id it is so cool so it's dreams interpretation and drawn so what they do is it's this dream sharing group and they do it all over the world they do these dream sharing groups all over the world and they you so for they they did one for me so I gathered a group of friends some old colleagues from my um old students from my master's program and dream researchers and we all got together and they helped me I shared a dream and then they helped me sort of they gave their perspective on potentially what they would have thought of the dream if it had been their dream and so it was really neat to get them to look at it with look at my dream yeah with fresh eyes and of. Fresh perspective and then while I was sharing my dream Julia was painting my dream so she literally painted a canvas of my dream and I have it in my office and it is so special um so what she does is she has this old copy of Freud's um Freud's like the dream bible right Like interpretation of dreams. And so what she does it with permission from the publisher, she takes a double page spread from the book, and she paints someone's dream. And so the really cool thing is that she's creating this visual of your dream. And then all of these words from Freud are coming out and she circles them. And it was uncanny how some of the words went with the visuals. Wow. So it was unbelievable how it happened. What did you learn about yourself going through such a unique experience? So what i learned was that i often explain my dreams to myself just by relating them to what's happening in my waking life so the dream was about i was wearing this long camel colored this really big swing coat very heavy wool winter coat and so i just assumed okay i dreamt of this coat because I had tried one on. And I actually didn't buy it because it was too expensive. So I thought, okay, I'm dreaming about it, because I really wanted that coat, but I didn't get it. But in my dream, then I created this scenario where it was almost like there was this, like pouch in the or a pocket in the back of the coat, and I was hiding someone I was I was protecting someone within the coat while there were all these people running around me trying to find this person and even though I never told anyone that I was hiding this person I felt like I was doing a good thing because I was protecting them somehow so um that was the first part of the dream and then the second part of the dream was there was this myth. And supposedly in my, and on the other side was a restaurant. And in order to eat at the restaurant, or I actually wanted to get a job at this restaurant, I had to fit through this mail slot, which was so bizarre. And, you know, like the comments that came out of the dream sharing group, I didn't understand it at all. And then someone was saying to me, well, maybe this is sort of this metaphorical way of trying to fit yourself into a job that maybe you don't feel is a good fit, or maybe you're trying to fit into a work culture that maybe you feel you're not, you know, suitable for or questioning, which I never would have. Isn't that interesting? Like, I never would have thought of that. It comes back, circle back to what we were talking about before was how, you know, these different interpretations can create reframes. And, you know, working with resilience in the sense that when people have challenges, sometimes they can't change the situation. But what allows them to handle the situation is a change in perspective, for example, from problem to possibility, from subjective to objective. But the idea of dream interpretations or different interpretations of a dream can completely, we can see our situation in a completely different light, which might embolden us or motivate us or enable us to tackle, to walk, to move through that challenge. That's what I just found fascinating. That's why I just want to kind of ask you, what did you learn about yourself? That's it. So that's, it's that new perspective and the reframing, I think, that has really been highlighted for me through the research over the year of researching for the book. And it just really highlights why dreams matter on their own, for all of the benefits that we get while we're sleeping, and all the ways we can use our dreams after for, you know, self-awareness, for introspection. It makes me think how, you know. Before I started meditating or doing yoga, I really didn't personally understand how it could, you know, give you different perspectives and it could be used for all the, all the different ways in introspective and introspection and self-awareness. And that's for me, how, what happens with dreams. It's this perfect state where you can have that you're you're given an opportunity to have look at things differently to have a different mindset to have a different perspective because you're dreaming and your brain is operating in a different mode i'm just very respectful of your time karen i just wanted to kind of drop back to something we had covered in our first conversation together about dreams and how they are connected to well-being and ill-being since we spoke so many months ago have you learned anything new that can contribute to how we can use dreams to help help us move from an ill state to more of a well state or to find more emotional regulation to find more mental well-being per se. So there's a lot of research that i'm learning that's being done right now on dreams and well-being and something really interesting um that i learned about about this pilot study to do with targeted dream incubation how so if you suffer from nightmares it often feels like or really stressful recurring bad dreams it can feel like they're never going to end it can feel like you're you're never going to find a way out and you feel really helpless and so one way as we talked about is to try and rewrite certain details or the ending of the dream. But another really powerful tool is to, by showing yourself, by guiding your dream thoughts as you're falling asleep. It shows you that you are in control, that you have control over, you're able to help shape your dreams. So it gives you this feeling of empowerment and control. So you don't feel helpless. And so there was this pilot study that was recently done on how you can use TDI to help reduce nightmares, because nightmares um can be a risk for suicidal thoughts and they found that the suicidal thoughts diminished after uh for the people who did the TDI because it gives you this feeling of okay I there's something I can do I can control these dream thoughts so that's I find that really interesting I'm excited to see what happens in that area um last time we also talked about anesthesia dreams yes and that is so fascinating so it's the group uh the dream team out of stanford and so they've been studying dreams that people have during anesthesia so you know i was told to sort of a way to understand this is when you're under anesthesia there's you're going through all these different brain states and picture it like a radio. Is say you're awake they try and keep patients at about 48 and they're in this calm relaxed state and what they found is that while they're in this calm relaxed state people are having these really these profound dream experiences and they're changing they're so profound of an experience to actually changing their waking well-being and so I was given an example there was a woman who had um had a knife attack and her her hand had been severely cut and when she went for surgery, she relived the knife attack very similarly to how reliving a traumatic experience during exposure therapy was. And so she kept reliving it, but she then hurt. So she would relive the attack. Then she had the surgery and then she looked in her hand was okay. And she kept going over the same loop. And it was, it turned, it was this positive experience because then she saw her hand was healed and she was better after. And so I was told that it's almost like you can think of it as this fast forward exposure therapy that's happening. And so now they're studying um this in the lab as well like out of the or as well as in the lab and i'm really interested to see how that can be used for well-being how can we you know use these tools to improve our well-being yeah the whole idea you said something i found quite profound you know we have our awaken experience but you also called it a dream experience i mean the brain it thinks it's going on regardless if we're sleeping or we're in an awake state but it's an experience that we're having one is maybe more sort of a fancy surreal and it's being created within our heads and the other one's sort of externally influenced but it's for me from you know my clinical psychology days and working with trauma way back when i just find that so interesting how we can use our internal environment and even our sleeping state and the information that is taken from that dream state. And if we can capture it, if we can articulate those abstract thoughts sometimes into concrete words and then look at it, again, it comes back to me, to whether it's well-being or ill-being, whether it's having nice dreams, daydreams or nightmares, and how we can interpret this and maybe share with someone we truly trust and respect and thinking, what do you make of this? And he or she, a friend, family, a colleague, again, well-trusted and respected, they can say, well, this is what I would read into it. And just having that objective perspective of something that is so personal to us, that that was part of our dream state, that can be a little bit of a door opener to a solution. And all of a sudden, it is a way of processing, whether it is suicidal ideation, whether it's negative dreams or nightmares or what have you, in a whole different way. Because sometimes it's just one small thing that can open up a universe of perspective to help us to find more mental resilience or emotional resilience. That I totally agree. And so when I was interviewing and chatting with different dream researchers. The thing that really inspired me that the name of the book, The Brain Never Sleeps, was inspired by all these conversations, because when you look at. You know, we exist on this 24 hour continuum of thought and experience, and the brain never sleeps, it never shuts off, there's no on off switch. So the experiences that we have during the day and the experiences that we have in our dreams can be just as impactful and they can help shape us and help us understand ourselves better and others and that really sort of turned a light on for me to let me understand dreams in a different way if you look at dreams along this continuum of experience then it for me it makes sense why they can be so powerful because if we think about experiences in our waking life and how they can affect our thoughts and our emotions and our behavior you know it makes sense why some impactful profound dreams can have the same effect on us well karen it's been a blast again i'm sure there'll be a part three but you know we've talked about such an interesting topic it is part of every person's life if someone wants to learn more about you your writings what you do can you share some of where they can reach out to you or they can read your your research and such so uh the brain never sleeps comes out february 2026 and in the meantime i'm going to be sharing some of the research some of the really cool stuff that i've learned along the way so if people want to follow me at science of you and me on Instagram. I'm going to be sharing some of the research and some of the conversations I had. It's been so interesting. It's been such a wonderful project. And thanks so much for chatting with me and having me back on your show. This has been fun. Always, Karen. I'll make sure all those links are in the show notes, folks. Thanks so much. Thanks, Karen. As we wrap up this incredible conversation with Karen, it's clear that our dreams are far more than just random nightly occurrences. Karen's year-long deep dive has truly cemented her appreciation for their profound role in memory consolidation, emotional processing, and even problem-solving. We explore fascinating creative avenues like the Dream Salon, where shared interpretation and visual art, well, how it brought new dimensions to understanding our subconscious narratives. Karen's experience with her dream about a coat and a mail slot, well, interpreted by Julia Lockhart, really highlighted how a fresh perspective can unlock surprising layers of meaning moving beyond our initial waking life interpretations. We also discussed how dreams offer new perspectives and can help with emotional regulation, with targeted dream incubation showing real promise in reducing nightmares and empowering individuals, and that intriguing study on dreams during anesthesia. It just further underscores the brain's continuous processing, even in a calm, relaxed state. We touched on how dreams parallel our waking life concerns and the potential for dream analysis to build mental resilience. The core insight I hinted at in the intro, the one that truly ties all this together, is that dreams are your brain's personalized, continuous narrative, tirelessly working to process, organize, and make sense of your experiences, both past and present. They are a powerful, often overlooked resource for self-understanding. Emotional healing, and creative problem solving, equipping you with the internal tools to navigate your waking life with greater clarity and resilience. Karen, a personal thank you. I appreciate you going around too with me. I had, again, another brilliant conversation. I find dreams fascinating. And I look forward to talking to you once your book is launched in February of 26. Folks you will find all of karen's contact information and links in the show notes and to our previous conversation if you have any questions please send them my way i'm always open to hear your feedback and your comments and until bite-sized friday keep well keep strong and we will speak soon. Music.