Whether it’s a predisposition for anxiety, a job that makes you miserable, or effects of a major life event, NBC reports that bad dreams don’t have to ruin your life.

Because dreams aren’t quantifiable, like other areas of sleep science, there’s no consensus on what meaning they hold for our day-to-day life, said Dr. Rebecca Robbins, a co-author of “Sleep for Success” and a postdoctoral research fellow at the NYU School of Medicine.