The paper suggests that dreams provide imagined unavoidable situations. If we play with our dream and change the in-dream behavior, it can affect our waking behavior. This change can be less mentally painful than change while awake.
References
Eichler-Summers, J. (2019, February 10). A Suggestion for a New Interpretation of Dreams: Dreaming Is the Inverse of Anxious Mind-Wandering. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/k6trz