Dreams say more than you think

‘I really dreamed the whole night, it was just over when I woke up,’ I shouted to my friend while brushing my teeth.  When he wanted to know what it was about, he was already gone, I thought and thought and thought but the dream was resolved in my subconscious. I don’t dream much and not often, but when I’m busy in my sleep  it actually always means that my day or week or life is just a bit too busy.

What you need to know about dreams to understand them?

Your dreams are most intense during REM sleep, the moment when your body and brain recharge. You have REM sleep several times a night, the first is usually short and feels like a trailer of a series, but the second is much longer and can feel like a complete movie with a plot. Professor Stickgold from Harvard emphasizes that it is unlikely we remember more than 10 percent of a dream, because we simply dream too much in one night.

Dreams are a combination of early memories, recent events, and everything in between. You get a lot from your day or week, Freud also called this the day residue. Nicely explained and phrased, I thought.

You never literally dream an event. If this is the case, you probably suffer from post-traumatic stress. Your brain determines what you dream by making a selection from your most valuable new memories, which you may not fully understand yet. Furthermore, you dream about what your brain has connected to those new memories and that one toilet from that lunchroom you visited that week can suddenly pop up. For filling, that toilet means little.

The brain seems to prioritize emotional memories. So it is likely that you dream about an emotion you feel or have felt that day. About that one big argument or the fear of losing your job.

But you also have the more general dream that more people have. For example, over 80 percent have been chased at some point, 76.5 percent have ever had a sexually charged dream and 74 percent dream about falling. It doesn’t always mean the same thing, because we all sometimes dream about losing our teeth. This is a memory from the past that almost everyone has. It’s important to look at a recent event: what triggered that memory in that dream? Is there something in your life that evokes the same feeling as then? It can be positive (because of the tooth fairy) or negative (because of a doorknob with a string). That makes it different for you than for your colleague.

By the way, it’s not strange if you don’t remember your dreams, but you can train it. Stay in bed when you wake up, keep your eyes closed and try to stay in your dream. Write down immediately what it was about or record it on your phone.

One thing is for sure: your dreams say more than you think about what you feel. But Professor (from Harvard) emphasizes, they don’t give you answers but only show the solutions. Actually, a dream is just a very cheap psychiatrist, if you use it the right way.

Source: Huffpost