What Do You Dream?

Do you believe that dreams mean anything? We all dream, even if we don’t remember our dreams, it is a normal part of our lives. We drift off to sleep and, in our minds, we go into another world — hopefully a nice world. I’ve had many dreams of my mum (she died of breast cancer), and I feel indescribable joy — we are both smiling, happy, cuddling — and it seems so real! I like to ‘believe’ that mum visits me from the other side. We were close when she was alive, more like a sister than a mum, and yes, I do miss her even after 20 years!

What do you think? Dreams have always been studied and researched. From Bible time, certain ‘mystics’ have claimed to interpret dreams, saying that they are scenes about the future, guiding us in what we should and should not do (I’m not sure how this would apply to nightmares). Actual researchers try to find ‘physical’ reasons for dreams. The scientific study of dreams is called “Oneirology”, and one such study tells us that “dreams result from a process that often combines fragments of multiple life experiences and anticipates future events, according to novel evidence from a new study. Results show that 53.5% of dreams were traced to a memory, 50% of reports with a memory source were connected to multiple past experiences”, (June 2021, Science Daily).

The study of dreams can overlap with neurology and vary from quantifying dreams, to analyzing brain waves during dreaming, to studying the effects of drugs and neurotransmitters on sleeping or dreaming. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that your body can’t function without. These carry chemical signals (messages) from one neuron (nerve cell) to another nerve cell, muscle cell or glands. Studies show that these can affect REM sleep and (possibly) dreaming. Am I losing you?

Our brains naturally produce DMT (dimethyltryptamine) during REM sleep, and this appears to stimulate various areas of the brain relating to visual reception, and thus our dreams. Enough of the long words!

We know that eating certain foods can affect our dreaming (when asleep). For example, foods that contain the vitamin B6 (whole grain cereals, cheese, bananas) can give us “lucid dreams” — dreams that we remember. Writing these dreams down in a journal can help us with our mental health.

Do dreams mean anything? It is generally thought that dreams are our minds' way of working things out — whilst we’re asleep. They can be meaningful because “they deal with the sort of personal conflicts and emotional struggles that people are experiencing in their daily lives, (Washington Post). Dreams can be a ‘gauge’, telling us how we are doing emotionally and mentally (and possibly physically). If we have a difficult struggle, something that we are worrying about ‘a lot’, this can come out in our unconscious dreams. Do you remember as a child, having a nasty dream because of a film you watched? (Of course, this can happen to adults too).

It is said that there are 3 types of dreams: 1) Passive imagination, 2) Dream illusions, and 3) dream-hallucinations. We can’t really talk about dreams without mentioning Sigmund Freud. He did many studies of dreams and believed that he could interpret them. He believed that studying dreams could provide a road to understanding the unconscious activities of the mind. Freud got his patients to talk about their dreams, hoping to ‘find out’ what was on their minds, even as a therapist would ask their patients to write down their dreams in a journal, hoping to find out ‘what the problem is’.

Some attempt to interpret dreams to find out a physical or mental problem. Others believe that dreams are ‘messages’ from a spiritual realm, and there are many books written on this type of dream interpretation.

Whatever you personally believe, having a dream journal is a good way of helping the person to ‘keep an eye’ on their mental health. What the eye sees, the mind (can sometimes) play on. Look at something nice and the mind should be calmer.

So, what do you think? Can dreams mean anything?