My Dreams Are Telling Me What I Need To Heal From

Do you believe dreams are trying to tell us something or are they just the result of brain chemistry doing its thing as we get our REM sleep?

We all have certain dreams that shake us to our core, leaving us filled with anxiety, fear, and confusion. I think these dreams are telling us the most.

Personally, I have a few different dreams that pop up frequently, I always wake up in a panic relieved it isn’t reality.

As unpleasant as these dreams can be, they are important.

Dreams serve as a sort of doorway allowing us to access our subconscious.

There is so much going on in our subconscious that we don’t realize. The subconscious mind is working twenty-four hours, seven days a week in the background. It determines our memories, stores our values and morals, and keeps an eye on everything around us. It then decides what to send to the conscious mind and what to store for later.

Therefore, our dreams are telling us we have unresolved trauma wreaking havoc on our minds and bodies.

They’re telling us we need to deal with this stuff in order to improve our mental health and move on with our lives.

As a recovering alcoholic with chronic depression, I’ve spent years in active addiction, ignoring all my trauma and just trying to not feel anything.

Now at two months sober I’m unpacking all the trauma and issues I’ve ignored my entire life and am finally dealing with it all.

My dreams are telling me what to focus on.

I have one reoccurring dream that is really messing me up, but the message is pretty clear after writing notes about my dreams and analyzing them later.

This one particular dream happens nightly and has to do with my abandonment issues.

I keep having this dream where my mom comes back and convinces my dad to give up on me because I’m useless and will never stop being an alcoholic.

Just for clarity, my mom never abandoned me, but at age twelve when she died of brain cancer, my little pre-teen brain felt abandoned and alone. Especially because my father was drinking and filled with grief and couldn’t really take care of me.

So even though I was never really abandoned, these abandonment issues have had a tremendous impact on my life.

I am extremely needy when it comes to relationships, especially with women. I cling on for dear life if I feel a hint of love because growing up it was so scarce. I guess it still is.

The only unconditional love I have in my life is from my dog but I’m pretty sure that’s because I’m her sole source of food, just kidding, she loves me.

Although all of the above is a tad depressing, these dreams are helping me.

They’ve resulted in me seeking therapy to deal with these issues.

I’ve also been focusing on loving myself, because really that’s all that matters.

We are born alone, and we die alone, so we really only have ourselves in the end, this is why self-love is the most important kind of love.

It’s also a prerequisite to loving anybody else.

It’s been a long journey from self-loathing to self-love but I’m getting there.

I’d like to leave you with once piece of advice that really helped me.

Start a dream journal if you are having vivid dreams. Write some notes about them when you wake up and after a while go back and read them over.

You’ll notice patterns and reoccurring themes that can guide you in realizing what parts of your life you need to work on.

So listen to your dreams and try to decipher what they are telling you.