Dreams can be fascinating,
exciting, terrifying, or bizarre. Adults and babies dream for around two hours per night. People usually have several dreams each
night. Each dream typically lasts for between five to 20 minutes. During a typical lifetime, people spend an
average of six years dreaming.
As
much as 95% of all dreams are quickly forgotten shortly after waking. According
to one theory about why dreams
so difficult to remember, the changes
in the brain
that occur during sleep do not support the information processing and storage
needed for memory formation to take place. Brain
scans of sleeping individuals have shown that the frontal lobes—the area that
plays a key role in memory
formation—are
inactive during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage in which dreaming
occurs.Researchers have found some differences between men and women when it comes to the content of their dreams. Men reported dreaming about weapons significantly more often than women did, while women dreamed about references to clothing more often than men.
Men's
dreams tend to have more aggressive content and physical activity, while
women's dreams contain more rejection and exclusion, as well as more
conversation than physical activity. Women
tend to have slightly longer dreams that feature more characters. When it comes
to the characters that typically appear in dreams, men dream about other men
twice as often as they do about women, while women tend to dream about both
sexes equally.
A
lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming even though
you're still asleep. Lucid dreaming is thought to be a combination state of
both consciousness and REM sleep, during which you can often direct
or control the dream content. Approximately half of all people can remember
experiencing at least one instance of lucid dreaming, and some individuals are
able to have lucid dreams quite frequently.
REM sleep is characterized by paralysis of
the voluntary muscles. The phenomenon is known as REM atonia and prevents you
from acting out your dreams while you're asleep. Basically, because motor
neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move. In some cases, this
paralysis can even carry over into the waking state for as long as 10 minutes,
a condition known as sleep paralysis. While the experience can be frightening,
experts advise that it is perfectly normal and should last only a few minutes
before normal muscle control returns.
Consider
the personal meaning of your dreams. The things you experience in your dreams
are a reflection of the concerns you face in your daily existence. Can you
learn your unconscious wishes and desires by interpreting your dreams? Take a
closer look at some of the most common dreams and what they mean:
Being Chased- Dreams
that feature being pursued by a known or unknown attacker can be particularly
terrifying. What do these dreams say about what's going on inside your mind?
Such dreams suggest that you are trying to avoid something in your daily life.
This dream might indicate a desire to escape from your own fears or desires.
The key to understanding what
such a dream might mean depends partly on the identity of your pursuer. Being
chased by an animal might indicate that you are hiding from your own anger,
passions, and other feelings. If your pursuer is a mysterious, unknown figure,
it might represent a childhood experience or past trauma.
If you are being chased by
someone of the opposite sex, it means you are afraid of love or haunted by a
past relationship. Usually it’s not anything in particular but just the feeling
like you’re being chased, and so you run and run. In the dream of course,
running and ‘pushing’ your leg muscles to run faster does nothing but slow you
down.
Drowning-If you dream about
drowning, it means that you’re worried about losing control. Many dreams are
about freedom, control, or fears. These are the forces which guide our dreams,
those and also love. Dreaming about drowning means you’re feeling overwhelmed
and helpless. Consider which areas of your life need fixing, and then do it.
Dying- Dreamers
sometimes dream of the death of a loved one or even dream of dying themselves.
Popular dream interpretations sometimes suggest that such dreams reflect
anxiety about change (or a fear of the unknown). Like death, change can be
scary because we do not know what is on the other side of the change, which is
why the dreaming mind equates change with death.
Dreaming about the death of a
loved one can reflect a similar fear of change especially with regards to
children reaching milestones and growing up. Such changes indicate that a child
is growing up and a parent's mind begins to wonder where the younger version of
the child went. Such dreams of dying reflect a sort of mourning for the
inevitable passage of time. Death dreams are fairly personal like most dreams,
and so you can’t really put a label on what a death dream means.
On a simpler level though, a
dream about death can actually just mean you’re accepting that you’re changing
into someone else. When we change, it’s said that we die a ‘small death’,
meaning a part of who we were dies and makes way for the person we’re becoming.
You’re changing and your brain and body are trying to make sense of it, and
sometimes that just appears in the form of dreaming about dying.
Exams- Taking
an exam in your dreams might reveal an underlying fear of failure. Exams are
stressful experiences in which you are made to face up to your shortcomings. To
dream of failing an exam, being late for one, or being unprepared shows that
you feel unprepared for the challenges of waking life.
This type of dream can just mean that you’re
being put to the test in waking life, or you feel like you’re being judged by
the people around you. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and sometimes it’s
just your brain saying you’re being examined by people.
Falling- Dreams
It is a myth that if you hit the ground in your dream you will die in real
life. Falling dreams are a sign that something in your life isn't going well.
It might suggest that you need to consider a new direction in some area of your
life. Falling is a symbol of fear in real life, or perhaps of failing at work
or in your love life. Falling often expresses a need to let go more and enjoy
life more. Falling dreams
are super common among people of all ages. It can
mean that you’re feeling hopeless and even depressed.
Flying- Dreams
about flying can be exciting, and even liberating but they can sometimes
be quite frightening (especially for those afraid of heights). Dreams about
flying often represent t feelings of independence, or escaping from the
realities of life. Flying most frequently involves positive feelings of
pleasure. Flying may depict our sexuality as to aspects of it expressing
freedom from social norms.
Losing Teeth- Losing
teeth might mean that you are worried about your attractiveness or appearance,
concerned about your ability to communicate, or said something embarrassing. The
real essence of teeth is their ability to bite through, to cut, tear, and
grind. If your teeth fall out, you lose personal power and your ability to be
assertive, decisive, and self-protective.
When we’re young and we lose our
teeth for the first time (our milk teeth to make way for the real ones), we’re
scared it’s usually the first traumatic thing we experience as children. It’s
no surprise that the brain links this first experience of fear and trauma with
other things in life that make you feel scared or uneasy. That’s why if you
dream about your teeth falling out as an adult, it just means you’re worried
about the changes going on in your life at that moment.
Public Nudity- Have
you ever have one of those awkward dreams where you show up at school or the
office in your birthday suit? Don't worry. Dreaming about being naked is hardly
unusual. Dreaming of public nudity might indicate that you
feel like a phony or that you are afraid of revealing your shortcomings. We all
fear being embarrassed in front of the larger society.
From a young age we’re told that
we should always cover up so as to not expose ourselves to people. This means
that to dream about being naked means you’re worried about how people will
think of you. You’re worried in some way about the way you appear to a friend
or family member. Pay attention to how often you have this dream, and think
about ways you can reduce the amount you worry.
Spiders-Spiders are probably
one of the most commonly feared insects along with snakes and wasps. To dream
about something you fear is normal, and actually it’s a good way of getting
over your fears. Through lucid dreaming you can actually remove your fears and
the way you do this is by just dreaming about the thing you’re scared of more
and more.
After a while you
start to get used to, and become less scared of it. If you’re scared of spiders
and you keep dreaming about them, work with that and just keep dreaming about
them. Try and turn it into a lucid dream actually, and you’ll eventually overcome
your fear altogether.
Trapped- To dream about
being trapped tends to mean you’re just worried about your current situation. This
can mean your job, relationship or even which country you’re in. Your mind
tends to show you things in a subtle way so if you’re worried about your job
holding you back from traveling. Your brain might create a dream in which
you’re trapped. A dream about being trapped in a small space usually means
you’re just not happy with where you are, and you want to change your current
situation.
“Legend says that when you can't sleep at night it's because you're
awake in someone else's dream” (Anonymous)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“10 Interesting Facts about Dreams” By Kendra Cherry
·
“101
Most Common Dream Meanings: How To Interpret Your Dreams Instantly” by HowtoLucid.com
·
“15 Interesting Facts about Dreams” by Lina
D
·
“9 Common Dreams
and What They Supposedly Mean” By Kendra Cherry
This
topic was suggested by friend and blog member, Jan Bahr.
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