How Do Dreams Work
Dreams
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep — when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable. The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes. People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven; however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten. Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.
According to Sigmund Freud dreams are those poems we tell ourselves at night in order to experience our unconscious wishes as real. Dreams allow us to be what we cannot be, and to say what we do not say, in our more repressed daily lives. For instance, if I dream about burning my workplace down, it’s probably because I want to dominate the workplace but am too nervous to admit that aggressive drive when I’m awake and trying to be nice to the people who might give me a raise.
Freud certainly had a catchy theory about dreams, but it was also limited. For him, every single dream was the picture of an unconscious wish. But people who have had boring dreams or nightmares might feel something missing from that formulation. In turn, recent theorists have tried to give a more accurate account of why we dream.
This are the 5 theories on why we dreams:
1. We Dream to Practice Responses to Threatening Situations
Ever notice that most dreams have a blood-surging urgency to them? In dreams, we often find ourselves naked in public, or being chased, or fighting an enemy, or sinking in quicksand. Antti Revonsuo, a Finnish cognitive scientist, has shown that our amygdala (the fight-or-flight piece of the brain) fires more than normal when we’re in REM sleep (the time in sleep when we dream). In REM sleep, the brain fires in similar ways as it does when it’s specifically threatened for survival. In addition to that, the part of the brain that practices motor activity (running, punching) fires increasingly during REM sleep, even though the limbs are still. In other words, Revonsuo and other evolutionary theorists argue that in dreams, we are actually rehearsing fight-and-flight responses, even though the legs and arms are not actually moving. They say that dreams are an evolutionary adaptation: We dream in order to rehearse behaviors of self-defense in the safety of nighttime isolation. In turn, get better at fight-or-flight in the real world.
2. Dreams Create Wisdom
If we remembered every image of our waking lives, it would clog our brains. So, dreams sort through memories, to determine which ones to retain and which to lose. He put rats in mazes during the day, and recorded what neurons fired in what patterns as the rats negotiated the maze. When he watched the rats enter REM sleep, he saw that the same neuron patterns fired that had fired at choice turning points in the maze. In other words, he saw that the rats were dreaming of important junctures in their day. He argues that sleep is the process through which we separate the memories worth encoding in long-term memory from those worth losing. Sleep turns a flood of daily information into what we call wisdom: the stuff that makes us smart for when we come across future decisions.
3. Dreaming is Like Defragmenting Your Hard Drive
Francis Crick (who co-discovered the structure of DNA) and Graeme Mitchison put forth a famously controversial theory about dreams in 1983 when they wrote that “we dream in order to forget.” They meant that the brain is like a machine that gets in the groove of connecting its data in certain ways (obsessing or defending or retaining), and that those thinking pathways might not be the most useful for us. But, when we sleep, the brain fires much more randomly. And it is this random scouring for new connections that allows us to loosen certain pathways and create new, potentially useful, ones. Dreaming is a shuffling of old connections that allows us to keep the important connections and erase the inefficient links. A good analogy here is the defragmentation of a computer’s hard drive: Dreams are a reordering of connections to streamline the system.
4. Dreams Are Like Psychotherapy
But what about the emotion in dreams? Aren’t dreams principally the place to confront difficult and surprising emotions and sit with those emotions in a new way? Ernest Hartmann, a doctor at Tufts, focuses on the emotional learning that happens in dreams. He has developed the theory that dreaming puts our difficult emotions into pictures. In dreams, we deal with emotional content in a safe place, making connections that we would not make if left to our more critical or defensive brains. In this sense, dreaming is like therapy on the couch: We think through emotional stuff in a less rational and defensive frame of mind. Through that process, we come to accept truths we might otherwise repress. Dreams are our nightly psychotherapy.
5. The Absence of Theory
Of course, others argue that dreams have no meaning at all — that they are the random firings of a brain that don’t happen to be conscious at that time. The mind is still “functioning” insofar as it’s producing images, but there’s no conscious sense behind the film. Perhaps it’s only consciousness itself that wants to see some deep meaning in our brains at all times.
Types of Dreams
Daydreams
You spend an average of 70–120 minutes a day, daydreaming or fantasizing from a perspective that transcends normal perception. Between consciousness and the sleep state is an area that allows the imagination to wander. As your level of awareness decreases, you lose your sense of self. You may revisit the past, or explore the future, and in doing so, approach the border of the dreamscape. All the while, consciousness keeps pulling you back into the present.
Lucid Dreams
Lucid dreams occur when you ‘wake up’ while dreaming. Sometimes this sudden sense of knowing you are dreaming allows you to do fantastic things like fly over the houses you see. Many people actually wake themselves up within the dream to remain in this lucid state to explore how they can influence dreams. This ability to achieve the lucid dream state is an important initiation into mastering the power of thought and its ability to influence events.
Nightmares
The nightmare often causes you to wake up in a state of panic with your heart racing. Not wanting to go back to sleep, the memory of the dream appears all too real. Sometimes a dream can reflect actual trauma or an unresolved crisis, although the nightmare is always a WAKE UP CALL to learn to let go. Whether you are attempting to overcome a real life crisis, or to transcend non-rational fear, dreaming is a ‘safe place’ that allows these difficult ideas to be explored. Perhaps you cannot recognize that ‘you are on the wrong path,’ and so, the nightmare may recur until the situation is resolved. Nature appears to empower the strength of all of its creatures. In keeping you authentic and open to growth, it asks only that you let go of what can no longer serve you.
A nightmare can be as simple as ‘leaving something behind’ while you hurry to your destination. It can be as frightening as actually experiencing death or dismemberment as you awaken to the idea of letting go. More than any other dream, the nightmare will disturb you so profoundly, that it cannot be forgotten. It is a natural mechanism, which forces you to confront the truth about how you are hiding from life. Once these fearful feelings are transformed into authentic power, the nightmare will not recur. More information on nightmares is available in the Dream Dictionary.
Recurring Dreams
Recurring dreams are story lines or themes that repeat themselves over weeks, months and even years. Sometimes they leave you feeling puzzled because they seem irrational. Dreams ever seek to wake you to what you are not facing and the hero’s journey of wellness through the dreamscape is explored in The Mythology of Sleep: The Waking Power of Dreams. Dreams have a way of forcing consciousness into perplexity, as an important aspect of transformation. At times, a recurring dream can be extremely frightening. Since dreams are suggesting what you fail to acknowledge in daily life, whatever you are avoiding or not facing will continue to be the subject matter of your dream, until it is resolved. Like nightmares, once the puzzle is solved and the aspect is integrated into consciousness, the dream will not recur. Even the most frightening dreams are meant to awaken you to your real nature.
Dreams About Healing
Many times vehicle doors, or lower and upper rooms of a house will depict aspects of the body, offering a message about your health and well-being. The front door can suggest arms, while the back doors can represent legs. Lighting or electrical circuitry can be neurological, while water problems can suggest psychological, vascular or ‘plumbing’ issues. The top floor of a building can represent the head, while the rooms below can suggest various parts of the lower body.
Protecting a ‘treasure’ can signify repression at the root of illness, while searching for a key is often the clue to wellness. If you are experiencing ‘dis-ease’, where it is taking place in the body is as important as why. If the left leg is suffering, look for its representation in dreams of ground floor doors, or lower left portion of a structure or vehicle. Sometimes before a physical manifestation will appear, you are warned in advance of over indulgence or things that can impact your wellness. Many therapists recognize repression at the root of illness. Since dreams portray what you are repressing, they are a profound tool in achieving wellness and balance.
Prophetic Dreams
The ‘dream cycle’ is a lot like ‘myth cycles.’ In our ancient stories, the hero is tested in exotic landscapes, finding clues in fantastic places. The adventure allows them to uncover the truth about both, their identity and destiny. Similarly, the changing landscape and clues within a dream cycle captures the essence of why we dream. When a dream is observed to ‘morph’ into different landscapes, the dream is described: ‘it seemed like the same dream, but then it changed…’
The dream cycle usually presents the idea of transormation in three stages:
a) The first shows you as ‘the hero’ facing a current life challenge.
b) The second shows the past and the part it played in creating this condition.
c) Finally, you are given a bizarre clue as to how you can transform to meet the future. This portion has unusual images that will allow you to discover your real identity and therefore, your destiny.
In the first portion, you explore the conflict at hand and are given the symbolism that can help you understand it objectively. The second landscape usually portrays family members and symbolism from the past, describing how the current crisis was created. The third portion of the dream is usually the most bizarre, as the transforming aspect of the psyche pushes you beyond your static sense of self. This portion can be prophetic or when compared against future events, will portray actual information that can be validated.
Dreams can be called The Mind’s Mirror because they have a special predisposition for reflecting aspects of you in a way that is puzzling or strange. The ‘newness’ or bizarre imagery of the dreamscape provides the innovative perspective that is necessary to achieve transformation. The third portion of the dream offers information about the ‘missing link’ in overcoming conflict or crisis.
Understanding your dreams will make more sense to you when once you recognize how dreams have an uncanny way of breaking through the walls of consciousness. The synchronistic aspect of the final setting may simply be the result of how your unconscious mind knows what is coming, before you consciously piece the information together.
Life Changing Dreams
During periods when you are actively undergoing transformation, you will experience Great Dreams or Cosmic Dreams, which are rich in mythological associations. They often portray a meeting with universal archetypes such as The Great Mother or Wise Man. These dreams affect you with such emotion and appear so vivid that you remember them for years. In many ways, you would call them life changing. Revisiting these dream themes to contrast the symbolism against ancient mythology can present you with a more profound understanding of its message. See The Mythology of Sleep: The Waking Power of Dreams.
