What are your Dreams Trying to Tell You? The Psychology Behind Dreaming.
Why do we dream? Do they actually mean anything? Dreams are equally as fascinating as they are mystical.
Think back to last night when you climbed into bed after a long, tiring, stressful day, you snuggle up under the cool, fresh, crisp sheets. A shiver of comfort surges through your whole body, right down from your head, across your back and into the tip of your toes.
But …
Suddenly what seems like just mere seconds later you’re fighting a family of 3-headed purple dragons with a plastic water gun on the streets of an abandoned Italian town!
This ladies and gentlemen is the mind-boggling phenomenon known as dreaming.
Of course we all know what dreams are but what most people don’t know is why we have them, and what they actually mean?
I want to share with you all the most fascinating aspects and facts about dreams and the psychology behind it all!
What do Dreams Mean?
Research carried out on dreams has become more and more extensive over time. Scientists and psychologists across the globe have been arguing about the true meaning of dreams for centuries — there are many different theories with varying ideologies, but one thing that all these theories have in common is how incredibly interesting they are.
Sigmund Freud, potentially the most famous psychologist of all time believed that dreams are a manifestation of our deepest desires. anxieties and fears, often related to oppressed childhood experiences.
However, there are many more theories circulating in the world of science today that may be more plausible …
1. Dreams help you Express the Emotions that you Might be Suppressing.
Some theorists are suggesting that dreams are an optimal way of processing and regulating our emotions. Research shows that negative emotions feature in our dreams 3 times as many as positive ones.
This coincides with the theory because Diane C. Marti suggests we don’t tend to work through negative emotion when awake, purposely neglecting them and so your brain is forced to do so on its own.
“When you refuse to confront your negative emotions while you’re awake, the brain works on combating the negative emotion without you while you sleep at night, causing these emotions to surface in your unconscious dreaming state.”
“The best bridge between hope and despair, is a good night’s sleep” — E. Jospeh Cossman
2. Preparing for Future Threat!
Out of the vast array of dream theories, in my opinion, this may be one of the other least plausible ones, but there is no denying that it is extremely interesting.
This theory suggests that dreams prepare people for threats by considering, imagining and mentally stimulating the negative outcomes of potential future events.
This is believed by some researchers because the negative emotion most prevalent in dreams is anxiety, which has an evolutionary function to help people anticipate negative occurrences.
Additional to this, there have been many examples where people have described having detailed dreams about an event before it had occurred in real-time — A famous example of this is Abraham Lincoln …
About 2 weeks before his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln described a recent dream to his wife and a few of his friends.
He dreamed of walking through the White House until he came upon his own corpse, guarded and lying in state in the East Room — exactly where his casket rested after his death.
3. Memory Organization and Information Processing
The majority of dreams that you have occur during REM sleep and the dreams during this stage tend to be more vivid. Studies have shown that REM sleep can improve spatial memory — Spatial memory is the part of memory responsible for relaying information about the location of places and objects
Therefore, it’s believed by some researchers that dreams are like purgatory for memories, recent memories are being transferred into your long-term memory from your short-term one.
Additionally, it’s thought that our dreams help create space for useful information, they eradicate useless and irrelevant memories by emphasizing the important memories and information we’ve recently encountered allowing it to be stored long-term.
Almost like a mental clean-out:
“The theory is that while we dream, the brain is sorting through what information it should keep and what it should forget,” she says. And to help further the process, our mind creates images and stories to optimally manage all of this activity.”
There are so many other theories on why we have dreams and so many other mind-boggling facts about dreams in general. The most interesting part is still how unknown it all is, just like the ocean we have so much more to explore and learn about sleep and dreaming!
What do you think? Let me know if you have any of your own theories as to why we might dream! Also, if you find this kind of thing interesting, why not give me a follow as I will be publishing more articles discussing fascinating topics surrounding the amazing field of psychology.
Much appreciated! :)
