As we rest our heads on our favorite pillow and finally doze off into a deep slumber, our brains create the wildest dreams that transport us into an. Ones that contain an alternate reality filled with familiarities of our real lives.
When we experience one of those outlandish dreams that make us wake up abruptly in a puddle of sweat, we question why our mind and body allowed this to occur.
Why did I dream that all my teeth fell out? Why did I dream I was pregnant? As we further examine and journal our dreams, it is possible that fantasies that happen during our sleep can reflect events in our day-to-day lives.
Deep Diving Into the Unconscious
Before psychoanalyzing every aspect of our dreams, it is important to understand how our brains compute such vivid dreams. The brain implements actions, perceptions and varying objects to create an almost hallucinogenic experience in our sleep.
Our memory plays a role in dream-making as our brain pulls from recent experiences and uses fragments of it to formulate a novel dream. The region of the brain responsible for memories is the hippocampus.
This area of the brain has a strong association with memories, short and long-term. There is no solid answer to why we dream. Dreams use all the senses aside from visual imagery.
Can Dreams Turn Into Reality?
Many scientists theorize on why we dream and if there is meaning behind it. The interpretation of our dreams has caused a debate amongst scientists for decades.
The famous icon in the psychology world, who’s known for theorizing a son’s attraction to their mothers, believes our dreams have more meaning below the surface. Sigmund Freud introduced the wish-fulfillment theory, stating how our dreams carry out wishes that cannot be completed in our real lives. Freud emphasizes on ego and super ego’s oppression of these unconscious desires.
It is a universal experience to have dreamt of a pregnancy, teeth falling out, or waking up late for an important event. In a quick Google search, we find answers to our panicking questions on why we dreamt this without reason in our realities. Our internet quests to find answers lead us to interpret how that dream can explain or relate to our current situation.
We can find peace of mind within our dreams. Although dreaming of pregnancy can freak us out at that moment, we can find deeper meaning and interpret a bun in the oven as symbolizing growth or a transformation occurring in our real lives.
It Was All A Dream
Contrasting to Freudian beliefs, dreams can ultimately mean nothing but a neurological process. Some scientists and theorists believe our dreams don’t have true meaning in our lives. Their scientific approach attempts to explain why our brains create dreams by pulling bits and pieces from past events.
A popularized theory is the activation-synthesis hypothesis which describes how our dreams originate from electrical impulses that pull random thoughts from memory. This hypothesis sounds cut and dry as our dreams are truly a figment of our imagination.
We can find a sense of comfort in theories that do not support further interpretation of dreams. Sometimes, we dream of horrible and unimaginable events that instill fear in us. If our dreams do not have subliminal messages, then those bad dreams have zero implications for our future lives.
Journaling All the Good, Bad and Ugly Dreams
Although our dreaming varies from being unforgettable to instant amnesia as we wake up, we can find benefits in writing down our remembrance of dreams. The power of a dream journal can go as far as our imagination.
It is advised to set our journals on our bedside and write down details immediately after waking up. As a result, we can remember many details and narratives derived from our dreams that can help us understand the logic and patterns within ourselves.
Further interpretation of dreams depends on the individual but freewriting our dreams allows us to remember great ideas or inventions mentioned in our hallucinatory experiences or reveal more about our unique dream patterns.
We are all dreamers once our eyes shut for the rest of the night. Tag @VALLEYmag on Instagram about your wildest dreams that make you think deeper than the surface!
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