Dreams and Their Interpretations

Dreams are a series of thoughts, images, and feelings that occur involuntarily in a person's mind while they sleep.

Sigmund Freud defined dreams as a disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish. In the mental health field, doctors use Oneiroscopy which is the study of patient's mental status by analyzing their dreams. Alas, one does not have to be a doctor to understand or evaluate dreams. This is demonstrated in one field by simply entering a book store and finding a book on dream analysis. However, interpreting dreams through a book is can be misguiding as it would be by buying a set of tarot cards and taking the death card as a literal translation that one will die.

I often guide people to discipline themselves to keep a dream diary or journal. It doesn't have to be fancy. A notebook and pencil will do fine. The goal is, upon wakening, to immediately write down as much of the dream that they can remember in the book. By having dated pages with dream entries, a person without any special training can often unfold explanations in their subconscious to situations or events that could be affecting them in a way that they might not be consciously able to recognize. This includes stress, upset, anger, fear, job insecurities, mourning the loss of someone, worry of children, etc. And, unlike Sigmund Freud, what you discover has nothing to do with sexual frustrations and your mother!

There are people who claim that they never dream. This could happen possibly due to sleep medications or other sleep aids. It could also be that they are not achieving all four stages of sleep. Dreams can often be absent in a person's memory if they are also exhausted. The transitional phase of sleep is within the first 15 minutes of the sleep process. The next four levels of sleep repeat every 90 to 120 minutes in cycles until the waking process begins. However the most vivid and memorable dreams occur during the REM stage of sleep. This is the last stage of the sleep cycle before it begins again. For a normal night, people can dream in several phases, even though upon waking it might seem like it was all one dream.

In stage 1, your body is relaxing, slowing your heart rate, lowers your body temperature and your body is being prepared to enter a deep sleep.

Stage 2 takes your body to a deeper level of what occurs in stage 1. There is a deeper relaxation of your muscles, more of a decrease in body temperature and your body starts sending blood flow and oxygen to your organs and limbs to restore your body from a long day. By the end of this stage you are completely asleep. You have entered into NREM sleep (non-rapid eye movement)

Stage 3 your body slips into an even deeper sleep and your metabolic levels have slowed down drastically (ie - your heart rate and breathing).

Stage 4 is when you enter the REM stage (rapid-eye movement). To a person awake watching someone in this stage, it appears as if they are watching things from under their eyelids. During this time your respiration increase, as does your blood pressure as well. Your brain activity also increases and can be erratic at times. Your muscles are put into a paralytic stage and this is the most restorative stage of sleep. BUT... if you are woken up during this stage, you are more likely to remember detailed memories of whatever you are dreaming about.

Often as you look back through your dream journal, you will most likely laugh as you read entries of silly descriptions. But, you can also weed out the silly parts and see what is truly on your mind.

There will be times where you might not understand the significance of an appearance of someone or something that catches your interest. That is where books of dream analysis can be helpful... to a degree. There are as many books out there on dream analysis as there are peanuts on Jimmy Carter's farm. So, take your time when selecting a book if you are going to purchase one. Don't just grab one off the shelf because of the pretty picture on the front. And, thumb through the pages to ensure that you are not getting a generic translation with no explanations as to what could trigger these particular images that you are trying to identify.

Finally, with this information in hand, please have happy sleeping, happy dreaming and happy journaling.