News
Unlocking the messages from our dreams…
How many times have you woken from a dream feeling worried by what you have just experienced or simply wondered what on earth it was all about? Although dreams often seem completely unfathomable, you might be surprised to see how much you can learn about yourself and your behaviour by carefully studying all the aspects of the dream.
Technically speaking, a dream is a hallucination. It is also a fantasy journey in our sleep that either reduces our stress or enables us to live out our greatest fears in the safety of sleep. When we sleep, we achieve rest and relief from our waking hours. In this sense, dreams are a way of relaxing and letting our minds drift away into distant worlds. Whilst in this state we interact in a non-physical sense with people, places and both living and non-living things.
There are three main theories explaining why we dream:
- Freud said that the function of dreams was to preserve sleep, but this theory has been contradicted by modern studies, showing that dreams happen very regularly, thereby actually interrupting the sleep cycle – at least four to five times a night, during the most active part of sleep, known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.
- Jung claimed that the reason we dream is to compensate for those parts of the psyche or total personality that are underdeveloped in waking life.
- Other dream theorists tell us that dreams have a problem-solving purpose, enabling us to deal with our challenges through the dream, thereby offering us some kind of solution or resolution for those problems we are struggling to deal with in life.
Whichever theory or theories we go for, it is clear that when we are in tune with our waking lives, dreams can undoubtedly help us to understand ourselves better. If we take the time to interpret them correctly, we find a treasure trove of hidden secrets held deep within our subconscious mind.
Who do we wish would simply “vanish into thin air”? Who or what are we running away from in that chase scene we keep reliving? If our teeth are falling out, should we be booking an appointment at the dentist or look out for what else we could be losing in real life? These are all common images and scenarios that everyone sees from time to time, all locked in our subconscious.
Entering this land of make-believe in order to unlock the messages of our dreams, both lucid and otherwise, can be an amazing experience……and a true awakening, if you can forgive the pun!
To find out more about dream therapy and analysis, please contact [email protected]