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Freaky Dreams: What Do They Mean?
Whether it's falling off a cliff or public nudity,
find out what may cause those vivid, crazy dreams.
By Suzanne Wright
WebMD Feature
Consider this freaky dream. You're at a black-tie
gala in a fancy hotel banquet room with lots of
other people. You're all having a good time eating
dinner, dancing, and talking. When it's time to go,
you look for your purse, but it's gone. As you
anxiously search for it, a fast-moving river appears
out of nowhere, bisecting the room. Your purse is
floating on the river, but you can't reach it. It is
moving too swiftly. When you awaken, you're filled
with a sense of panic.
Now
if you plugged the dream into an online dream
analyzer, such as you might find at Freakydreams.com,
you'd learn that a purse is a symbol for wealth and
resources, a hotel represents transition, and a
river connotes emotion. Since you have been living
through a kitchen remodeling -- with its attendant
financial stresses and upheavals -- this dream
echoes and amplifies what's going on in your waking
life.
What Are Dreams?
Human beings dream, and so do, scientists believe,
most mammals and some birds. On the most basic
level, a dream is the experience you have of
envisioned images, sounds, or other sensations while
you sleep. They are an internal mental process. But
dreams are actually much more than that.
Sigmund Freud's theory was that your dreams are an
expression of what you're repressing during the time
you are awake. And Carl Jung believed that dreams
provide messages about "lost" or "neglected" parts
of our selves that need to be reintegrated. Many
dreams simply come from a preoccupation with the
day's activities. But some offer rich, symbolic
expressions -- an interface between the conscious
and the unconscious that can fill in the gaps of our
self-knowledge and provide information and insight.
In
his book The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power
of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, Robert Moss
writes, "Dreams are open vistas of possibility that
take us beyond our everyday self-limiting beliefs
and behaviors. Before we dismiss our dream lover,
our dream home or our dream job as unattainable --
'only a dream' -- we want to examine carefully
whether there are clues in the dream that could help
us to manifest that juicy vision."
Why Do We Dream?
Everyone dreams every night -- even if we don't
remember our dreams.
Tom
Scammell, MD, associate professor of neurology at
Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center, says no one knows why we dream.
"There is a strong movement in the research
community to research how sleep improves memory and
learning," Scammell says.
"One
speculative possibility is that dreaming allows you
the opportunity to practice things you may or may
not ever have to do, like running away or fighting
off a predator."
Three or four times a night, you have a period of
sleep that lasts approximately 90 minutes called REM
-- rapid eye movement -- sleep. It is during REM
sleep that your brain is more active. And according
to Scammell, it's then that conditions are right for
"story-like" dreams that are rich in action,
complexity, and emotion.
"You
are most likely to recall dreams if you wake at the
end of a REM episode," says Scammell. "People who
are chronically sleep-deprived, probably miss out on
some REM sleep. This builds up pressure for REM
sleep. So when you're catching up on your sleep, you
may have more REM sleep with more intense dreams."
The Value of Dreams
Scientists have long debated whether dreams have
meaning. But those who work with their dreams,
either independently or with the aid of dream
interpreters, believe that understanding dreams can
provide meaningful clues to feelings, thoughts,
behaviors, motives, and values.
Artists, entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists
often get creative ideas from dreams. Jeff Taylor
dreamed up monster.com. Jack Nicklaus had a dream of
a new golf grip. And Nobel laureate and scientist
Wolfgang Pauli called dreams his "secret
laboratory."
Kelly Sullivan Walden is a certified clinical
hypnotherapist and dream coach. In her book I Had
the Strangest Dream...: The Dreamer's Dictionary for
the 21st Century, she divides dreams into eight
categories:
-
Processing
-
Venting ( nightmares)
-
Integration
-
Breakdown/breakthrough
-
Recurring
-
Precognitive
-
Prophetic
-
Wish fulfillment
The
most common, she says, are recurring and venting
dreams.
Moss
gives an example of a predictive dream: "One of the
biggest oil discoveries in history ... resulted from
a dream of a retired British colonial official
living in Kuwait in 1937. Colonel Dickson's dream
revealed a specific location near an unusual sidr
tree in the Burqan hills. The Kuwait Oil Company,
which had been drilling dry holes far away, was
persuaded to move a rig to the location identified
from the dream and hit a gusher."
Processing dreams can be used to diagnose and solve
physical and emotional problems.
"Some of our dreamscapes are living dioramas of what
is going on inside our bodies," explains Moss. "The
ancient Greek physician Galen used dreams to
diagnose patients' complaints. A friend of mine was
alerted to a problem when her dead father appeared
to her in a dream, accompanied by a doctor and
yelled 'Get to a doctor at once!
You
have breast cancer!' She acted on that dream and
believes that it helped save her life."
Eva
Van Brunt is the West Coast media manager at the law
firm DLA Piper. She thinks pregnancy is contributing
to the intensity and vividness of her dreams.
"It's been remarkable -- and a little annoying. Last
night I dreamt I was in the security line at an
airport and couldn't find my license. I woke up in
an utter panic, and it took a few moments to realize
the dream was not real."
But
she's also found her vivid dreams helpful.
"A
few days ago, I couldn't find my camera anywhere in
my house. I grew quite anxious and ended up looking
for it until bedtime without success. Eventually I
got to sleep. Next thing I know, I am having a very
vivid dream." The dream, she says, was about a
concert she and her husband were at a month earlier.
She was walking up to the gate and saw a no cameras
sign and found herself getting flustered because she
had one in her purse. Her husband suggested she put
the camera in an inside zipper pocket of her purse
because it likely wouldn't get searched. "In the
dream, that's what I did. And it's also what I had
done on the night of the concert." The next morning,
she found the camera in the inner pocket of her
purse. "The only thing I can think," she says, "is
that my body triggered the memory to alleviate the
anxiety."
Worrying About Weird Dreams
What
are we to make of the crazy dreams of adults?
Cognitive scientist and Duke University professor
Owen Flanagan is the author of Sleep, Dreams & the
Evolution of the Conscious Mind. He has written that
"Bizarreness will increase ... the more you have on
your mind."
Bert. O. States, professor emeritus of dramatic arts
at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
agrees. In a paper called "Dream Bizarreness and
Inner Thought," he writes, "Dreams are a psychical
prism through which reality somehow gets refracted
-- as opposed to reflected."
Deidre Barrett is the immediate past president of
the International Association of the Study of Dreams
and author of Committee of Sleep. She says all
dreams are a little strange by waking thought
standards. "But artists and scientists report dreams
we call bizarre or weird as quite positive or
interesting or having creative potential."
Moss
tells WebMD, "Crazy dreams may actually be crazy
like a fox, using wild dramas and special effects to
get us to remember and pay attention to something we
have been blocking out -- or simply to lighten up."
Decoding Dreams
All
of us can recall strange dreams. But interpreting
and understanding them can be tricky.
Some
of the most common dreams include teeth falling out
(indicating a possible fear of aging or death),
falling (loss of confidence or threat to security),
or public nudity (feelings of vulnerability or
exposure of weakness). These are examples of
archetypal dreams that exist across time, culture,
and people.
But
most dreams are intensely personal. They reflect the
underlying thoughts and feelings of the dreamer.
Symbols -- images or objects with obvious meaning in
daily life -- serve as metaphors, representing
something partially known. A lion in a dream, for
example, can mean something different to a circus
performer than to a teen who claims it as her
favorite stuffed animal. By examining each dream
element and looking for parallels between
associations, you can decipher a dream's meaning.
"Even if it doesn't initially make sense to you,
contemplate the dream, meditate on it, marinate in
it," suggests Sullivan Walden. "Pretend you are on a
treasure hunt. Your interest in uncovering the
mystery of what your dreams are telling you will
lead you to the gold that is waiting for you."
Barrett says that you can explore dreams on your
own, with a peer-led dream group, or with friends.
"We are often blind to our own issues and
associations. But someone else can see things
objectively."
Moss
recommends you play the 'What Part of Me' game --
pretending that everything in the dream is a part of
you and notice what its condition or behavior may be
saying to you about yourself. "In your dream house,
for example, if there's a problem with the plumbing
or a room you have never explored, what could that
be saying about a part of you that needs some TLC or
a part of your potential that is waiting to be
recognized and opened up."
Another technique he offers is to listen for puns
and double entendres. "If there's a train on the
tracks in your dream, could it be prompting you to
think about what 'track' you are on, what 'line' you
are following? Say your dream features shoes. A shoe
has a 'sole,' which sounds like 'soul,' so maybe the
condition of your footwear in a dream says something
about the state of your vital energy."
Recurring Dreams
Recurring dreams can continue for days, weeks,
months, and even years.
Barrett says the majority of people over a lifetime
have recurring dreams. "They are more important, on
average, than other dreams. They are probably your
unconscious trying to tell you something, a more
significant issue."
She
says there are two key clusters of recurring dreams.
Most of them are nightmares, though some are
positive or neutral in nature.
"The
single likeliest [dreams] to get locked in are
posttraumatic dreams, where you are reliving
something that happened while you were awake," she
says. Soldiers or victims of violence may experience
such recurring dreams. "The details unfold like they
do in real life but often go one step further. The
thing you are most afraid of in real life presents
in the dream."
The
other type of recurring dream is one where you
haven't experienced the trauma in your waking life.
"These dreams include monsters and surreal,
impossible settings," she says. "They are much more
metaphoric. Sometimes symbolism is obvious,
sometimes it's quite a puzzle."
Should we be concerned about recurring themes?
Barrett says only if the content is troubling. In
the case of disturbing posttraumatic stress dreams,
she recommends seeking help from a therapist. "They
will diminish over time."
Improving Dream Memory
Some
people can remember several dreams a night. Others
recall dreams only occasionally or not at all.
"People differ greatly in dream content, both the
intensity and recall," says Scammell.
Interestingly, according to Barrett, women and
younger people report greater dream recall, as do
those who sleep for longer periods of time.
Dreams are by their nature, uncontrollable. But
there are things you can do to increase your dream
retention:
-
Get enough sleep. Those who sleep for longer
periods of time enjoy more REM sleep, resulting
in more dreams and possibly greater memory of
them.
-
Employ the power of suggestion. Experts
recommend that before you go to sleep, remind
yourself that you want to remember your dreams.
-
Keep a journal. Have a pen and paper or a
recorder at your bedside so you can log your
dreams when you awaken before hopping out of
bed. If not immediately recorded, dreams become
elusive and difficult to retrieve.
-
Get curious. When you first wake up, lie still,
stay quiet, and see if you can recall a dream.
It may flood over you. Mull it over. Having an
open mind, reading about dreams, and discussing
them actively with friends and family may
encourage future dreaming.
-
Limit drug and alcohol intake. Sleep and, by
extension, dreams are affected by alcohol. And
medications, including antidepressants, can
induce crazy dreams or even nightmares. Talk to
your doctor about the effects of drugs on your
dreams.
©
WebMD. All rights reserved.
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"Some of our dreamscapes are
living dioramas of what is going on inside our
bodies" |
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