Have you ever had a strange dream, and woken up the next morning questioning it? How much of your dreams actually have merit to your daily thoughts, you might wonder? For years, scientists have come up with theories but no straight answers, so to maybe help and aid your curiosity, I will begin to list three of them out:
- Wish Fulfillment theory- a theory created by Freud, suggests that each of your dreams are a fulfillment of your deepest desires, and you can interpret them in your own ways. Essentially, what you dream about you truly want.
- Information processing theory suggests that your brain is working through everything that happened during the day and organizing them into parts of your mind, which is why you dream about it.
- Activation synthesis theory suggests, in a more scientific way, that due to the firing of your brainstem, your brain is weaving meanings and pictures as you sleep.
- Cognitive dream theory implies that dreams are a way to solve problems, reorganize new memories, and interpret our ongoing needs.
Although quite mysterious, the common belief of dreams is that it’s essential to our lives. Even if you can’t remember your dreams, that doesn’t mean they never happened. Quite the opposite really. As long as you’re going through your full REM sleep cycle, the stage of sleep in which dreams tend to happen most, – your deepest sleep – you are dreaming. During REM sleep, you are devoid of noradrenaline which induces anxiety, leaving you in a peaceful state of being. Without this moment of reprieve, it’s hard to imagine how much more difficult waking up would be.
Among other benefits, dreams continue to be a mystery. No one knows why we have them and why they appear in the ways they do. Subsequently, people create ideas and theories to analyze dreams that may ultimately have no meaning. However, of all the dreams you experience when you fall asleep, one thing remains true: the unexplainable phenomenon of seeing your most despised teacher get pied in the face, or losing a tooth, or skydiving is up to you to give meaning to. The multiple possibilities, although it creates an air of unknowing, gives you creative freedom to make it your own, and absolutely no one can argue against it. As long as you aren’t hurting anyone, interpret away!
