#The space in between we used to dream series#

Sometimes nightmares can be caused by tangible things like stress, trauma, or medications like beta blockers or antidepressants. In that case, you should seek out help from your physician or a sleep specialist. However, suppose you are experiencing intense nightmares to the degree that your social, professional, emotional, and physical wellbeing is jeopardized. Reasons to See a Doctor About Your Dreams Perhaps rather than trying to understand exactly what they mean, simply try to enjoy your dreams each night. However, we can’t stop dreams from happening or ever truly understand the causes of human emotions, images, and memories.

While Freud created a complex psychological system to attempt to decode, understand, and try to source the dream (in Freud’s case, he theorized dreams might be repressed childhood memories), for centuries humans collectively have sought to understand the real meaning of dreams. Usually, dreams happen without the dreamer controlling them sometimes dreams can be inspiring and sometimes they can be terrifying. Most people accept that their dreams are connected to their unconscious and can be terrifying, exciting, magical, adventurous, sexual, and much more. ‌Generally, today most people seem to embrace a Freudian outlook on dreams that reveal hidden emotions and desires, and that their dreams also help in problem solving, memory formation, and random brain activity. In addition, it suggests that dreaming helps with problem solving, decision making, and prioritizing. Another study proposes that dreaming is just a way that your brain organizes knowledge, forms connections, and helps with memory.

A way to wrap your head around new information and memories.

It's a way for the dreamer to understand and move past these antagonistic relationships. One study claims that dreams are an evolutionary response, especially when people have negative dreams, particularly those involving violence or enemies. Created by a Finnish cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist, this theory states that dreaming is a way to prepare for real-life situations that you're worried about. A group of Harvard University psychiatrists posit that dreams occur in the brainstem and are prompted by new information. Some other theories about what dreams mean include: Even extremely revered leaders in the field of psychiatry, such as Freud and Jung, have theories that are not technically substantiated. Whether dreams have meaning is a difficult question to answer because there is no way to answer objectively. Typically, during a whole 8-hour night of sleep, you will experience around 2 hours of dreams.

Usually, you will have between five and seven dreams per night and dreams seem to get longer the more you sleep. People who can remember their dreams have woken up during their REM stage of sleep. While you can dream during other times of sleep, these dreams are often less impactful or memorable.ĭreams can last for a few seconds or up to 30 minutes. REM is differentiated from other stages in the sleep cycle by constant eye movements. REM sleep is a high brain activity stage of sleeping, shown to have movement that is most similar to actually being awake.

#The space in between we used to dream series#

Technically, dreams are an involuntary series of sensations, emotions, ideas, and images that mainly occur during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. In the modern era, we are still trying to understand dreams scientifically, spiritually, and emotionally. Alfred Adler later expanded upon Jung’s theory, believing that dreams were a way of playing out inferiority complexes. Carl Jung viewed dreams as a way to problem-solve through archetypal conflicts. In Ancient Greece, Hippocrates hypothesized that dreams are a sign of illness, while Sigmund Freud believed dreams are methods to avoid emotional stress. Dreams have long been speculated over and studied.