Most often, we quickly forget what we dreamed about. But, if the same bright or frightening story is repeated again in different variations, we involuntarily think about what this is connected with. Some try to explain dreams from the point of view of psychology or physiology, others are sure that these are messages from the world of spirits. Who is right?
The interpretation of dreams is a delicate matter, but fascinating. It’s always interesting to figure out what they might mean. Let’s try to figure out what role recurring dreams and nightmares play. How do dreams affect life? Maybe they have some kind of clue and no one but us can understand it? Or something different?
They are chasing you, but you cannot see the pursuer, you feel something terrible behind your back, but it is better not to look back. Legs become wadded, breathing is interrupted. Or you are terribly late, but it seems that you can’t get to the right place. No matter how fast you move and how far to the goal, you cannot understand what is happening, only you know: you can not stop. You run with all your might as long as your legs carry you. You suddenly wake up abruptly. Fortunately, this is only a dream, but it is not possible to shake it off immediately.
Dreams in which someone is chasing us or running somewhere are very common, as are those in which we fall, have sex, go to school again. Most people dream of scenes with persecution, this is the most common plot of children’s dreams.
Images and experiences from childhood, buried deep in the mind, continue to influence life.
The same scenario is repeated in people belonging to different cultures, living in different places. What is this mystery of the human mind hiding, and is there a rational explanation for it?
Unsolved problems
Experts who study dreams agree that they are psychological in nature. Scenarios—say, seeing yourself naked in the middle of a class or running down the halls—indicate strong emotions or internal conflicts. Thus, one’s own nakedness is associated with shame and helplessness. The subconscious can give out such a picture if in real life a person suppresses these feelings. The version has the right to exist.
For example, you often dream that you are standing at attention in a classroom, flunking an exam, or trying to get out of trouble. If you think about it, you can find many reasons for this. Perhaps a long-standing school trauma and childhood fear of the punishment that will follow if you do not cope with something reminds you of itself. Maybe you are going through a tough time and your subconscious associates stress with the classroom environment, even if you have long graduated from high school.
The images and experiences from childhood, buried deep in the mind, continue to influence life both in dreams and in reality when we become adults. Psychoanalysis has been working on this for decades. Attempts to interpret these symbols and erase the line between the secret and the obvious are often erroneous.
Important context
It must be understood that there cannot be a clear answer. It is possible to reveal the content of a certain plot in general terms, but the context is determined by the experience and characteristics of the individual. Carl Jung believed that dreams are a means to establish a connection between consciousness and subconsciousness in the process of becoming a person, which he called “individuation”. Accordingly, they simply perform their function and there is no need to decipher them.
A dream that recurs frequently can provide insight into trauma or indicate physiological and psychological problems. Before approaching the solution of symbols from a dream, one must take into account that obstacles block the path to the depths of the subconscious.
All hypotheses are good
The phenomenon of sleep paralysis confirms that the mysterious nature of sleep defies purely scientific explanations. The same can be said about the pictures that we dream of.
For everything that we experience in a dream, both psychological and physiological mechanisms are responsible. One-sided perception is not objective. For example, why do many people dream that their teeth are falling out? This can be associated with fear of the dentist, but most often such a vision is visited by those who grind their teeth in a dream, pure physiology.
Trying to debunk the theory of the mystical and spiritual origin of dreams with the help of knowledge of physiology may seem too mundane. But if you brush aside such a banal explanation, you can miss interesting details. Much depends on the position in a dream, since at this time the pressure on different parts of the body and internal organs is unevenly distributed. For example, people often have nightmares when they sleep on their left side: studies point to a link between this position and nightmares.
collective nightmare
Quite often, an important aspect is not taken into account – the cultural factor. Talking about him, one cannot fail to mention the popular night terror: the man in the hat. The ominous silhouette has appeared to many people who have experienced sleep paralysis. Horror when a stranger in a hat comes to destroy you, and you can not move. The vision is so real and impressive that after such an incident, one person created the blog The Hat Man Project (trans. The Man in a Hat Project): he did research and found people who also described a similar figure that arose with sleep paralysis. The resource still exists, anyone can share their feelings and thoughts about the eerie vision.
How can it be – all these people dreamed of the same evil character? If we assume that the state of sleep paralysis opens a portal to other worlds, it turns out that the parallel reality is extremely hostile to ours?
The realm of dreams is uncharted territory, so it pays to keep an open mind
There is a hypothesis according to which those who are faced with the unknown try to find a culturally accessible clue in the subconscious. A state of stupor in a dream from the realm of the unknown. When a person is threatened by something, instinct makes you panic.
The demons that sit on the chest of a sleeping person, depicted in old drawings, are one of the confirmations of what incredible images our psyche creates. The man in the hat, in turn, resembles Freddy Krueger. The movie A Nightmare on Elm Street is based on the experience of sleep paralysis and Freddie is created as a symbolic embodiment of evil. However, it does not matter what came first, the egg or the chicken. The main thing is that the man in the hat makes the imagination of the sleeping people real.
What have we come to? What are nightmares hiding? Perhaps they have a bit of everything from the above and something that has not yet been given to understand. The realm of dreams is unexplored territory, so it pays to keep your mind open to all possible hypotheses. To understand yourself and your dreams, you will have to penetrate deeper into them and put together all the fragments and small pieces. If you decide to do this, the unknown will cease to frighten. Who knows, suddenly the door to a new reality will open before us.