Why dream different dreams: interpretations and features of the appearance of dreams

Sleep is one of the most impor­tant com­po­nents of human life. It helps to ful­ly relax and restore strength. Its defi­cien­cy leads to improp­er func­tion­ing of all body sys­tems, fatigue and var­i­ous dis­eases.

The value of sleep for a person and his psyche

Sleep is as nat­ur­al a human need as food and water. New­borns sleep from 11 to 23 hours, old­er chil­dren — 10–12 hours. An adult needs at least 6–8 hours of sleep for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and full func­tion­ing.

How­ev­er, every­one’s bio­log­i­cal rhythms are dif­fer­ent. Some peo­ple feel com­fort­able when they get up and go to bed ear­ly, they are called “larks”, oth­ers like to get up late and stay up late — these are “owls”. Since most work sched­ules are designed for ear­ly ris­ers, night owls have a hard time dur­ing the work­ing day from 9 to 18. To cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion, you should go to bed at the same time, then there will be no prob­lems with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Var­i­ous sleep dis­or­ders lead to poor health dur­ing the day and a drop in per­for­mance. There­fore, it is impor­tant to go to bed at the same time, try to escape from gloomy thoughts and relax as much as pos­si­ble.

Images that we can see in a dream

Why do we dream? They reflect the state of our psy­che, our dai­ly expe­ri­ences, doubts, fears. Some­times our dreams have bizarre plots that are not relat­ed to our life.

The founder of psy­cho­analy­sis, Sig­mund Freud, believed that see­ing this or that plot in a dream means expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing that we do not receive in real­i­ty. Som­nol­o­gists believe that our dreams con­sist of 40% of the events expe­ri­enced dur­ing the day, and 60% of the expe­ri­ences of our uncon­scious. The dura­tion of one dream does not exceed 2 min­utes, but it may seem that it lasts 1.5–2 hours.

Dreams are not our fan­tasies. We dream of an alter­nate real­i­ty. It reflects what we want, what we fear, what we think about. Some peo­ple clear­ly remem­ber their feel­ings while view­ing a dream — joy or con­fu­sion, sad­ness or sat­is­fac­tion.

Some facts about dreams:

• We remem­ber only a small per­cent­age of dreams — only 10%;
• A dream is a dream for any per­son, with the excep­tion of per­sons suf­fer­ing from men­tal dis­or­ders;
• Col­or dreams are seen by most men­tal­ly healthy peo­ple, and not just peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties;
• Ani­mals also have dreams;
• Peo­ple may only see famil­iar faces in their dreams;
• Dur­ing the night, from 4 to 7 dreams can be dreamed;
• Dreams can be inter­twined with real­i­ty.

Thus, with the help of dreams, we “have a con­ver­sa­tion” with our sub­con­scious. Bizarre images or strange events are a reflec­tion of our emo­tions — fears, doubts, expe­ri­ences.

Correct interpretation of dreams

Of course, peo­ple have always been inter­est­ed in know­ing what their dreams mean. For exam­ple, the great rulers of the past have always attached great impor­tance to the inter­pre­ta­tion of dreams, try­ing to see in them their own future and the fate of states.

The inter­pre­ta­tion of dreams in the Mid­dle Ages was reli­gious in nature. With the begin­ning of the Renais­sance, inter­est in it grad­u­al­ly weak­ened with the devel­op­ment of sci­en­tif­ic thought, but, start­ing from the 19th cen­tu­ry, it again began to arouse inter­est. A key role in deci­pher­ing the images of dreams was played by Z. Freud, who called them “the road of the uncon­scious.”

The human psy­che is an inter­est­ing and mys­te­ri­ous instru­ment. It is dif­fi­cult to say what inter­nal process­es take place in our brain while view­ing dreams. The sig­nals of the uncon­scious are the largest top­ic in the research of psy­chi­a­trists and som­nol­o­gists.

The images we see in our dreams should not be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. They can mean cer­tain sig­nals of the sub­con­scious, trans­mit­ted in an alle­gor­i­cal form. These are our fears, doubts, fears that we expe­ri­ence dur­ing the day.

Of course, it is always inter­est­ing for a per­son to know what awaits him in the future. We some­times think that the cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of dreams will help find the answer or pre­dict the future. From child­hood, we learn the so-called “folk inter­pre­ta­tions” that cock­roach­es dream of mon­ey, and dogs dream of friends. In fact, the sig­nals of our sub­con­scious can be much more com­pli­cat­ed, and dream books are con­tra­dic­to­ry and hard­ly worth trust­ing.

When we sleep, log­i­cal think­ing is turned off, and irra­tional images come in its place, forced into the sub­con­scious. Some­one sees plot dreams, like movies, which have noth­ing to do with them­selves, some­one sees liv­ing or dead rel­a­tives or peo­ple with whom com­mu­ni­ca­tion ceased many years ago. These can be encrypt­ed warn­ings or pro­jec­tions of sen­sa­tions from real life.

For exam­ple, fre­quent night­mares may indi­cate cer­tain prob­lems with the psy­che, the ner­vous over­load that a per­son expe­ri­ences in real life, and even the onset of depres­sion. In this case, he needs a con­sul­ta­tion with a psy­chother­a­pist and a detailed analy­sis of the images with a pro­jec­tion on a real life sit­u­a­tion. If the dream is absurd and its images do not car­ry any mean­ing, then it should be for­got­ten.

Human dreams are one of the most mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­e­na. See­ing pic­tures, bizarre images, intri­cate plots is nor­mal. But, nev­er­the­less, it should not be abso­l­u­tized and giv­en too much impor­tance. Of course, peo­ple will be inter­est­ed in try­ing to “deci­pher” the mes­sages of their sub­con­scious. Pop­u­lar dream books give too con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion to be trust­ed. If you want to deci­pher the mean­ing of your dream, then it is bet­ter to turn to real life events and ana­lyze what real­ly wor­ries or inspires you.

So-called “prophet­ic” dreams are noth­ing more than a coin­ci­dence with real events, and it is hard­ly worth attach­ing great impor­tance to them. They can be ful­ly explained from a sci­en­tif­ic point of view — per­haps they were pre­ced­ed by some events from your real life that you for­got about or sim­ply did not attach impor­tance to. In any case, a person’s dreams do not car­ry any­thing mys­ti­cal or super­nat­ur­al.