Pinch Me Am I Dreaming?
Dreaming. It’s the kind of thing that seems normal and familiar but once you really think about it is quite strange. I’ve recently gone on a streak of vivid and gory nightmares, ever since the thought of dreaming has been on my mind. So why do we dream? What do our dreams mean?
After some research and looking back on personal experience, I’ve found that dreams are subconscious thoughts, motivations, fears, or unconscious desires basically playing through our minds as we sleep. Mainly, dreams are a way for our minds to create and be in new experiences or gain knowledge that normally we couldn’t or wouldn’t do. They’re kind of like simulations out of subconscious curiosity. It turns out that dreams only last about 20 to 30 minutes of our sleep, sometimes even less. No one quite knows how we dream which to me is kind of shocking as it’s something nearly everyone does.
Many times I have a reoccurring dream, as I’m sure many people do. These dreams seem to be based on concern or stress and anxiousness. Now with some more research I found something incredible. Dreams could predict the future. Now it seems crazy when I put it that way but this has actually happened to me alot before. The brain creates these subconscious simulations, so just like an actual simulation, if it had enough information and reasonability the subconscious mind could create a simulation that could come true. This could be as basic as predicting what you’ll have for lunch, or maybe more complex things like how the next day will go. Usually this can happen by the brain getting used to patterns, like taco Tuesdays you have tacos, or your teacher is always late on Mondays.
I’ve also noticed that most dreams I can never remember. Basically when we sleep the brain shuts down the part that creates and maintains memories, so we only remember the ones that we have right before we wake up. A working theory however states that some dreams however can be remembered but are stored somewhere in the brain that we can’t access. This could be why sometimes you remember parts of dreams at random times in the day, because they can be triggered and remembered. I’ve also found that if you wake up with no alarm you can better remember your dreams. If woken by an alarm the brain becomes conscious and focused only on getting the sound off and not recalling the dream.
Overall, we dream because our minds play out scenarios to see what would happen. These scenarios are based on thoughts, motivations, fears, or unconscious desires. Different dreams mean unique things to each person and this may be told by a recurring dream or even just an average one. They can even predict the future. Dreams are pretty interesting and crazy when you take a closer look at them, who knows what your next dream may be?
Very interesting!
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