Do you remember your dreams?
Do you ever think about your dreams?
Have you ever wondered what they're about?
Perhaps they're easy to dismiss as aimless wanderings of an unattended mind. Or, perhaps they're more than that; dreams can be deeply personal, accompanied by intense emotions, and are often distractingly bizzare. Many psychologists believe dreams to be important communications from the unconscious.
For centuries, mystics have tried to decode dreams by categorizing their symbolic meaning -- If you dream of water, it means this or that. If you dream you're flying, it means this. If you dream of such and such animal, it portends x, y, or z. I believe this way of thinking about dreams is reductionistic, and it falls short of understanding the personal meaning of a particular dream in the context of the dreamer's life.
I work under the assumption that dreams are the dreamer's attempt to process complex emotions. At night, when the so-called "defenses" are down, emotions come out to play. Feelings try to get worked-out, processed, synthesized, and ultimately understood. (The understanding of a dream typically comes later in conscious waking life. Unfortunately, this final part of the process often goes neglected as a dream fades from memory. More on that below.)
The most important aspect of any given dream is the emotion that accompanies it. I will go as far as to say that the content of the dream is rendered almost meaningless if we don't know how the dreamer felt about it in the dream. Trying to explore a dream without knowing the accompanying feeling is like the having the lyrics to a song without the music.
Dreams often reveal core emotions, basic anxieties and fears, and unfulfilled wishes. Understanding a dream is like understanding a part of you. The exploration of a dream is like unwrapping a gift from your unconscious.
Tips For Remembering Dreams:
1) When you awake, don't move. Studies have shown that moving around disinigrates the memory of a dream. Instead, when you awake, lie still and review the dream in your head. Reviewing the dream immediately after you awake will put it into your conscious memory.
2) If need be, write down a few words or a phrase that will help you recall the dream later. There is usually no need to write the entire dream down verbatim.
Thanks for reading,
Ryan Janis, Psy.D.
Beverly Hills Psychologist
http://www.drryanjanis.com/
