FollowEvery one of us has been there before. You are fast asleep in the dead of night having a dream that feels so real to you. You wake up suddenly and look around to be sure what you just experienced wasn’t real. It wasn’t real; you just either had a dream or a nightmare.
Dreams mostly occur and are most remembered during the stage of sleep known as R.E.M. This is the stage of the sleep cycle that is the deepest. During this stage, your eyes start to move fast, your heart beat is irregular and your breathing is inconsistent. R.E.M sleep does not last long, usually only minutes but dreams, even detailed ones, only last a couple of minutes as well, even if it seems like hours!
It is believed that everyone dreams even though not all of us remember our dreams. In fact, there are people who can never remember that they even dreamt at all. However, if you wake up during R.E.M sleep, you have a better chance of remembering your dream.
In addition to the belief that we all dream, it is also believed that we have dreams and nightmares for a reason as well. There are numerous reasons that people experience nightmares, for instance. It could be that you are trying to face a certain fear you have. However, the majority of the nightmares are a result of repressed childhood emotions.
Other types of dreams also include the lucid dream, which is a little different than the R.E.M. dream stage. Sometimes a person who has a lucid dream are aware that they are dreaming. The dreams are usually very vivid and alive. Often a person who is having a lucid dream can alter the dream environment and outcome. Lucid dreaming occurs at the conscious level and is stored in our working memory. Test studies have shown that lucid dreamers are aware that they are in a dream and signify this with eye movements. People in lucid dreams either wake up or drift off into a deeper sleep.
“The interpretations of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” Sigmund Freud
Are you a lucid dreamer who can easily recall your dreams and remember that you altered them? Or are you a person that usually has nightmares?
I almost always remember my dreams, at least for a bit in the morning. As the day goes on the dreams fade a bit unless it was really vivid. I don’t think I’ve had any lucid dreams, although I would really like that.
thankfully i don’t usually have nightmares but I do have dreams that feel SO real that my emotions wake me up from the dead sleep!
I have both nightmares and dreams. I hate the night I have nightmares I am usually upset all day afterwards.
I am an active and lucid dreamer. I believe that God still talks to us through our dreams (though not every dream we have is a message from God), and many of my dreams come from him. And then there’s the pizza dream…. 😉
So true DaLynn… but just have to ask you when you have the pizza dreams do you wake up feeling full! ;p Now you have me craving a pizza 🙂
I can never remember my dreams, ever! My husband, on the other hand, can remember every single one in vivid detail!
I can always remember my dreams. I think. How would I know if I couldn’t remember them? I love the days I dream of doing things with my late husband – I dream of him a lot. The whole next day it makes me feel good inside, kindof like he came to visit from somewhere far away
I remember my dreams quite often. I can still remember the nightmares I had as a child, usually involving a giant T-rex chasing me!