Ever wonder what your dreams are trying to tell you?
Each night, your brain goes through multiple stages of sleep but has only two main types of sleep: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM. Throughout the night, our body and mind transition from wakefulness, to light sleep, to deep sleep, to REM sleep (the phase in which dreams occur).
Often, recurring dreams indicate a stressful decision or incident you are experiencing in waking life.
REM sleep is characterized by high brain activity in addition to the rapid, back-and-forth movement of the eyes. REM is also known as paradoxical sleep because brain activity increases while muscles simultaneously become more relaxed. REM sleep is crucial to your health because it allows your brain to process information it has gathered from the previous day and leaves your brain with a “clean slate” for the next day. As a result, dreams often reflect or seem inspired by events we experienced, thoughts we had, or information we learned from the day before. While for the most part dreams are a pleasant, if not uneventful, experience, many people report specific recurring dreams. After speaking with our experts at Sleep City, and consulting the trusted internet, I’ve collected 5 of the most common recurring dreams and what they are trying to tell you.
understandably terrifying. One expert explained that this dream often symbolizes a perceived threat in your waking life. By analyzing who or what is chasing you in the dream, you may be able to better understand what you feel threatened by in real life. This dream could also signify a “fight-or-flight” situation in which you have chosen to flee in real life; in other words, you have chosen avoidance over confrontation at some point in your waking life. Interestingly, women reportedly experience this dream more often than men.
Luckily, each of these dreams can be solved in the same fashion. By understanding your dreams, you often learn a lot about yourself and what is causing you stress in your day-to-day excursions. After relieving the stress that is causing them, these dreams should cease to occur. More likely than not, through research and understanding of these dreams, you will have the tools to solve the problems that inspire them.
While dreams can tell us a lot about ourselves, they can also keep us from achieving a good night’s sleep. By not relieving the stress that causes nightmares such as these, many people begin to experience severe sleeplessness. In addition, these dreams can leave you feeling like you hardly slept even after a full night of sleep. It is important to address dreams such as these and solve the issues that provoke them before they result in serious sleep loss.
Cheers and sleep well.