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Science is helping us understand dreams better, but what would we see if we examined our own lives in such close detail?
Not as scary as it first sounds! This article explains how understanding the similarities between the unusual perception of reality that occurs in both psychosis and lucid dreams can potentially be a way to help treat the mentally unwell. While working with patients’ dreams is not as common in psychiatry as it once was, this new research is shedding light as to how dreams can be helpful in understanding psychotic episodes. As science continues to explore the dreaming mind, there are bound to be many new and interesting insights that come along, some that use dreams to help the mentally ill, some that tell us more about the dreaming mind and some that provide insights as to how the brain works. All this knowledge is useful and helpful, but it does not replace the value gained by personal reflection and careful self examination. We can all use dreams, and access them without the help of scientists and experts, to learn more about ourselves and make improvements to our own lives.
To read the full article go here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090728184831.htm
If dreams have meaning beyond wish fulfillment, what can we learn from them?
An interesting article in TIME Magazine cites new research that dreams and sleep are really important to our emotional well-being. While this has been the long held view of this post, it is none the less refreshing to see the benefits of dreams being taken seriously beyond the role of “sorting out clutter” or even the Freudian approach of “wish fulfillment.” Scientific research can validate and extrapolate out to far larger samples than what we individually know to be true through personal experience. This kind of authority can elevate the whole conversation of dreaming, and help add weight to the processes that hopefully can contribute to the happiness and well-being of all humans.
So thank-you TIME for your article.
To move the conversation on a little further, let’s take a look at one the main take-outs of the research. One key proposal in the article is that dreaming helps us take away the emotion from an experience so we can remember events and experiences with out their associated pain or anxiety. This is referred to as an “emotional rind.” It is as if an experience is the juicy part of an orange, and the emotional rind the bitter peel we must remove and throw away in order to live happy and well-balanced lives.
I believe this may in part be true, but to me instinctively this feels like an over simplification. What happens to this “rind” after we throw it away? Where does it go? I think this interpretation places too little value on the emotions themselves. Rather than become separate from our feeling and discard them, I believe our task is to understand them, and in doing so, integrate them and assimilate them into our entire being. I do not believe dreams are a process to remove parts of ourselves and our lives, but rather to take things in, and to grow from them. What we “lose” then is confusion and anxiety as we learn not to react simply instinctively, or out of learned but redundant patterns. Dreams help us take the pain from a situation by revealing the hidden lesson beneath the complex experience. This then, is the “rind” that is lost – the misconceptions that the only real or valuable perception of life is the superficial and conscious one. The real “juice” inside is our subconscious, wanting to nourish and refresh us, if we can only to learn to taste what it has to offer.
One of the reasons we have recurring dreams is because we have not yet seen the value of the lesson contained within the experience at a conscious level. Our conscious and subconscious are not yet communicating clearly – we have not “integrated” the lesson. We are effectively trapped in cycle of repeating ourselves until we recognise what is really going on, and how to release ourselves from the restrictions and pain of the past. This is often not easy, and not not achieved in a single “epiphany” or sudden breakthrough. It can take weeks, months, even years to learn how to move on from a difficult situation, and to discover the strengths and gifts within. But move on we can, and our dreams, as the language of our subconscious, is there to coach and guide us.
Let me know what you think! Do you agree? Are dreams more than simply a “nocturnal soothing balm?” Or not? To see the full article, please click below.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1904561,00.html
