The Power of Dreams

I am not usually one for these sorts of new agey ideas, but I do believe that there is something in our dreams. To understand what our dreams are trying to tell us we must first understand why we dream.

There are different theories behind why we dream and the truth is that no one really knows. One is that we dream so we can act out our desires and fantasies in a safe environment. There is no consequence in a dream which isn't real. Other theories say that we dream because we are trying to make sense of information we pick up during the course of the day. Our brains take in more than we realise and this needs to be processed at some point. Dreams can also be an insight into our unconscious minds. You may not realise you were worried about something but it surfaces in our dreams.

Dreaming is only one part of sleep and sleeping is actually when our brains are most active. Sleep is beneficial in that it rests our bodies and repairs any damage done during the day but the brain uses this time to go into over drive and sort through information. The time we sleep is split into sleep cycles and you can have several in one night. They last around 1.5 - 2 hours at a time and there are several stages to each cycle:

• Stage N1 (transition into sleep) - your eyes move under your closed lids, muscles relax and this is the time that you are easily startled awake. Ever had that feeling of falling and you jerk awake? That is this stage and it lasts around 5 minutes.
• Stage N2 (light sleep) - eye movement stops, heart rate decreases as does your body temperature. This is the best type of sleep for naps and it lasts 10 - 20 minutes.
• Stage N3 (deep sleep) - difficult to waken and if you do wake you feel groggy (sleep inertia). Brain waves slow and blood is taken from the brain and transferred to the muscles to rest and restore them.
• REM sleep (dream sleep) - 70 - 90 minutes after falling asleep you enter dream sleep or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Eyes move rapidly, breathing shallows and blood pressure increases. This is when your limbs are paralyzed to prevent you acting out your dreams and hurting yourself or others. This is when you are subject to the terrors of sleep paralysis (more of which later).

I have always suffered weird dreams. There are several from my childhood I can remember vividly. One was set in the village I grew up in that was a recurring dream and involved me walking around with my Dad but everything had a blue tinge to it. Another was from the age of 7 or 8 where my family were kidnapped and I tried to save them before they were injected with horrible drugs that would kill them. Another was a weird hoover like machine in our hallway that would suck people in and spit out their bones (as you can see my mind was messed up when I was a kid). Another was a Christmas tree that would kill people and another about church bells that would ring to the tune of Smoke on the Water and then people would die. These dreams clearly had an effect on me as I can remember them all so clearly to this day.

More recently my dreams have been about weird stuff too but the content has changed. Only this week I had a dream that my fiance looked the way he did about 7 years ago when we first got together. He had his old motorbike and he dressed the way he did back then. In my dream he cheated on me with someone who was supposed to be from his past, a stunning tall brunette woman who I don't recognise. Apparently this dream doesn't mean he will or is cheating but rather that I have low self-esteem. With everything that has been going on in the last year I would say that was accurate.

Other dreams I have had over the last couple of years have involved me fighting zombies. Always different locations, stories and people with me but always zombies. It is always a zombie apocalypse and this could signify a massive life change which makes you fear for the future. A part of you or your past life has died and you have uncertainty about the future.

Of course this may all be true but I do have some comments to make on this. When I was dreaming about zombies I was watching a lot of zombie related things. The Walking Dead had just started on TV, I had just discovered the film Zombieland and I was already a fan of Shaun of the Dead. It may be that all of this was influencing my dreams. I was changing jobs and starting to house hunt though so who knows?

The other dream about cheating could be related to the Haruki Murakami novel I had finished that evening. It was called South of the Border, West of the Sun. In it a man reconnects with a stunning woman who he was in love with as a child. Since then he has married, has two daughters and a successful business. When this woman from his past re-enters his life he is torn between starting anew with her or staying with his wife. Towards the end his wife discovers the truth and confronts him and it looks like he has lost her and the woman from his past (who has disappeared for good). The outcome of the story is one that looks to be positive but the man has been taught a valuable lesson. My dream was so closely related to that novel it must have influenced my unconscious mind. I was playing the part of the wronged wife in it and so I must have made an unconscious connection with that character when I read the book.

I do believe my dreams have been telling me something. Perhaps through relating to something recent that I have been reading or watching I have been letting my unconscious mind tell me what I am really worried about and I have been trying to make sense of the world.

Now, on to sleep disorders. These are lovely and I have had my fair share of these in the past too. The ones I have suffered with at some point are:

• Sleep walking
• Sleep paralysis
• Night terrors

These are all scary in their own ways. 

When I was very young I would wake up stood in the kitchen or bathroom with no memory of how I got there. According to the NHS page on sleepwalking this is more common if someone in the family has also had a history of sleep walking or night terrors (remember I had that too). There are many reasons for it including needing the toilet, fever (especially in children), stress and anxiety, alcohol consumption and many more. The reality is no on knows why it happens to some people and not to others. Sleep apnoea and restless legs syndrome can also lead to sleep walking and I have had the latter more recently. I was always an anxious child even if I didn't show it. Having anxiety didn't stop me doing things like take parts in school plays or sing solos in concerts or play my recorders in public. Presentations have never bothered me either as I feel I am the one in control in these situations. Situations out of my control let to the stress and anxiety as a child as they still do and perhaps one of the ways I showed this was through sleep walking.

Sleep paralysis I only remember happening once in my early 20's. I was not long out of uni and at my first place of full-time employment. I was so tired after work every day with the adjustment to working life that I did what many of my friends in the same situation were doing every night, taking naps. Only for maybe half an hour at a time but naps they were! The evening that made me try and change this habit was a scary one. I did the usual thing of leaving my light on so I would wake up again and I put on the TV. I would sleep through The One Show (light topical evening chat show on BBC 1 at 7pm Monday - Friday for those not in the know). This one evening I tried to wake up like normal when the end credits were rolling and found the only part of me that could move was my eyes. I couldn't move another muscle in my body, not even to cry out. It was terrifying and I started to feel panic. I felt I couldn't breath and that a huge weight was on my chest. My brain was racing with worry that this paralysis wouldn't pass. It can be caused by irregular sleep patterns and is more common in teenagers and young adults. With my messed up naps and sleeping patterns over night I am amazed it took that long for me to suffer with it. You can reduce the chances of it happening with regular sleep patterns although it can also be linked to narcolepsy.

Night terrors are really what they say on the tin. Again I used to have this when I was a child. I would wake up thrashing about and screaming from some dream I had. I would even jump out of bed and this would often lead to my sleep walking.

I am glad that nothing too serious has come from my dreams. I am often upset or weirded out by my dreams but in the cold light of day I am able to see them for what they are. Dreams can help us make sense of our lives and I do welcome my dreams no matter how weird they get.