The Effects Of Clinical Depression On An Individual 's Dreaming

2. Dreammoods.com states that Researchers have found why dreaming is so important and if you do not enter the dream phase it causes irritability and anxiety. They performed a study, where they would wake up a person right before they entered the REM stage, and then let the person fall back asleep, and then wake them up again and do this several times during the night. They repeated this over several nights. They then observed the subjects doing everyday activities and found they were disoriented, crabby, and quick tempered. Dreaming is necessary and helps to recharge the mind and visualize the body.

Dream content reflects aspects of waking-life experiences. After memories are made, they are often fragmentally merged with other information to construct larger, holistic dreams. Autobiographical memories are predominantly represented in dreams in comparison to episodic and semantic memories. Among various characteristics from waking-life experiences such as places, people, and events, emotions are highly incorporated into dream content. There is also a decreasing relationship between the cognitive demand of an activity and the frequency in which that activity occurs in dreams. Dreams tend to include material from experiential memories and events from the preceding day as well as experiences from 5-7 days prior. The recurrence of memory content in dreams seems to support the hypothesis that dreaming helps with memory consolidation, or particularly the content which is reflected in dreams.

However, the true exact meaning of dreaming hasn 't been proven, there has been new ideas, different methods to advances to both a psychological, science understanding of when it began and how it functions. What some of the studies have concluded is that dreams are a certain phase of the brain 's activities, that the mind experiences while you are sleep; sounds, pictures, ideas, and feelings. Both psychologists and scientist have theorized that dreaming is made up of the person’s mind, that ranges from being rare, normal, scary, and ordinary.

A series of thoughts, images, and sensations that occur during a person’s mind during the time that they sleep is known as a dream. Dreams go way back until the beginning of mankind, even to the BC era during the time that Egyptians and Greeks were the leading force! The Egyptians examined the meanings behind the dreams we have and analyzed the symbols. There are a numerous amount of reasons behind our dreams. People must ask all the time, what is the reasoning behind dreaming? Why do we dream? What is the meaning behind the dream I had? In an average lifetime, approximately six years is spent dreaming. Every single person on this planet dreams and just because one might not remember doing so, it was still done. One might have several dreams occur throughout a normal night of sleep that lasts from about seven to eight hours. Everyone has dreams and each experience is distinctive and personal. Some can contain vivid pictures or memorable illustrations of reality and others can be unreal or abstract. In a way, they all have certain meanings to them and there can be messages hidden that are trying to tell someone something. An abundant amount of people are always curious as to why they dreamed what they did and spend time looking for those answers.

To many people, dreams are the thoughts that occur while sleeping, having almost mystic qualities. For millennia the significance of dreams has escaped even the brightest of philosophers and intellectuals. Many people have speculated about why people dream and what meanings the dreams have but in recent times two theories have gained credibility in answering those questions. The first theory is Sigmund Freuds and the other is known as the cognitive theory of dreams also known as biological determinism.

The journal entry begins by introducing the concept of nightmares and the negative emotion that is followed by such occurrences. People who are experiencing negative emotions more frequently are often times more likely to having nightmares or other intolerable dreams. The journal also points out how many people who experience nightmares also experience frequent dreaming in general. All the data contrived from people who experience frequent nightmares found that these people experience a wide variety of dreams that are usually triggered by a state of severe emotion. Another form of dream experienced by such people is Day-dreaming. The journal explains that people with a higher occurrence of nightmares, experience dreams in many other forms. They also are more prone to letting their mind wander even when they are not fully asleep. These people may experience similar states of

As a lead in to psychoanalysis, as part of my journal I kept a daily dream log for a week (Appendix A, p. i). Although enjoyable, I did find myself questioning the validity and lack of scientific support. There seems to be too much room for different interpretations or misinterpretations. This

Knowing what causes one to have dreams is important in order for one to know what one thinks about. What one thinks about is oftentimes a direct reflection of how a person feels. The human mind is complex and beautiful and actually processes pretty much everything one thinks about, even if one is not aware of it (Hidalgo n.p.). One’s dreams are the mind's way of subconsciously processing the things one thinks about. Moreover, when one is in overdrive or very stressed out one's mind is aware of that and filters through that

Thesis Statement: Dreams are successions of images, emotions, and sensations that occur subconsciously during sleep.

When I was doing my research it was a little hard to find good sources that are centered on the science behind dreams. A lot of the information seemed to be pretty old and outdated. That was when I found the dreaming brain by J. Allan Hobson. This author takes a look at the

Dreams have been around as long as the first civilization came to be and have been a normal part of human existence. One third of your life is spent sleeping, and of that third, on average you will have spent a total of about six years of it dreaming. Most people dream on average two hours every night, but you can have anywhere from four to seven dreams in one night. According to research, the most common setting for a dream is in your own house. In our dreams we can do anything we want and be whoever we want to be. Our dreams are an escape from reality. While we dream we are unable to control our actions and choose our surroundings. We let our minds take over. Sometimes dreams can be understood in the context of repressed thoughts. Dreaming serves as an outlet for those thoughts and impulses we repress during the day. When we go to sleep at night and slip into our dream state, we feel liberated and behave in a manner that we do not allow ourselves to in our everyday life. Visions and ides can come from your dreams. Often, authors, screenwriters, and even poets turn to their dreams for inspiration. The think quest oracle library goes on to tell about the most well-known of the modern dream

    Everybody dreams during his lifetime. It is a part of human nature that we experience almost everyday. Dreams can be lost memories, past events and even fantasies that we relive during our unconscious hours of the day. As we sleep at night, a new world shifts into focus that seems to erase the physical and moral reality of our own. It is an individual's free mind that is privately exposed, allowing a person to roam freely in his own universe. As we dream, it seems that we cannot distinguish right from wrong or normal from abnormal and, therefore, commit acts that we would not have done in a realistic society. Perhaps Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,

What do dreams mean? Where do they come from? There are many theories in the world about dreams, and what they mean, but it all depends on the person. Many people with BPD have vivid nightmares, causing them to lose more sleep and even develop a fear of sleeping. In 1913, Frederik Van Eeden published a book titled, “A Study of Dreams” (Turner). He went into detail about lucid dreams, and how it improves a person’s sleep. He named the deepest stage of sleep one could experience “lucid dreaming.” He defined it as, “the reintegration of the psychic functions is so complete that the sleeper remembers day-life and his own condition, reaches a state of perfect awareness, and is able to direct his attention, and to attempt different acts of free volition” (Turner). People can become fully aware that they are dreaming, and are in control, the mind relaxes completely, making it the deepest most desirable stage of sleep. It was not discovered and confirmed until 2009, by a German study conducted at the Neurological Laboratory in Frankfurt, that brain activity significantly increased during lucid dreams (Turner). This time is extremely important for people’s mental health.

Anxiety and depression have a substantial impact on recalling dreams. Consequently, when a person is anxious or depressed they tend to wake up more often throughout the night (Caceres). Waking up in the middle of a dream makes it easier to remember. If a dream has finished while you are sleeping, there is a much greater chance of not remembering it because your brain has drifted from the REM period to another stage in the sleep cycle. This can be explained with the instance of waking up during a nightmare and remembering exactly what was happening. When the waking is done naturally the body is able to recall dreams; however, when waking is unnatural it results in the opposite effect. For this reason, recalling our previous thoughts is often difficult to do with the assistance of alarm clocks, or other devices, because of their abruptness (Edwards, 2). The shocking noise can interrupt a person’s sleep pattern so suddenly, creating a blank mind when trying to reflect on a dream. The brain controls dreams and impacts how well and what we remember each morning. While the influence of outside factors can also trick the mind. Except health is not the only factor which affects

Dreaming is an important part of everyone 's emotional well being. When we create the dream imagery in our head we