How Does Trauma Affect Dreams

REM sleep helps to learn and memorize what was learned during the day. During REM sleep the body and brain are still “awake” and proceeded to dream (What is REM sleep). REM sleep involves strong emotions, learning, and balancing moods which helps create a dream or nightmare. During REM sleep signals are sent to the brain’s cerebral cortex brining out memories and to the spinal cord, which puts the body in a heavy paralysis like state, during this process some stray signals are also sent to the brain which results in a dream. “The reason for these random signals creating a story in a person mind is not yet understood” (What is REM

experiences is extreme and he tries to block it out of his memory, yet the trauma finds unconscious expression through his dreams.

Many may feel like these nightmares are difficult or even impossible to overcome, there are methods in which the memories can be subdued. Hector Garcia, a Psychologist in the Valleys Coastal Bend Veteran Health Care Systems, describes a method that he has found to help people who suffer from PTSD-induced nightmares. The affected veteran listens to his combat experiences over and over until the memories no longer generate anxiety within the person. One of Garcia’s patients, Carlos, chose this method as his solution, and, as Garcia explains it, “he processed his memories so much that his brain no longer needed to return to those experiences in his sleep”(We train soldiers to go to war. Let’s train them to come home, too, 2015). In effect, Carlos’s brain had come to terms with the trauma he had experienced in Vietnam, and was able to stop the endless loop of nightmares.

In the above testimonies — as with many others I came across — the dreams are recounted with unadulterated specificity. That is, the dream is retroactively dematerialised into a cogent and simplified form, which, although making it easier for a general audience to understand, belies research which suggests that the dream is ‘polyphonic’ (communicates with many voices); has an ‘intersubjective texture’ (is susceptible to radical and varied interpretations); and, is ultimately ‘heterogeneous, heteromorphous, and heterologous.’ (Bakhtin in Neri, Pines & Friedman, 2002, p. 77). Put

Normally, dreams occur in the REM stage of sleep, but they can occur in the fourth stage of sleep. Although little is truly known about dreams, because we can only rely on the dreamer, there are three main theories that try to explain dreams. These theories are Freud’s psycho dynamic theory, the cognitive theory, and the activation-stimulation theory.

This research analyzed the effects that traumatic events in life have on our dreams. Two pieces of research were reviewed for this paper. One is a study in which children examine their own dreams and interpret the meanings; the other is about people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who experience nightmares after experiencing emotional trauma. These two journals suggest that significant events and feelings people experience in the past have a direct effect on the content of our dreams.

     An individual’s unconscious mind combines bits and pieces of information and places them together. Dreams are almost always visual. “Forty to fifty percent of dreams have some form of communication present in them and a very small percentage of dreams give the dreamer the ability to use his or her five senses”(Encarta). Dreams allow one to take a closer look into their mind in a quest for self-discovery. In ancient Greece dreams were believed to be messages from the gods. Hippocrates and Aristotle believed that dreams contained physiological information that may be cause of future illnesses. Dreams can be used to solve a number of different types of problems. In The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud he states “As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred by it to the sleeping

Amber Pethke CST 11, Section 11 Informative Speech 10.10.14 Title: Evolution of Nightmares Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about the evolution of nightmares from childhood to adulthood.

Dreams are generally linked with rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep, which is a phase that happens near the end of a sleep cycle. REM sleep is characterized by the random movement of the eyes and heightened body and brain activity. One study proposed that there is a definitive link between dreams and emotions, where the reduction of REM sleep causes a reduction in the ability to comprehend the multifaceted emotions in everyday life (Gujar, 2011, p.117). This phase of the sleep cycle has the highest inclination of vivid dreams and studies of MRIs of the brain during REM sleep show that the amygdala and hippocampus play a key role (Gennaro, 2011, p.1458). The amygdale processes the memory of emotional reactions and the hippocampus stores information from short-term to long-term memory. These findings reveal the core mechanism and perhaps the reason that humans dream. Dreams seem to aid in processing emotions by linking them to a variety of memories. The experiences within dreams may not be real, but the emotions that accompany the images and events during REM sleep are unquestionably genuine. Without processing these emotions, the emotions build up and personal anxiety increases. With less REM sleep, people tend to be more agitated and mental disorders are more easily developed

Being that a host of different mental disorders or negative effects can come from one’s traumatic experiences, it does not matter what stage of life the experiences are had, being a part of a serious and traumatic episode can allow these negative effects to stay with someone for their entire lives. For all these reasons and many more the study of trauma has become one of most importance and new theories are always being studied.

Traumatized his mother couldn’t say another word, her eyes widened with shock and asked to excuse herself. I walked around the house leading towards his room only to find the book “ A Study Of Dreams “ I instantly read about it and some of the words Andy mentioned were from the book.

Dreams that have been overlooked can creep back into a person’s thoughts and plague the mind. They can give an almost draining effect if they are left to parish, instead of pursued. Theories arise from what could have been, and perhaps what should have been if only there had been more attention or effort directed toward these dreams. Surely it is easy to touch lightly on this subject, but to go in depth about what other possibilities are present and the intricate ways a deferred dream can influence thoughts and the mind can bring greater understanding. Exploring further shows just how powerful dreams truly are.

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, takes the audience on a wild and confusing ride through the human unconscious. From the play within the play, to fairies causing mayhem, what is to be considered reality? The notion of falling asleep and dreaming is introduced over and over in the play, and leaves the audience wondering, is any of this real? Throughout this paper, I will attempt to explain the parallels between Shakespeare’s work, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the work of the Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud, whose most popular work is that of dreams and dream interpretations.

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.

Her dreams would be more and more open with different therapists until she reached Jung and her initial dreams embraced him and they subsequently had a productive analysis. The cause of this patient's neurosis came to light later, but was in no way present in her initial dreams. Dreams can often be anticipatory and are misleading if looked at in merely causalistic ways.