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How Does Trauma Affect Dreams

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Trauma and their Relationship to Dreams
Introduction
Trauma is something about 70% of Americans experience in their lifetime. How does it change the way our dreams structure themselves, or the intensity of images we see? Trauma can directly affect dreams, but how exactly it does affect dreams is what I’ll be exploring today. The purpose of this essay is to embark on a journey learning about trauma, dreams, and other things relating to it. Trauma can be seen to have a direct relationship dreams, and discovering that is the purpose of this paper.
In this essay, I will be relaying the facts and discussing about trauma and its relationship to dreams. The literature review, where I will review the basic facts and studies that give us clues as …show more content…

Dreams are very unique and many people have theorized about what a dream 's meaning or purpose is, and what affects them. In most present day studies, more vivid dreams have been linked to the stage of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. REM dreams are emotional, bizarre, and sometimes so vivid we may confuse them with reality. Most commonly, a dream’s story line incorporates traces of previous day’s experiences and preoccupations. Unless a person is awakened during REM stage of sleep or the dream is exceedingly vivid or intense, most people don’t remember anything about their dreams during REM sleep. This is likely due to the fact that during REM sleep, our brain essentially turns off the ability to encode,or create, new memories. A contextualizing image (CI) is a powerful central image in a dream. A contextualizing image can be found in most dreams, and can have negative or positive emotions implied through the image. It can be seen as providing a picture for the dominant emotion of the dreamer.The image presented represents the overall feel of the dream, and contextualises the feeling portrayed. For example, dreamers who have experienced any serious traumatic event sometimes dream of being overwhelmed by a tidal wave. This appears to picture their feeling of terror and vulnerability.
Laurence J Kirmayer wrote a journal article where he attempted to decipher nightmares and

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