Everyone seems to have an interesting take on dreams and their meanings. Dreams can offer a glimpse of real life experiences and sometimes can show a completely different reality that has no correlation to a person’s life. Scientists have been researching dreams for many years to gain a true understanding of their meaning and why they happen in the first place.
When you sleep, there is a REM phase, a rapid eye movement. The brain becomes just as active as it is when you are awake, which is what allows people to have such creative dreams. Dreams are a mystery, and nobody is completely sure why they happen, but there could be multiple reasons why you may dream: we dream to remember, to forget, to keep our brain working, or to heal from something.
According to the National Institute of Health, “During slow wave sleep (SWS) early in the night, consciousness can nearly vanish despite persistent neural activity in the thalamocortical system.” This can also help prove how people can become disconnected from reality in their sleep. When people fall asleep, all types of dreams can occur, such as realistic ones that seem so real it’s almost as if you never fell asleep. These dreams can seem more dramatic and exaggerated than your real life, but still feel authentic.
Another type of dream can be a recurring dream, when you keep having the same dream, whether realistic or like a fairytale. This type of dream can happen over and over in the same night, or it can cross over into different days. Some people have dreams that make no sense and have no real meaning to them, which is most common.
Looking more into dreams, I did some research at our school and interviewed teachers and students to ask them what they think dreams mean and if they have had any unusual dreams. Aerin Bender, an English teacher at Dakota Ridge High School, has been having a recurring dream about a futuristic traveling car that she believes is influenced by Tesla. When the cars come together at a stopping point, they join together like a roller coaster, and it’s like the highway, in a sense, that takes you to your destination. “I think it’s because I’m trying to find ways to have fun on my very long commute from Arvada, which is around 40 minutes one way, and I believe it’s just the idea of traveling somewhere in general,” Bender said.
A senior at Dakota Ridge, Mele Hidalgo, told a story about her most recent recurring dream about her and her sister going to a daycare that had a bunch of carnival-like toys, and within it, there was a ball pit that she was drowning in and could not get out of. “This dream keeps recurring till this day,” Hidalgo said. “It was never a real-life event, but it is a very big fear of mine to drown.” Scientists and psychologists say that downing is often a sign of feeling overwhelmed or something you may be stressing about in your life.
Another Dakota Ridge senior, Emily Friesen, keeps having the same dream that she is a pregnant teen; every so often, she will have this dream, and it picks back up in different parts each time. “I think this dream is possibly trying to symbolize change and starting new things and experiences,” Friesen said. According to PsychologyToday.com, “Pregnancy in a dream can symbolize that something new is growing inside. It’s not out yet.”
Ireland Wallace, a freshman at DRHS, began her nightmare having a picnic on a dark road with another friend of hers when a truck came up and started chasing them. Eventually, she got shot in the back of the leg, lying face down in the driveway. After she got shot, it skipped to her being amputated from the knees down. After all that, the nightmare started again with her being chased by the same truck. “This dream stuck with me because I have always had a fear of getting kidnapped,” Wallace said, “and it could also be because I started watching a scary show that could have influenced that.” Nightmares are one of the more common types of dreams that can be triggered by stress in your life, or just fears that you may have that you have never gotten over.
Overall, dreams remain a mystery, but there is still depth to them that we can use to understand them a little bit more.
