Hands up who remembers their dreams?
No, Carl, not those dreams that slowly die when you become an “adult” and we realise life is meaningless, and that existentialist nihilism is the only way to survive this cursed existence. Or if we’re lucky we live our dreams out through our kids until they resent us for having no childhood which leads into a hollow adulthood due to constantly trying to externally validate themselves…
Jeez Carl, bit grim this morning aren’t we?...
I mean the ones you have when you’re sleeping. Back on track, are we? Good
How many do you remember?
How clearly do you remember them?
What kind of feeling did they have for you?
There will be a couple of people in the room today who can say without contradiction that they’ve woken up PISSED at someone else because of something said someone else did in that dream. Guys, ever be asked “who was that bitch you were cheating on me with last night?” by the missus the next morning? Assuming of course you ever find out why there’s that level of hostility in the next day’s interactions…
The main reason for this is because the brain is a fickle thing. If you’ve ever read anything about intentional visualisation then you might know where I’m going with this. If not, here you go. Professional athletes, golfers and gymnasts are excellent examples, can achieve a certain amount of effective training through mentally going through their movement routines and engaging their brain in rehearsing the movements and skills they want to physically perform on the course/mat/field/court/bedroom(?). Now, the reason this works is because of the brain’s ability, or lack thereof, to tell the difference between physical practice and mental practice. Wild, huh? So, this mental rehearsal becomes particularly valuable for very skill orientated sports.
Back to my original point, have you woken up after a dream and for some reason your emotions are acting like that shit was real? It’s because there is a big part of you that can’t tell the difference between reality and dreams. Literally can’t. So, you wake up super pissed off, or super happy, or bemused, or murderous, or whatever emotion your dream experiences leave you with.
The most confusing bit is when you cant actually remember the damned dream so you cant even figure out why you just punched Sam the Barista in the face for being 4 seconds late with your coffee today after sleeping like shit because of a dream you cant remember having… And now your banned from that coffee shop and probably going to get charged for assaulting an officer for the “affray” that happened after it.
Anyway, I digress, as I do…
This begs the question, “Why the hell do I have these things then?”
Well, several reasons, seeing as you asked so politely, Maru.
When you are sleeping, and you progressively move into REM sleep, that is the period when your brain starts moving a lot of your short-term memories into long term. Which demands that the bits of your brain that do short term memory that normally input information while being awake, are now outputting information to long term storage. There’s this REALLY cool hormonal process in those parts of your brain that allow this to happen, but as soon as you’re awake again, it goes back to input, which is why you usually can’t remember your dreams! Hopefully that made sense…
However, there are exceptions. And we go back to the dreams you can remember.
How significant were those dreams you can remember having? Like, how much did they make sense to you? Because some dreams can be relatively simple to understand things that are the consolidation of the days learning, as short term memories move to long term, were you’re trying to make sense of this new stuff and integrate it into old stuff you know.
This is usually how those inventors who make giant leaps in insight about things end up saying “I dreamt that this was thus, and so I built it according to my dream. Forsooth!” Thomas Edison, for example, banked on this concept to help him invent all sorts of cool shit. I think I’ve mentioned my theory on Sir Isaac Newton and the theory of gravity before.
Now, this is where Nic, quite rightly, asks “But you said we have stuff and things that make us not remember our dreams! Lies! Shady corruption!!!” Well, Nicole, this is where those exceptions I mentioned come into it. Calm down, it’s just a dream.
Or is it? Thomas Edison didn’t think so. He was a smart dude. The missus didn’t think so when she dreamed you were doing Billie from 4B last night. Why do we remember some dreams and not others?
Those hormones that allow the short-term memories to be outputted into long term? They can be overridden, or at least circumvented if the dream is significant enough. If you’ve ever heard of something called norepinephrine, and its interactions with dopamine, (let alone how PTSD nightmares work) in regards to sleep, you might have some idea of how this stuff works. Its… technical…
The nutshell version is, when your brain experiences and visualises significant enough mental/emotional stimulation, it throws norepinephrine and dopamine at the brain to sharpen it up for important shit to remember. Providing its not traumatic enough to literally wake you up (ie. PTSD nightmares), you stay asleep but with enough waked-ness to remember that stuff your dreaming about, because its being seared into your memory banks with that norepinephrine and dopamine. Awake or asleep, that’s how significant memories are stored and come to amazing and terrible prominence to us.
Ask a well-disposed war vet or rape victim the emotional response they have to flashbacks. It’ll give you some idea of how far the emotional responses to those memories, and the perpetuating cycles those emotional responses have on continuing to make those memories even more significant…
So, back to why we remember certain dreams and not others.
Sometimes it’s the surrealness of a dream that makes it prominent. I have a theory. If a part of you can’t tell the difference between a dream and real life, how can you tell what you’re going through is actually real or not? By injecting the really REALLY random shit you know can’t possible be true. Think about it, what’s the weirdest dream you can remember having? So, a part of you realises you can’t always tell the difference between dreams and reality, and therefore another part of you weirds the place up a bit to make it a bit more obvious that this is a dream. Those dreams that create the heightened emotional response? I’d be prepared to bet that worst of them had literally NOTHING surreal in them at all.
Sometimes it’s the meaning of the dream that makes it significant. And sometimes that meaning isn’t immediately obvious either, dammit. Those dreams that help inventors were helpful because they were obviously relevant to what they were trying to achieve. But what about personal insight and emotional regulation? How blatantly obvious can you make the deeper workings and revelations about yourself and the world you live in, to yourself, before you freak out and start to get a bit grim like Carl did earlier on.
Part of the value of REM sleep is that its essential for helping your brain understand and regulate emotional experiences over the course of the day. But how do you tell yourself that you’ve finally understood why that banana left on the kitchen counter at Daria’s house made you think the stove was going to explode? The judgemental jerky consciousness you usually run with will just look at that scenario and go “Seriously, what the fuck is up with you? Everyone thinks you have issues with yellow phallic symbols now and you are going to get SOOOO many yellow dildos for your birthday next month now…”
Well, sometimes you have a dream about it. And wake up with the knowledge that when you were told that your grandad had just died, it hurt so much you just shut down and all you can focus on and stare at is the banana you left on the kitchen counter you were going to eat before hearing the news… Don’t ask me what kind of ridiculously random dream you would have to have had to come to that revelation, but it’s possible. This is what your brain does when its integrating new information you have into old stuff. You learn and give yourself insight. Sometimes you aren’t conscious for it though…
The same can be said for recurring dreams. Carl Jung formulated the idea that dreams are a way of your subconscious trying to send your ignorant and egocentric consciousness messages about cool shit you’ve just figured out. But, do we listen? “Hah, its just a random dream. I just ate too much cheese last night.” While that cheese dream stuff is a thing (yet another post to come one day…), if you continue to ignore the message’s you’re trying to send yourself, you keep sending them. Weird and randomly occurring dreams that reoccur? You’re trying to tell yourself something dude, how many times do you have to do dumb shit before you pay attention to yourself?
I’ve had a few recurring dreams in my time. One of them is about throwing looney tunes characters off the edge of a huge tank that has a 40foot great white shark devouring each and every character as I lob them in.
Now, is this a dream where I’m trying to tell myself that I’m a sociopath with psychopathic tendencies? Maybe. Not an unreasonable call. I considered that myself. But then, when do mad people ever think they’re mad.
What if I told you that these dreams happened when I was in my mid to late teens?
Could the meaning be more about the need to grow up and leave childish things behind to feed the beast that is the grinding teeth of daily life?
What if it told you that the feelings I was left with was sadness and resistance?
Could it be that a part of me knew that this was a part of growing up, but to never forget what fun looks like?
That’s the meaning I took from it. It took me ages to figure it out, because I wasn’t listening when I was giving me that message. Being an adult is demanding, but without fun to balance it with, what’s the point?
As usual, this rant is once again punctuated with the classic me catchphrase, “PAY ATTENTION!!!”
You are trying to tell yourself things that you need to know. Look through the stupefying and surreal weirdness and find the deeper truth of what you really know about you and how you work. Dreams aren’t just things to entertain yourself with. Their value is difficult to overstate.
If you need any more convincing, consider this. When you are significantly enough sleep deprived, your brain will start cracking the shits and start trying to initiate dreams WHEN YOU ARE AWAKE. That’s how desperately your brain wants REM sleep and the dreams that come with it. How weird are dreams at the best of times, let alone when your start overlaying dreams on the waking world that become effectively hallucinations? That’s how important your brain thinks those dreams are…
Get some sleep. And pay attention.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“I had a dream about you last night… you were holding a pine cone and introducing him as Gerald.” Nicole McKay
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