Dreams
18/05/19 02:18
Occasionally I will wake during the night with a partial memory of a dream. If I lie very still and try to remember, I can catch a few images from the dream. Sometimes I will remember enough that I will be able to describe part of the dream to my wife the next day. Most of the time, however, I don’t remember my dreams at all. I will go night after night with no conscious memory of my dreams at all. When I do remember one, it is a fleeting memory that sometimes captures a mood or a hazy image, but rarely enough of a narrative to make a story.
My wife remembers a few more of her dreams. She can tell me the story of what happened in her dream. I tease her that we don’t need to pay for psychoanalysis in order to discern the meaning of her dreams. They are all pretty obvious. When our son went off to college she had dreams in which a baby was lost. It seemed easy to know that she was working through the grief of his going to a far-away campus and not being in our home every day.
I think that part of the difference between my wife and I is the way that we get up in the morning. I tend to respond very quickly to the alarm on my phone and get out of bed and get into action very quickly. I don’t like to lie in bed when I am awake. Sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night, I get up and read. Sometimes I write my journal. My wife, on the other hand, will lie quietly in bed. When her alarm goes off, she turns it off and stays in bed for a few minutes before rising. That ten or fifteen minutes she lingers in a kind of half-awake state. She will often talk to me if I am in the room, but she isn’t ready to fully engage in a conversation. It is at those moments that she sometimes reports to me one or more dreams.
There is a scientific reason for our differences in remembering the imagery of our dreams. According to sleep researchers, the levels of noradrenaline are low in the brain when we are experiencing REM sleep, this is when the most vivid dreams occur. Our bodies, however, produce quite a lot of noradrenaline when we are startled. A sudden sound, such as an alarm clock, can raise the noradrenaline levels significantly. As our noradrenaline levels rise, usually quite suddenly, our brains go into rapid activity, sorting out the details of our circumstances. For most of us questions like “Where am I?” and “What should I be doing today?” are quickly answered. As our brains process that information, it discards imagery that doesn’t support the quest for specific details.
I remember teaching myself to rise quickly upon waking. When I was a child, my father rose between 4:15 and 4:30. Most days he was out of the house by 5 am. If it was not a school day, he was glad to take me to work with him and often I could get an airplane ride, depending on the activities of his day. Even when I didn’t get the airplane ride, I got to hang out at the airport with my dad, which was something I loved. So I taught myself to wake, rise and get dressed as soon as I heard him wake. He once told me, when I was an adult, that I was the only one of his kids who could get out of bed and get dressed in the amount of time it took him to put on his boots.
I taught myself to respond to the noradrenaline in my system in ways that allowed my body to produce more of it. The sensation of quickly waking became pleasant to me. My brain responded by discarding imagery that got in the way of my primary task, which was being in the car next to my father when he headed off to work. I became addicted to the feeling, which was a chemical addiction, but the chemical was natural and produced by my own body.
A professor of psychology in college kept a dream journal for decades. At the time we were students, he had more than 25 years of dreams recorded in his journals. He maintained that remembering dreams was a simple matter of practice. The more you try to remember dreams, the more dreams you will remember. He trained his brain to remember the imagery of his dreams.
Dreams have a number of practical advantages. Our brains, as they rest, process feelings, ideas, and experiences. They access information in less structured and formal ways than is the case when we are awake and fully conscious. Ideas and concepts that normally would be kept distinct are put together in different patterns. Dreaming enhances our creativity and allows us to solve problems that defy pure logic.
However, it does not appear that we have any need of remembering our dreams in order for us to gain the positive effects of dreaming. Our brains can benefit from sleep without requiring our consciousness. In fact, some sleep researchers are gathering data on a theory that remembering dreams can have negative effects, especially when there is confusion between the images of dream state with conscious reality. People suffering from sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy, can find it difficult to tell the difference between their waking and sleeping lives, leaving them confused and embarrassed. Some people remember their dreams to vividly that they export dream memories into their waking lives, resulting in false memories. When those false memories are checked, confusion can result. Excessive dream memory might be a symptom of an underlying emotional or mental disorder.
It turns out that sleep is far more complex than we once thought. I am fascinated by the research, but not distressed that I am not always the best sleeper. That college professor who remembered all of his dreams ended up suffering from severe dementia and was unable to distinguish reality from fantasy for several years at the end of his life during which he required constant care.
Part of the reason I don’t remember my dreams might be that I am not disciplined or practiced at remembering. On the other hand, there is little incentive for me to adopt such a discipline given what is currently known about sleep and dreams. I prefer to retain the ability to sort dreams from reality and hope I am able to do so for many more years.
My wife remembers a few more of her dreams. She can tell me the story of what happened in her dream. I tease her that we don’t need to pay for psychoanalysis in order to discern the meaning of her dreams. They are all pretty obvious. When our son went off to college she had dreams in which a baby was lost. It seemed easy to know that she was working through the grief of his going to a far-away campus and not being in our home every day.
I think that part of the difference between my wife and I is the way that we get up in the morning. I tend to respond very quickly to the alarm on my phone and get out of bed and get into action very quickly. I don’t like to lie in bed when I am awake. Sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night, I get up and read. Sometimes I write my journal. My wife, on the other hand, will lie quietly in bed. When her alarm goes off, she turns it off and stays in bed for a few minutes before rising. That ten or fifteen minutes she lingers in a kind of half-awake state. She will often talk to me if I am in the room, but she isn’t ready to fully engage in a conversation. It is at those moments that she sometimes reports to me one or more dreams.
There is a scientific reason for our differences in remembering the imagery of our dreams. According to sleep researchers, the levels of noradrenaline are low in the brain when we are experiencing REM sleep, this is when the most vivid dreams occur. Our bodies, however, produce quite a lot of noradrenaline when we are startled. A sudden sound, such as an alarm clock, can raise the noradrenaline levels significantly. As our noradrenaline levels rise, usually quite suddenly, our brains go into rapid activity, sorting out the details of our circumstances. For most of us questions like “Where am I?” and “What should I be doing today?” are quickly answered. As our brains process that information, it discards imagery that doesn’t support the quest for specific details.
I remember teaching myself to rise quickly upon waking. When I was a child, my father rose between 4:15 and 4:30. Most days he was out of the house by 5 am. If it was not a school day, he was glad to take me to work with him and often I could get an airplane ride, depending on the activities of his day. Even when I didn’t get the airplane ride, I got to hang out at the airport with my dad, which was something I loved. So I taught myself to wake, rise and get dressed as soon as I heard him wake. He once told me, when I was an adult, that I was the only one of his kids who could get out of bed and get dressed in the amount of time it took him to put on his boots.
I taught myself to respond to the noradrenaline in my system in ways that allowed my body to produce more of it. The sensation of quickly waking became pleasant to me. My brain responded by discarding imagery that got in the way of my primary task, which was being in the car next to my father when he headed off to work. I became addicted to the feeling, which was a chemical addiction, but the chemical was natural and produced by my own body.
A professor of psychology in college kept a dream journal for decades. At the time we were students, he had more than 25 years of dreams recorded in his journals. He maintained that remembering dreams was a simple matter of practice. The more you try to remember dreams, the more dreams you will remember. He trained his brain to remember the imagery of his dreams.
Dreams have a number of practical advantages. Our brains, as they rest, process feelings, ideas, and experiences. They access information in less structured and formal ways than is the case when we are awake and fully conscious. Ideas and concepts that normally would be kept distinct are put together in different patterns. Dreaming enhances our creativity and allows us to solve problems that defy pure logic.
However, it does not appear that we have any need of remembering our dreams in order for us to gain the positive effects of dreaming. Our brains can benefit from sleep without requiring our consciousness. In fact, some sleep researchers are gathering data on a theory that remembering dreams can have negative effects, especially when there is confusion between the images of dream state with conscious reality. People suffering from sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy, can find it difficult to tell the difference between their waking and sleeping lives, leaving them confused and embarrassed. Some people remember their dreams to vividly that they export dream memories into their waking lives, resulting in false memories. When those false memories are checked, confusion can result. Excessive dream memory might be a symptom of an underlying emotional or mental disorder.
It turns out that sleep is far more complex than we once thought. I am fascinated by the research, but not distressed that I am not always the best sleeper. That college professor who remembered all of his dreams ended up suffering from severe dementia and was unable to distinguish reality from fantasy for several years at the end of his life during which he required constant care.
Part of the reason I don’t remember my dreams might be that I am not disciplined or practiced at remembering. On the other hand, there is little incentive for me to adopt such a discipline given what is currently known about sleep and dreams. I prefer to retain the ability to sort dreams from reality and hope I am able to do so for many more years.