Dreaming sounds obvious to many. But there is more to it. How do dreams actually come about and do they actually mean anything?

Why do we dream?

Why we dream has still not been definitively explained. Already 2000 years ago it was known that dreaming keeps people healthy. It helps to cleanse the soul, thus finding inner balance. In a dream we unconsciously look for solutions to problems and also reduce our stress.We need to think about our dreams and talk about them ourselves with others. For many natural peoples, interpreting dreams is a daily ritual. Research has shown that people with brain damage, i.e. people who are unable to dream, suffer from depression. Furthermore, they also seem to lose all inner impulse. They are unable to make coffee, for example, without being prompted. So dreams are very important.Every healthy person dreams, even if they no longer remember them the next morning. We dream the most intensely in the so-called REM phase. This phase repeats every 90 minutes and lasts approximately 20 minutes. In the morning we can only remember the dreams from the last REM phase and that is only 10 percent of all dreams. Furthermore, dreams rarely penetrate into the memory, especially not after alcohol or drug use.

Contents of the dream

What about the content of our dreams? Is the content of a dream as important as the dream itself? Can the dream be explained? It is believed that the brain processes the impressions we receive during the day according to their importance, and then stores or deletes them. Sort of like how we clean up our desk after weeks of collecting things.

Resolving problems

Our dreams play a decisive role in managing problems. For example, recent events are compared with similar scenes from the past and solutions are then sought. The brain projects two slide images, so to speak: current events and past events. Now it becomes clear why dreams can sometimes be bizarre and chaotic.It has also been shown that people can solve a task more quickly after dreaming about it at night. So what you have learned is remembered more quickly if you sleep on it.

Nightmares

Recurring nightmares may be evidence that some problems are difficult to solve. For example, if you have a fear of failure before an exam, you may often dream about it. This fear of failure often arises in childhood and accompanies many people throughout their lives. Even when one is insecure, because something has changed in life, there is the possibility that certain dreams keep coming back.But not all dreams have a meaning. Sometimes the head is simply overcrowded with impressions gained during the day, which in turn need to be processed. This means that a short fragment of that day flashes by in a dream before it is completely erased. Another amazing thing is that when the alarm goes off, our brains can automatically record the sound into a dream.