Why do we dream, and are we supposed to interpret them?

Science and biology tells us that dreams are the result of free form chemical process that occurs while we sleep, a  by product of the removal of waste products from our brain cells. During this process the waste is flushed from the brain into our spinal fluid and then processed out of the body via our organs.

We’ve all heard the “eating cheese/spicy food before bed creates weird dreams” thing. This is why! Some dreams are just weird and random, the mind and brain taking out the trash and that’s all.

Sometimes the consciousness and brain are clearly working together when we dream vividly, it is more than mere chemical side-effect.

Think of your brain as a library and your thoughts as books.

During the day you’re constantly taking books out and getting new orders of books in. As the day goes on the library gets more and more messy. Eventually the library closes for the night and the librarian (your dreaming brain) has to spend the night putting books away and throwing away damaged books or books that aren’t needed.

During this the librarian has to sort through the books. This is where the dreams become diverse because we all have different thoughts, and process uniquely different experiences throughout the day.

We input sensory information all day and when we dream we process that input. (*this is why PTSD manifests in nightmares and flashbacks… the mind is unable to process the input). Our minds assemble the input into recognisable form and the mind will inform us of signs we may have missed.

Dreams can and do have meaning. We are likely to dream about something that signifies something that drew our attention and focus throughout the day.  They may might not be prophetic that often, but we can still use our dreams as a window into ourselves,  in that they might highlight something we need to address in order to heal and evolve in this human experience.

Nightmares are often nothing scary to worry about in real waking life, they can often just indicate how much we care about something or how much we love someone. I had a terrible dream about a loved one many years ago that was nothing more than a validation of how much I would miss them because I love them dearly. There are many possible causes of adult nightmares, especially recurring ones, but they’re often linked to stress, trauma or an existing mental health condition. They can also occur after taking certain types of medication, such as antidepressants. Sometimes a condition that affects sleep can be a trigger for night terrors or sleep paralysis – not the paranormal.

Night terrors and sleep paralysis describe a much wider set of hallucinatory symptoms which happen more frequently at times of stress or extreme tiredness, often on the edge of sleep on that theta brainwave cusp. I had very scary experiences of this some years ago during a phase of insomnia.

Hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations are visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory events, usually brief but occasionally prolonged, that occur at the transition from wakefulness to sleep (hypnagogic – dropping down into theta/delta state) or from sleep to wakefulness (hypnopompic – coming up from delta through theta). The person may hear sounds that are not there and see visual hallucinations or feel touched or grabbed. These can be very vivid, feeling very real and may be bizarre or disturbing as I also found.

These can affect us in different ways. Sometimes the hallucinations are visual, tactile, some are auditory, sometimes we have all of them at once – and almost all of them have an unwanted extra symptom – like a presence is in the room.

As a parnormal investgator, it is so very rare that a spirit is causing this activity. It is 9 times out of 10, entirely physical brain activity causation. It’s essentially a misfire of the brain telling the body its asleep when it isn’t and reality and dreams are overlaid and seem to be one scary experience as the dream feels very real… because we are still in two brainwave states at once!

Our brainwaves drop our consciousness down on the edges of sleep from waking state to deep theta and delta states, which are the same states that have been observed in mediumship experiments. On the edges of sleep we are usually on the cusp of theta/delta which is where most mediums are during a sitting to communicate with the spirit world. Even those who don’t believe in mediumship can experience some information being “downloaded” for later reference, knowledge validations and even brief dream visits from loved ones who have passed over. Even dreams about things that do come to pass.

I remember so vividly, a dream I had of a little girl who looked like me aged 2, sitting on a white bed between me and my husband we were so full of love for this little girl, it was overwhelming. When I woke, I felt full of emotion and love for this little one, and told Mr F about it, and how much we adored her.

A year and a half later, our little niece was born… she does look like me, as me and my brother are very similar and she takes after him. The actual moment in my dream actually happened during a visit when she was 18 months. We stayed in a hotel which happened to have a white bed, and she climbed up to sit with us and snuggled up in the middle. The love and purity of that moment, her choosing to chill with us …It hit me with such deja vu! I have a list like this, so many dreams that made no sense at the time, but came to make sense later on.

I keep a dream journal and recommend you do the same, even just keeping  voice memos on your phone, as we forget most of our dreams within 20 seconds of waking. I find voice memos in the morning quite often that I had no recollection of making, and that info would have been lost forever!

Reviewing our dreams weekly. monthly, yearly gives a fascinating insight into ourselves, and even some amazing psychic validations! We even have dream visits from our loved ones too – here’s how to tell if was a real visit or not. 

We all have a little psychic ability within us, so working with your dreams can really help it develop too. Give it a try!