A third, at best a quarter, of our lives we do not spend in a figurative sense in a dream. Symbols in a dream often puzzle us, we remember them for a long time, trying to decipher the essence of the message that they wanted to convey to us.
On a scientific basis, this is the psychology of dreams. At the same time, you, too, are able to decipher the information that comes through dreams.
The psychology of dreams is the key to the unconscious
Understanding your dreams means understanding the language of your unconscious. That which is hidden from our daytime consciousness. And what we ourselves do not know about ourselves. In any case, an exploratory attitude to one's sleep and dreams can be the beginning of a self-exploration of the unknown territory of us.
The analysis of dreams can be viewed in different ways. This topic is as popular today as it is controversial. Someone thinks that it is meaningless to interpret dreams, believing that the most reliable way to get rid of negative emotions after an unpleasant dream is to say the cherished words through the open window: "Where is the night there and sleep." Someone, waking up in a bad mood, begins to remember his dream and look for answers, analyzing the language of his dream. No matter how a person reacts to his dreams, he cannot ignore this topic. Because every morning we are again and again faced with a choice of what to do with the information that we remember from our dreams.
In order to answer the question of what the symbols in a dream mean and how to deal with your dreams, let's see how dreams are formed.
Our psyche can be conditionally divided into three spheres: conscious, unconscious and superconscious. For the first time, Z. Freud began to talk about the structure of the psyche (work "I and It"). Later, such famous psychologists as C. G. Jung, A. Adler, E. Fromm and many others studied this topic, developed and modernized it. Thanks to their research, the psychology of dreams has received serious scientific justification.
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- The conscious sphere is responsible for our perception of the world, the people around us and the events that happen to us.
- The unconscious sphere is responsible for our desires and instincts that drive us, but which we are not always aware of.
- The superconscious sphere is responsible for the moral attitudes that we live by, for the rules and principles that we follow.
About dreams: how they are formed
Our desires have the most powerful influence on the formation of dreams.
In real life, we often suppress our desires because our moral principles do not allow us to do as we want. Desires that we abandoned under the influence of the prohibition do not disappear without a trace, they are pushed into the unconscious sphere and begin to bother us in dreams.
So, dreams are formed at the level of the unconscious sphere, they contain emotions and instincts that have not yet been censored by our rules and prohibitions. Therefore, sometimes the information that we understood from a dream can surprise and shock. It happens that after analyzing a dream, the thought arises: "What a horror, it cannot be that I want this."
In addition to repressed desires, the formation of dreams is influenced by emotionally significant events that happened to us the day before.
You should be attentive to the symbols in a dream. For example, a client dreamed that she came to a chic social party. All the women wore long cocktail dresses, and the men wore tuxedos. At this event, she had an important task - to recruit a man. This dream was formed under the influence of strong emotions the client received the previous evening. She was at her relative's birthday party. She liked the holiday very much. The entourage of this party was taken as a basis for the formation of her dream. So sometimes in a dream you can see the external environment in which we were the day before.
Often the formation of a dream and the appearance of certain symbols in a dream are influenced by our real problems and situations that we could not solve harmoniously. Such dreams also contain information that gives hints to solving the problem.
As an example, I will cite a client's dream: he was racing with his colleague, before the finish line he stumbled and fell, and his colleague crossed the line and won the competition. This dream tells us that in real life the client had a competitive situation in which he lost. And now, analyzing the dream, we can find the reasons and ways of solving this situation. During the discussion, it turned out that the client applied for a promotion, but in the end his colleague was promoted. He had negative emotions towards his colleague, which he did not admit to himself. However, he noticed that their relationship began to crack. Subconsciously, the client blamed his colleague for his failure, and, therefore, did not analyze what mistakes he made and what skills he lacked to get the desired position.
So, the key factors that influence the formation of a dream are our feelings and desires, emotionally saturated events of the past day and problem situations that we could not harmoniously resolve.
Dream symbols are an important part of our dreams
A person's dream consists of symbols that are emotionally significant for him. Here is an example of a client who, many years ago, experienced intense emotions in an elevator, after which the elevator became a powerful symbol in her dreams. When difficult situations happened in her life, she dreamed about different elevators, inscriptions in elevators, interactions with people in elevators, descents, ascents and other events related to elevators. Thus, her unconscious sphere tried to convey information through a symbol that was meaningful to her.
The interpretation of symbols is purely individual. For example, for one person, a snake symbolizes sexual desire, and for another, insidious competitors.
Also, often in our dreams there are symbols from childhood. We may not be aware and not remember what emotional meaning they had for us then. For example, a woman periodically dreamed of artificial red flowers, analyzing her dreams for three months, we saw a pattern that this symbol appears in her dreams after quarrels and conflicts. During therapy, she recalled that as a child, she was often present when her parents had a row. Quarrels usually took place in the living room. There were red artificial roses on the table in the living room, and she looked at them, trying to distract herself from the screams of her parents.
After analyzing this information, she came to the conclusion that red artificial flowers symbolize scandals and violence for her.
Realizing how our dreams are formed, it becomes clear what information about ourselves we can get during the analysis.
Our emotions and desires are grotesquely manifested in dreams, even if we ignore and supplant them in real life. Also, when interpreting, negative emotions are noticeable that accompany repressed desires. These are emotions of irritation and aggression, a person can stay in them almost constantly, for a long period of life, and over time, such an emotional state becomes familiar to him. Sometimes, when analyzing recurring dreams, we become aware of our long-standing desires, after which our emotional state changes significantly for the better.
We can analyze psychological traumas from childhood that continue to influence our lives by the symbols and storylines of the dream. For example, nightmare dreams reflect human fears, which are most often formed in childhood. Sometimes in a dream we see ourselves in an environment that surrounded us in childhood, in the yard or in the house in which we lived, such plots often reflect unpleasant emotionally significant situations that we could not resolve, and perhaps even realize then.
Exploring our dreams, we have the opportunity to know ourselves deeper, find answers to exciting questions, understand the causes of problems that worry us in real life. Also, dreams are excellent helpers in dealing with depressive conditions. Fear, inability to experience joy, aggression, apathy - the reasons for these and many other states we can understand by analyzing our dreams. By learning the language of our unconscious, we improve our emotional and mental well-being in real life.
