It can be difficult in day to day life to express all our feelings. Some of them aren't socially acceptable and some would not be appropriate expressed in certain environments like the workplace - we could get into a lot of trouble! What happens when we have an experience that produces emotional arousal is that it will stay in the body if unexpressed. Holding emotions in like this causes lots of stress on our bodies and minds. During REM sleep we process these unresolved feelings and the feelings can be discharged. Read more...

The mind will try to organise and make sense of all our experiences. Particularly when unexpected and/or distressing things happen to us our unconscious minds will be busy trying to make sense of it all. For example when a relative dies suddenly and unexpectedly, we are in an accident or we have a disagreement with someone.

During our dreaming state we will often go over the same event over and over, providing different outcomes and solutions, looking at every minute detail - replaying it until we have consolidated and absorbed the experience.

While asleep our minds are often busy solving problems. These can be of varying nature from relationship problems to creating new inventions.

As a child I used to learn maths in my sleep! I can remember working out how to do long division while dreaming - we had been learning it in class but I didn't fully understand it until my dream.

My eldest daughter dreamt she could ride her bike - that day I made sure we got her bike out and lo and behold she could ride it.

What are you learning or creating when you are asleep?

Dreams quite often are simply expressing our desires. For instance we dream about being with someone we are attracted to (maybe having sex with them if we are lucky!), or that we have loads of money, or we are in our dream job. Wish fulfillment dreams can also be of the negative type like dreaming of killing someone we do not want in our lives anymore or rejecting someone who has hurt our feelings.

These are the dreams where our internal saboteur is in charge. They seem to turn up when we've made a postive step in the right direction in our lives. For instance when we stop a destructive behaviour like overeating or we bring a new element into our lives like working towards a life long wish. These dreams express a part of ourselves that want to keep things as they are no matter how destructive. Some people would call this part the ego.

These dreams can be very distressing and more like nightmares. They attempt to show you every reason why your new way of doing things is completely wrong. For instance if you have stopped overeating you could dream that you get slimmer and slimmer until you get so thin you can hardly stand up and that people are laughing at you because you are so bony.

If you have a dream like this acknowledge yourself for providing it and carry on with your new behaviour. You can use intention to strengthen your resolve in your goal.

Processing & Releasing Feelings

Organising Experiences

Problem Solving

Wish Fulfillment

Sabotage