Have you suddenly gotten up at night due to some weird nightmare1? Did you feel sweaty, thirsty, or restless due to it, even after being in your comfortable bed with proper ventilation? Have you ever felt like falling down while asleep and woken up just to realize you were fine?
But, when we get up from sleep, we have a certain picture stuck in our brains or a feeling that something positive or negative happened and we either loved or hated it. This makes us wonder about the facts about dreams.
It’s all about what images you saw in your vivid dreams. It is the most confusing phenomenon that happens to us! We do not comprehend any of it, and most of the time, we do not even remember it. People dream for different reasons, including sleep disorders.
You might have woken up in the morning with a blush on your face just because you saw yourself talking to your crush. You might have had dreams about sex2. There would have been occasions when you woke up conquering happiness because you had just won an argument with your teacher or parents, slapped an annoying ex, or gotten excellent service and respect from your sibling. Well, these are just a few things that you would have experienced at some point or another.
So let’s talk about the purpose dreams serve and some related facts-
Dreams, Sleep and More
Did you wake up with a sweat? Did you feel that you could not move your body and someone is out there to grab you? You might be suffering from sleep paralysis3 – the horrible feeling when you are semi-conscious. While nobody knows why it happens for sure, there are different aspects to it – something we have discussed here. Brain activity increases significantly during dreams.
You might even be wondering what causes dreams. To know the answer to that, click here!
Even scientists and researchers are not entirely sure about the purpose and reasons behind our dreaming. Most of it has become a study of psychology. However, experience has testified to specific facts and, bang on, proved them right!
A list of the top 10 facts about dreams has been curated to make your reading experience enjoyable. You sure will relate at some point and wonder, “O Man, I felt this just today after waking up!”
Top 10 interesting facts about dreams
1) Connection to Reality
There is a possibility that your subconscious mind and conscious mind, both are active simultaneously, while asleep. This will feel like you are dreaming about a specific thing or a person or even getting some incredible work-related idea that you desire!
At the same time, your conscious mind would be instructing you to open your eyes and note it down to remember it later or tell it to the specific person or work on the idea you got. So, the images going in the subconscious mind and the alarming bell of recollecting it by your conscious mind happen together.
This is referred to as lucid dreaming, wherein you are aware that you are dreaming. If you are in such a dream, you may even possess some control over the happenings of the dream. There is also the fact that you see only the faces of the people whom have seen in reality. You may have seen them in person or even in images or movies.
Isn’t this a great fact about dreams?
2) Awareness of the Surrounding
Yes, there is a high possibility of you being aware of what is happening around you while you are asleep and dreaming. You are dreaming but are also listening to the conversations happening around you. And sometimes, when you are called, or your name is mentioned around you, you will incorporate that into your dreams.
The facts about dreams say that such awareness happens when it’s about to wake up.
3) Déjà Vu
When you are in reality, living your daily life and conversing with people, you suddenly feel that you’ve gone through the exact situation and head the exact conversation. For a moment, you are frozen and try to recall where did you see it. This is a feeling of Déjà vu.
The moment must’ve happened in front of your eyes but in a dream. The How’s and Why’s are not easily recalled because a person tends to forget 90% of the dream within a few minutes of waking up. This is one of the facts about dreams experienced by around 80 percent of people and is normal. Some people see images in their dreams – premonitions if you will.
To Know more about Deja Vu, go to the following video.
4) Reflection of Current Mood
You would’ve experienced dreaming about a particular issue or a person if most of your thoughts were centered on it for days. For example, you dream about throwing a surprise birthday party for a friend, and when you wake up, you realize that the thought of that friend’s birthday is nearing has been on your mind for a few days.
It is one of the interesting facts about dreams that the stress, mood swings4, happiness, or grief that we are currently experiencing in real life, get projected in some way in the dream some way or the other.
5) Paralyzed Body
We get more negative dreams than positive ones. We even get some weird dreams where we are running, shouting, fighting, or eating. We do not act out such actions while sleeping because our bodies are paralyzed.
Usually, we dream when we are in REM sleep(Rapid eye movement). In such a condition our mind paralyzes the body to restrict us from moving. I am glad that the body gets paralyzed! Otherwise, think of the fear that would be created for those who are awake while someone is dreaming in such a way.
6) Erotic Dreams
The men at an early adult stage would have come across getting erections daily while asleep and later be distraught about it. Even women would have woken up wet with orgasm during sleep5. This is a very normal phenomenon occurring while dreaming and is not a worrisome problem.
Men and women tend to fantasize about having romance or sex in their dreams. Such dreams lead to orgasms in them. It is one of the interesting facts about dreams that people visualize such stuff, but on a lesser note.
If you are confused about wet dreams and wish to know more, here is a video to help you out!
7) Weird Baseless Dreams
When you are asleep, you do not have control over your mind, similar to when you are awake. As a result, your mind is highly active during sleep, and it is not a prized-guessing that how powerful a human’s mind can be. The thoughts will flow like an Ocean, unrestrained and unpredictable, while asleep. The facts about dreams say that this will lead you to have bizarre dreams that have no connection with reality.
You could even get a taste of supernaturalism6 or baseless impossibilities. You can be a bloodsucking vampire or a magical wizard in your dreams!
I cannot even imagine what kinds of baseless dreams animals dream of.
8) An Illiterate in Dreams
You could be a great reader and writer in your life. But, at the same time, you could be an utterly illiterate person in your dreams. You might see books or signs, but you would not be able to read it. The facts about dreams say that dreaming is an activity of our subconscious mind.
On the contrary, reading and writing are the activities of the conscious mind. So Bam! Dreams have the power to make illiterate in your dreams, even after being a P.H.D in actual life.
Also, fun fact: you can’t count in your dreams, so if you find yourself in some lucid dreams, try and look at your fingers. You won’t be able to count them.
9) The Difference in Dream Theme of Men and Women
Men and Women both face a lot of feelings or circumstances while awake. Their minds and bodies are naturally different, so their take on a similar situation would be different. This difference in gender is also reflected in the themes and types of dreams they go through.
Men would see dreams involving more of physical activity, fighting, or weapons while women’s dreams, undoubtedly, circle around the emotional subjects. On the subject of sex dreams, while talking on psychological facts about dreams, men tend to be involved in the act of romance with more than one woman, while women dream of having a more passionate romance with someone close to them or even celebrities they adore.
10) Dreams Keep You Creative
Your subconscious mind never stops taking in and processing the things, people, or situations you experience your entire life. Your subconscious mind is even well-informed of your hobbies, activities, and routine. It will show you some really creative ideas and give you instincts about the work you are stuck on! There have been many pieces of evidence about certain ideas that unbelievably originated from dreams and changed the world!
Citing a few examples is Larry Page getting an idea for google or Dimitri Mendeleev coming up with the concept of the Periodic Table. The DNA double helix was the imaginative outcome of the vision of dreams to James Watson. Remember your dreams – this might just make you be more creative and have a better problem solving approach.
How does sleep connect to mental health?
There’s a tight association between sleeping and mental wellness. Living with a mental health condition may influence how well people sleep, and poor sleep could have a negative effect on your mental health.
Facts about dreams coming true
Some dreams come true without any involvement or “post-dream” action that the dreamer or anybody who understood the dream’s content could have influenced.
An increasing body of evidence suggests that dreams may also be an amalgamation of the thoughts of the person’s conscious and subconscious minds, allowing them to better predict the likelihood of certain events.
A related hypothesis proposes that evident cues may not be taken into account until all the evidence has been gathered. This may happen when you’re asleep.
Science or not but if you do work hard enough all your dreams will come true!
Have you ever had the same dreams again and again?
Recurring dreams might last for years or even a lifetime, depending on how much stress you’ve been under. To make matters worse, these nightmares seem to repeat themselves over and over again.
Such dreams are unique to each person, although they have similar themes among people from various countries and time eras. One of the most common situations is being followed, falling down, being unsuitable for a test, being late, or doing something over and over again.
You can have these dreams for the following reasons-
- Issues from the past that you haven’t addressed
- unmet needs
- areas of frustration
Facts about Nightmares
You’re most likely in the latter part of your sleep cycle when you have a nightmare, which is when REM is at its finest. During REM sleep, which happens every 90 minutes, your brain activity is elevated, your eye movements are quick, and your motor activity is restrained. .
Nightmares aren’t always associated with fear, sometimes its only cause of stress.
Do Blind People Have Dreams?
People who are visually impaired dream in different ways depending on when in their lives they were born blind. The visual content and sensory sensations of some blind individual’s dreams are quite similar to those of sighted people, whereas those of other blind individuals are considerably different.
Conclusion
Aren’t these facts about Dreams mind-boggling? It is even a fact about dreams that each one of us dreams daily. To add a cherry to the cake, we experience 4 to 6 dreams daily, ranging from 15-20 minutes.
It’s just that we do not remember it. It is even said that you will witness more nightmares if you eat late, or the schedule of your day is haphazard and hectic. While going through various facts about dreams we get, there is something called prophetic dreams. Click here to know about them further.
It is a fact about dreams that one-third of our life or around six years of it is spent in dreaming.
So, if you think you are getting some creative punch out of your dreams, keep a diary and a pen beside you before falling asleep and note down whatever you remember first on waking up. Who knows what idea or invention you could gift the world with? Try out a dream recall strategy if you feel you forgot your dream!
- Jones, Ernest, et al. On the nightmare. London: Hogarth Press, 1931. ↩︎
- Hmidan, Amira, and Angela D. Weaver. “Sex dreams: Gender, erotophilia, and sociosexuality as predictors of content, valence, and frequency.” The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 28.2 (2019): 177-189. ↩︎
- Sharpless, Brian A., and Jacques P. Barber. “Lifetime prevalence rates of sleep paralysis: a systematic review.” Sleep medicine reviews 15.5 (2011): 311-315. ↩︎
- Richards, Ruth, and Dennis K. Kinney. “Mood swings and creativity.” Creativity research journal 3.3 (1990): 202-217. ↩︎
- Lastella, Michele, et al. “Sex and sleep: Perceptions of sex as a sleep promoting behavior in the general adult population.” Frontiers in Public Health 7 (2019): 33. ↩︎
- Chireau, Yvonne Patricia. “Supernaturalism.” (2004): 71. ↩︎
Last Updated on by NamitaSoren
Strangely Interesting..