Media coverage: February 2006
Dream a little dream
Can your nightly visions really warn you about health problems, or are they nothing more than random images floating in your head?
Aviva Ingram
Ever had a dream that left you tied in knots trying to figure out what it meant? Then you're in good company. A recent survey carried out on behalf of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) found that almost half the population had at least one dream during the year that seemed significant despite being utterly impenetrable. But do dreams bear any relation to your real life? If so, how do you unlock the mysteries of their images? And, more importantly, can they alert you to, or help you deal with, physical an emotional problems?
It's a question that has been around since the dawn of time – the ancient Greeks used dreams as a healing system and the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt believed that they offered divine inspiration. At the turn of the 20th century, psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung argued that the secret meanings of dreams could be unlocked to reveal the true you.
Today, research into dream interpretation is still big business, but how much dreams can actually reveal continues to be hotly debated. 'It's because there's no hard evidence on how meaningful or useful dreams are, just strong opinions, 'says fellow of the BACP Phillip Hodson. 'But white the function of dreams is hard to prove scientifically, it's far from pointless to analyse their meaning.'
In fact there are plenty of experts worldwide who have analysed thousands of clinical observations and studies, and emerged strongly believing dreams can help wellbeing.
Hodson's 30 years of practice as a therapist have convinced him that dreams have the potential to show you a great deal about what's bothering you in your body and mind. 'I know of cases where a dream has revealed the need for a physical check-up,' he says.
There are certainly some incredible instances where dreams have saved lives. Wendy Pannier, president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), runs dream workshops with cancer patients and says that many participants dreamed about their cancer before it was diagnosed. 'A lady who came to a recent workshop dreamed she had breast cancer,' says Pannier. 'She requested the tests the next day at the hospital in Philadelphia where she works. When the routine mammogram revealed nothing, she argued for a sonogram until they agreed. It revealed a breast cancer tumour.'
Pannier says diagnostic dreams like these are not uncommon. 'A Russian psychiatrist, Vasily Kasatkin, studied the dreams of his patients and found that, by correctly interpreting dreams, it was possible to discover and treat serious illness long before traditional methods would have done so, ' she says. Kasatkin believed nerves feeding into the brain from every part of the body relay signals of impending illness to the subconscious, which translates them into dreams. Pannier herself dreamed of her endometrial cancer 15 months before it was diagnosed.
Robert Hoss, author of Dream Language, offers more insight into how physical problems may alter the content of dreams. He believes dreams about illness are often disjointed and contain imagery of broken pipes or machinery and dirty water, representing the sate of the physical body. He recommends getting a check-up if a particular body part recurs in a disturbing dream.
But dreams reveal far more than physical issues, say Pannier and Hodson. 'From an experiential point of view, working with dreams can also enhance creativity, encourage healthy lifestyle changes, indicate relationship issues, help solve problems and much more,' says Pannier. 'To give you one example, the caner patients at my dream workshop found that utilising the meanings of their dreams helped them through treatment by reducing their anxiety, helping them to connect ore to others, and increasing their feelings of hope and control. One lady used imagery exercises where she directed the energy from a healing dream towards her place of surgery. Doctors were amazed at her rapid improvement.'
Hodson believes dreams can reveal emotional difficulties that people would usually find difficult to recognise or talk about during waking hours. 'When you're conscious, you can repress certain thoughts,' he says.
'There's a "censor in your head", which stops you dwelling on things that make you anxious. You may not be able to banish these thoughts when you're asleep.' So a recurring dream may actually highlight suppressed worries and fears. It's proved a useful tool in therapy, because it can help people determine which areas of their lives need straightening out. If you keep dreaming about the same thing, it's worth looking at more deeply. Despite all this many experts remain unconvinced of the healing power of dreams. Some psychologists say dreams are just mental chatter of the day, allowing the brain to clear unnecessary thoughts. Then there are well-documented cases of depressed patients who make better progress when given drugs that deprive them of dreams. It's probably the strongest argument against dreams having a psychological function.
'There's also a school of thought that says dreaming is just the effort of the brain to make sense of random activity during REM [rapid eye movement], which is why they seem so bizarre,' says Dr Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre. But he thinks this is too simplistic. 'Dreams are generated by the brain,' he explains. 'Our brains have a great deal to do with who we are as individuals, so it follows that dreams may reveal information about ourselves and what we think about when we sleep.' If Dr Dijk, who has 20 years experience in sleep research, believes there's more to dreams than random activity, you know there's something in it. What he's less sure of is whether we dream about issues and events that have already happened or ones we need to deal with in order to stay happy and healthy.
What is certain is that everybody dreams. 'We also know that dreaming occurs primarily during REM sleep,' says Dr Dijk. During this time, rapid eye movements occur, you remain unconscious, and there is loss of muscle tone (your body is paralysed), but your brain becomes highly active.
Despite the lack of consensus on the function of dreaming, there is agreement among a wide range of experts that, at the very least, dreams are highly personal and could well reveal our most pressing thoughts. So dream dictionaries that give meanings of 'universal' symbols are fairly useless: a plane means something entirely different to a pilot than it does to someone with a fear of flying. The search for an answer continues, but for now all you can do is decide how important your dreams are for you. As Hodson says 'If they are bothering you, it's well worth doing something about it, especially if you're going through a hard time. Just remember that not all dreams are necessarily significant.'
The potential of dreams to benefit our waking lives is huge. There's just some way to go before we can say exactly how.
How to avoid unpleasant dreams
- 'You can wake yourself up from a recurring bad dream if you tell yourself just before you go to bed that there is a solution to nightmares,' says Hodson.
- 'Take charge of your dreams by telling yourself you won't worry about any causes of anxiety tonight, you'll deal with them tomorrow,' he adds.
- Stress can influence your dreams, so wind down and relax before you go to sleep. A warm bath with a few drops of lavender essential oil may help to instil calm.
- Drink plenty of water, adds Hodson. 'A nightmare could be the result of dehydration rather than an emotional problem.'
TIPS ON ANALYSIS
According to Phillip Hodson, your dreams may be trying to tell you something if:
You've had an upsetting experience (such as bereavement) and you go from sleeping soundly to having lots of disturbing dreams
You have recurring dreams
The type of dreams you have change dramatically
HOW TO INTERPRET YOUR DREAMS
Keep a dream diary – make notes as soon as you wake up, within 10 minutes at the most.
What's going on in your life right now? What's really bothering you?
Do elements of your dream remind you of things in your life? Look for parallels between your dream and your life to help you unravel what your dream could be telling you.
Assess your dream metaphorically as well as literally – did it include some kind of journey, for example?
Ask yourself whether this could relate to your life in some way.
FURTHER ACTION
Remember, you're the best person to understand your dreams, but in some cases it can be helpful to see a therapist, for example if you're highly stressed, or you feel you might benefit from getting to know yourself better. There are many ways to work with dreams, and different therapists have different approaches.
To find a psychotherapist or counsellor, contact BACP on 0870 443 5252, or visit www.bacp.co.uk.
IASD has a wealth of information on dreams – visit www.asdreams.org.
Extract Source: Healthy magazine, February 2006