I have really weird dreams, rarely scary ones, though. Well, when I say “rarely scary”, I mean rarely do I dream about some axe murderer chasing me down and chopping me to bits. But I guess my dreams can be scary in their own right…losing teeth, dying my hair (permanently) some obnoxious color…superficial stuff like that.
Over the years my friends have found my dreams to be pretty entertaining (think Spicy Brown Mustard pants dream for those of you that know it!). One year, I received a dream interpretation book as a gift so I could try to figure out just what the wild encounters are that make up my dream world. While thinking that a dream I had that centered around raw meat means I’ll become super wealthy one day is interesting, I recently was introduced to a new concept…well, it’s only new to me. Someone I recently met described the theory that dreams provide an evolutionary benefit in that they help prepare us for real-life situations. Intriguing, huh? There’s a movie or documentary out there about it that I plan to watch once I find the right one. At any rate, because I dream so vividly and they’re so freaking strange, this concept really sparked my interest. So like the geek that I am, I started researching this theory, probably too much. In addition to many web sites, I think I’ve read 4 scientific reports on the concept of how dreams affect and relate to the evolution of the human mind, what parts of the brain are active during dreams and what that means, why dreams typically occur during REM sleep, etc.
I don’t want to write my own dissertation on it, but I do think it’s super interesting that dreams could (and probably do) play a critical role in threat rehearsal and preparation for various circumstances that we may encounter in our waking states. With the complexity and nonsensical nature of my own dreams, I find myself trying to figure out each morning what that dream is trying to prepare me for. Perhaps I’m overthinking it but it’s fun and interesting nonetheless.
Not only do studies show that dreams help prepare us for “threats”, they help prepare us for other social situations. Just like role-playing and mental imagery in real life helps prepare us for certain social interactions, dreaming can too. This has been proven through reports of children’s dreams. Children’s dreams most often involve family and close friends – probably because it’s more important for children to rehearse those types of close interpersonal relationships than it is for adults.
There’s so much more I could say about this topic but the last thing is just an interesting dream state that I ran across called “lucid dreaming”. Basically, the skinny on lucid dreaming is that the dreamer realizes, during a dream, that they are dreaming and that they are actually asleep. I think I’ve come close to this before but I don’t have full recollection of it now. One part of this that I know for a fact that I have not experienced is that for lucid dreamers, they’re often able to manipulate and react within the dream from a wakeful state of consciousness. Know what’s really cool? Apparently lucid dreaming is fairly uncommon but studies have shown that you can train yourself to do this. My dreams are so bizarre that I’m not sure I would want this for myself and it involves some wacky stuff like questioning your reality throughout the day while you’re awake (among other things). I don’t have time for that. I question reality enough as it is.
Perhaps I’ll start posting some of my dreams and my thoughts on their evolutionary benefits. This may expose too much about me to the general population, though. :)
