Alaska Sleep Education Center

Why You Should Write Down Your Dreams

Posted by Lilian Chifley on Mar 27, 2019 10:00:00 AM

dreams1You may not think much about your dreams, but they can be powerful sources of information about what is going on in your subconscious. Whenever you fall asleep, it is actually your conscious self that goes to sleep.

Your unconscious is still very much active, and that is when it comes out to play, bringing to the fore ideas that have been lying within for a long time. If you actually aid more attention to your dreams, you might end up with answers to your deepest questions and solutions to your most challenging problems.

The problem is that most people do not pay attention to their dreams. They got to sleep, dream, and then wake up and continue with their lives. They might remember snippets of the dream here and there, especially if it is soon after waking up and the dream was especially epic. However, that memory will soon fade, and the details will blend and blur into each other, becoming an incoherent mass of images when they try to remember.

dreamsThe thing about dreams is that the memory of them is clearest within the very first few minutes of waking. That is a crucial time, because after that everything disappears.

You should record everything you can remember about your dream right after waking up, while the memories are still fresh, and then you can go over them later trying to figure out what the dream was trying to tell you.

You can do this in many ways, such as by recording yourself describing the details, using a speech-to-text app, or good old pen and paper.

Pen and paper is the most engaging of these as it forces you to think really hard about what you remember as you try to describe it in detail. Later on, you can even have a proper write-up of it done by a service like Assignment Masters, EssayMama, Ninja Essays, or AustralianWritings.

That said, here are 5 reasons why doing all of this is good for you:

1. You get to remember your dreams

You forget all about your dreams within minutes of waking up. In fact, in less than a minute, you typically forget over 80% of the dream you had. That is why it is important to begin writing it down immediately while it is still fresh in your mind.

It allows you to get all the details right so that you can study them later to figure out what your unconscious is trying to tell you. Remember that your unconscious is like a muscle, which means that the more you work it out, the easier it will be for you to remember your dreams.

2. You are communicating to your unconscious

Your unconscious is sometimes called your higher self and for a good reason. It represents the parts of you that are hidden from your conscious state. In its own way, your unconscious represents a whole other you. That part of you likes to send you subtle messages with all types of information in them.

When you write your dreams immediately after waking up you are sending a message to your unconscious that you are listening to what it has to say. With time, you will have more clarity over the messages that it is trying to send you and it will also send you more messages for you to decipher.

Ultimately, the unconscious is like a muscle, which means constantly putting it to work only makes it stronger over time. Eventually, you will be in tune with your unconscious even during the day in your waking hours.

3. You become better at lucid dreaming

Good or bad dreams?To put it simply, lucid dreaming is dreaming with the knowledge that you are dreaming and thereby being able to take control of your dreams. Lucid dreaming as a phenomenon has been known about for a while now, and even Buddhist monks are aware of the technique.

In fact, the very best practitioners of deep meditation are able to dream while awake and have full control over their dreams.

When you get really good at lucid dreaming, you have full control, not only over the objects in your dreams but also over the dream scenarios themselves.

This is a good thing. Usually, in a dream, we are afraid of something bad happening, such as something scary chasing us or us falling or something like that.

However, when you are in charge of the dream scenario, you can easily switch the dream into a pleasant one when it becomes a nightmare. You can even explore the dark aspects of your unconscious without fear because you are aware that you are dreaming the whole time.

“Lucid dreaming is almost like playing a video game, only it’s way more fun,” says Thomas Jones, a creative writer with various top essay writing services.

When you meet a scenario or object in your dream that you find scary, you can simply take the time to ask yourself what it means. In reality, though, you are asking your unconscious, which will give you an answer by changing the scenario or object to what it symbolizes.

This allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your unconscious and the things that your mind has been repressing the whole while.  You can visit scenarios involving childhood or other trauma; you can explore your darkest fears, your little tendencies, and the sources of your most strongly embedded habits.

You can also see how your unconscious views the world and find the solutions that it suggests to your most challenging problems.

4. You can see patterns

dreams4Sometimes things that are unresolved in your brain manifest themselves in various ways in your waking life. You might find yourself developing certain coping habits as a result of attachment patterns you developed as a child, or you might find yourself suffering anxiety or depression, or some such state because of some traumatic event that happened in the past.

First of all, it is absolutely necessary that you see a professional therapist to deal with these things. They have been trained to help patients get through such conditions and are your best chance of dealing with your issues. That said, you can also find some ways to help you resolve these issues in your dreams.

A common practice at Best term paper is to encourage writers to write their dreams down and explore the dark parts of them with the company therapist once a week. It has significantly contributed to the overall mental health of the writers.

Often your unconscious is the source of many of your mental states. We tend to repress thoughts and emotions that we don’t want to face and they find their way to our unconscious. In order to face them properly, interrogate them, and resolve them, we need to revisit that subconscious and figure out what it is that we are running away from.

It is especially easy to get to note recurring patterns in your dreams when you master lucid dreaming. Your unconscious tries to tell you things about what is going on in your mind, and all you need to do is listen.

If there was something you started but never finished and your dreams keep leading you back there, you can investigate why you have never moved on from the event and maybe resolve the issue for yourself, allowing you to move on once and for all.

5. It can boost your creativity

Because of the unfettered nature of your unconscious, it can be a great source of creativity. Your dreams aren’t bound by the same rules as your reality because your unconscious does not see the world the same way your waking mind does.

You can find your muse in your dreams sometimes, finding the next painting, song, or novel to write and wow the world with. If you’re a writer, writing down your dreams might even boost your essay writing skills.

Mind Racing? Write your Insomnia Away

It’s 1 a.m. and your brain is on autopilot organizing your pantry in order of food group. You’d love to be sleeping but instead you’re going all Martha Stewart with your beanie weenies. It’s times like these that knowing how to keep a sleep journal come in handy.

Writing in a sleep journal when your mind won’t slow down materializes your thoughts and worries and makes them tangible. So instead of whizzing at 100 miles an hour solving a problem or doing a rundown of your schedule for the next day, your brain says, “girl, we got this settled. We can chill!”

It gives your brain an outlet for all the excess creativity, and writing down that awesome idea or solution gets it off your brain and onto paper. If your sleep loss is moving into a chronic, nightly event, you may have un-diagnosed sleep apnea. Contact Alaska Sleep Clinic today for your free sleep assessment with one of our board-certified sleep specialists.


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Topics: obstructive sleep apnea, dreams, journal

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