Dreams are like windows to the subconscious.
Sometimes I write my dreams in a journal; sometimes I tell them to a friend; sometimes I keep them to myself; sometimes I remember, but I tend to forget afterwards. Dreams help me to reflect on the events in my life. In mywork, dreams reflect how stressed I am. I remember a time when I was having a hard time producing my undergrad thesis, and I had recurring multi-level dreams/ nightmares where I saw myself sleeping and a negative force or monster would try to harm me. I would try to shout so I could tell people who were awake in my dreams to wake me up, but they couldn’t hear me. I would wake up shouting, but with no voice; sometimes I would wake up but find myself still in the dream. Sometimes I have recurring dreams of me sleeping or not wearing anything, but as if that’s normal. Sometimes dreams make me more aware of my responsibilities: in a dream I will see the consequence of not doing the thing I need to do, and when I wake up, I know I have to do it. It reminds me of what’s important.
Real time can be linear, but dream time isn’t. While thinking, especially when I am focused on doing something such as writing, producing a work or experimenting with different ways of expressing the ideas I have in mind, I get lost in time and forget about the time and even the place. With intense emotions, time can move slowly, or sometimes very fast.
Dreams are very important for me, especially waking dreams. They help me cope. I use my imagination to create the dreams that I want to happen. If I cannot have a real dream while sleeping, I will just think about it and sometimes put it on paper. I remember when I was dreaming about having a child, I wanted to dream about the child but nothing happened, so I imagined and drew how my child would look, and also looked for images of how that child might look.
Whether or not dreams to have a positive impact on you really depends on how you interpret them, and also on which you choose to focus on and which to discard. Happy dreams are always nice to have. But if a dream disrupts your life, then you need to reflect and find out what triggered it: an unaddressed feeling, an anxiety or a problem. If you are able to find the trigger, you can start addressing it and start the healing process.
