After “what happened,” one question is almost always important to ask about your dream.
Here it is: “How did it make you feel?”
Were you happy? Sad? Anxious? Relaxed? Or something else?
The answer will color your interpretation of every other symbol that comes up in your dream.
Sometimes it’s a natural question. You’ll wake up feeling a certain way, in a certain mood.
Sometimes it’s not, especially when it’s a dream where you’re reviewing the day’s events or when you’re dreaming about something that you feel is completely out of your hands.
When it’s not a natural question, it’s a good idea to remember to ask it.
SOM
When writing down a dream, it’s often good to follow a particular format:
- Story (if there is one, if there’s not, and it’s a list of items, then list those)
- Objects (for an explanation, look here)
- Meaning
When you’re telling the story, ask yourself how the dream itself made you feel.
Dreams and emotional processing
REM sleep plays a major role in processing emotions. Sleep studies show that emotional and vivid dreams are more frequent when someone is woken up when they’re in REM. It’s natural that asking “how did the dream make you feel” is key to unraveling the meaning of the dream.
It’s especially important to ask this when the dream is a happy one. You need to understand what makes you happy. It’s not always obvious. For example, say you’re a person who’s happy helping others in desperate situations. Sometimes those situations can be desperate and pressure-packed. As someone interested in helping others, you wouldn’t necessarily be happy because of the awful situation, rather, you’d be happy because of the meaning and purpose you find in helping others.
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James Cobb, RN, MSN, is an emergency department nurse and the founder of the Dream Recovery System. His goal is to provide his readers with simple, actionable ways to improve their health and maximize their quality of life.
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References:
Scarpelli, S., Bartolacci, C., D’Atri, A., Gorgoni, M., & De Gennaro, L. (2019). The Functional Role of Dreaming in Emotional Processes. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 459. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00459