The Importance of Remembering
Your
Dreams
Dream interpretation and analysis can be
anything from a fun and interesting diversion to a serious, full time
pursuit. Many people have been able to analyze their dreams and use the
clues found there to address important issues in their waking lives, and
dream analysis has been an important subject throughout the
ages, from the earliest Greek and Roman philosophers to modern
day society.
Before any dreamer can set about
analyzing and interpreting his or her dreams, however, those d reams must first be remembered and recorded. Remembering
your dreams is an often overlooked part of dream analysis, but it is the
basis upon which all dream analysis stands or falls.
It's important to record dreams
quickly, since dreams are one of the hardest things to capture. Half of a
dream's content can be lost in as little as five minutes, and up to 90% of
the dream can slip away within less than ten minutes.
Therefore, it's vital that anyone
seeking to interpret or analyze his or her dreams keep a dream journal as
close to the bed as possible. Keeping a notepad on the night stand or
under the clock radio is ideal.
It's important to get into
the habit of playing your dream back in your mind before you even open
your eyes. That's because the clock is ticking as soon as you
wake up.
Running the dream back through your mind will serve to
strengthen and reinforce some of those little details that will soon be
forgotten.
Write down as many of those
details as you possibly can, even if it just means jotting down a quick
word of phrase. You can always fill in the gaps later, the goal is to get
as much recorded about your dream in as short a period of time as
possible.
After you've written down as many
details as possible of your dream, it is a good idea to read what you have
written, fill in as many gaps and details as you can, and try to make
sense of it. If there are meaningful symbols in your dream, or things you
recognize from real life, you may want to circle them or otherwise point
them out.
It's best to keep a dream journal
over a period of a few nights, in order to look for patterns and similar
elements. There are often recurring themes in dreams, and those recurring
themes can provide valuable clues to the root causes of the dream
elements.
When interesting and analyzing
your dreams, it is best to keep it a fun and exciting exercise. While
dream interpretation can be used by experts such as psychologists and
therapists to treat and diagnose issues, that part of dream analysis is
best left to the experts.
It's, of course, possible to use
your dreams as healing tools, or as ways to examine underlying issues in
your life. For instance, dreams about being naked are often metaphors for
being exposed in a lie, or having a secret revealed. If you see such a
pattern in your dreams, it may be worth examining what parts of yourself
you have kept hidden, and for what reasons.
Likewise, dreams of falling are
often indications of feeling out of control. If you see a pattern of
falling dreams emerging, you may want to examine your life and try to take
better control of your waking hours.
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