I started paying attention to my dreams
Dreams are different every night. One night, it’s only a pitch-black view of nothingness. Sometimes, it is a rollercoaster of events. It is unpredictable, interesting, or for most times, scary. I never paid any mind to it because I know they were not real. Until one day, some of them started to make sense.
I tried to understand it whenever I have one. The more I do, it gets scarier. So, I try to minimize the time to analyze them all. Everyone has a dream. Clear, unclear, remembered, forgotten, we have them. These are images and scenes that our minds create while we sleep. Some said that it reflects what you know and feel at the moment.
Why did I start paying attention to my dreams?
There was a time, mid-pandemic, I had a hard time sleeping due to the stress that I felt. The feeling went on for days and I started expecting creepy dreams. When I feel good, on the other hand, I thought I would have better ones.
One night, I had a dream that I was being chased. I felt so tired when I woke up the next day. Then, the next night, I had a dream that I was crying and screaming with frustration. It felt like an alarming situation because my friends were involved in that dream.
However, at the time, I tried to shrug it off. The next day, I woke up sobbing and sweating. That’s when I knew I felt stressed. Stress controlled my mind and dreams. I never acknowledged my tiredness because I would only remain in front of the screen.
I don’t move much. Why would I be tired? Why would I be stressed? It doesn’t just make sense. That’s when I realized how I never recognize my tiredness. But, my mind does. And, my dreams show them.
It’s good to know but not overanalyze it.
I have a habit of searching the internet for the meaning behind my dreams. For one, I tried to know why it would be about me sleeping in a bed full of ants. I found out that it’s about something that bugs my daily life. It made sense because of how much stress have been in my personal life at that time.
One search after the other, some of them made sense that it scared me. I decided to stop assuming things and let things happen. I can only change those that I can control. In this case, I should just maintain peace of mind to have good dreams.
Keeping track of my mental health through my dreams.
Dreams are somehow connected to health, most importantly, the mental health. If my mental health is healthy, my dreams are calm, letting me sleep better.
Although, when I feel more tension from being stressed and anxious, I get nightmares. Unusual and scary dreams appear in my sleep. In this way, I try my best to calm down.
What I do to have better dreams
- Listen to music before sleeping
- Clear my thoughts before sleeping
- Exercise more
- Eat healthily
- Watching or reading good things online (I probably take the content in my dreams)
Dreams are sometimes weird, scary, and full-on strange. But it might be your brain trying to send you a message through those unusual images. It may be “You need rest” or “You know better than doing this.”
These thoughts are already present in your mind. But with your overthinking, you might be burying it with your stressful thoughts that your brain made a way to pass to you.
You don’t have to mind every dream you have. You just have to pay more attention to what your body and mind want to tell you. How about you? Do your dreams ever make sense, too?
