What Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You

By Sylvia Eastman

Edited by Taylor Morgan

Rayburnelaine / @Rayburnelaine on Pinterest

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night because of a crazy dream? Well, most people have. An article by sleepfoundation.org states that the average person is said to have about two hours of dreaming every night, 81% of people believing that their dreams have some sort of meaning. The most common dreams are about teeth falling out, showing up late, flying or failing a test, but can also be more specific to your personal life.

Dreams help people process what’s going on in their everyday lives. Sometimes, certain dreams signal underlying feelings about life events and can be your subconscious trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world around you. Recurring dreams are also triggered by unprocessed conflict and unhealed trauma. So, if something is happening in waking life that you are avoiding, chances are that your brain will try to process it while you sleep. 

Dream meanings are completely subjective, and everyone interprets them differently. No dream will ever be exactly the same. A lot of dreams are also not remembered in the morning, and a lot of people who say that they don’t dream actually do. Their dreams just aren’t detailed and impactful enough to be remembered. If dreams are very detailed and personal to one’s external life, chances are that person has a very imaginative mind and has lingering emotions or memories towards a certain event. Nightmares can also represent fears or anxieties we have in our waking life and often disturb our sleep patterns. 

Regardless of whether you are a deep sleeper who has very detailed dreams every night or someone who can’t remember even the faintest details from their dream, your dreams are a way of telling you how you feel. These internal cues can serve as a reminder to put ourselves first when we are struggling with something in our external world. Your dreams are signaling you to face your reality and be open to change. So before you wake up and immediately Google the meaning of your next dream, let the connections between your dream and your personal life soak in. Don’t ignore the subconscious signals and take from your intuition what your dreams are trying to tell you.