Have you ever wondered if the dreams you have hold a deeper meaning? In some cases, they just might. We dream every night, but we don’t always remember what we envision while we’re resting. The dream that you had about falling might not just be about you grasping for something to keep you from hitting the ground, just like the argument you had with a friend in your dream wasn’t just an argument. Sometimes, what we dream about holds a deeper meaning, one that we have to interpret to truly appreciate and understand.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into dream interpretation, looking at the most common symbols and what they mean in your dreams. Whether you dream about falling, family, friends, animals, or even other natural elements, we’ll discuss what these mean according to the experts and what insights they could provide you into your own mind. Let’s first look at what we know about dreams and what they represent for us, according to science.
The Nature of Our Dreams: Why Do We Have Them?
According to Sigmund Freud, one of the most famous psychologists who studied dreams, dreams are sourced from our external world when we encounter stimuli. In other words, we see something in our world and then respond to it, and our brains choose to envision that stimulus in our dreams in varying ways. In other words, we use our dreams to process what we see in our world, to understand it, and to code it to memory.
Our dreams are not the same as real life, but they come from our external world. That’s why seeing a monkey in the rainforest while on vacation might not show up exactly the same in your dream, or the conversation you have with a loved one is blown out of proportion when you lay down to sleep and dream about it.
Even more importantly, our mood are important to our dreams and how we understand them. They can control and even guide what happens in our dreams and how we comprehend what we experience if we remember it (Source: PubMed). With that in mind, what do specific symbols mean in our dreams? Let’s uncover a few of the most common ones so you understand more about your own nighttime reveries.
Common Dream Symbols and What Experts Say They Mean
The dreams that we have might feel random at times, but there are many studies that show that they might hold meaning. Let’s look at some of the most common dream symbols and what experts say that they could represent for you:
- Being Chased: If you find yourself in a dream and you’re being chased by something, experts have said that it is not only one of the most common nightmares, but it shows that you might be afraid of something and you might not be willing to confront it yet.
- Flying: Flying is another common dream that many people have. It’s a sensation that could feel liberating to some, and it might even represent a sense of freedom that they feel at that moment. However, if you feel anxious about flying in your dream, this could actually be telling you that you might need to escape something in your life.
- Being unable to move or talk: Many people might also dream about being unable to move or talk, two things that give people the agency to think and act for themselves. This situation might actually reflect your physical body at that moment because of a situation called REM atonia when your body cannot move during REM sleep.
- Being naked: If you dream about being nude, then researchers say that this might be an indication of your own worries about what others think about you. You could worry and feel shameful like you have been exposed—hence the lack of clothes in your dream!
- Water: For those who dream about swimming, rain, or other forms of water, this could actually be an indication of your emotions. Water flows just as your emotions ebb and flow from time to time, so if you consider the state of the water in your reverie, you might have an indication as to how you feel at that current moment in time.
- Specific Animals: Believe it or not, animals actually have specific interpretations when you see them in your dreams. For example, if you dream about a snake, it could mean that you’re afraid of dealing with someone or that you’re facing a change in your life, as snakes shed skin.
Tips for Interpreting Your Own Dreams
The most important thing to remember is that your dreams are uniquely yours and their meaning will depend on the whole picture of what you have experienced overnight. Freud himself said that dreams are often like riddles, telling us more about ourselves than we could have possibly imagined.
To better understand your dreams, try journaling about them as soon as you wake up. You can write down what you saw, how you felt, and what you noticed and then piece together the story from there. Your dreams are not always going to be clear to you immediately, but if you want to better understand your mind and the meaning of your reveries, this is a great practice to start!
Our Dreams Hold More Significance Than We Know
Whether you choose to start a dream journal or take the time to reflect every morning when you get up on what you experienced the night before, we can all learn more about ourselves. There are also so many more dream symbols that you can interpret! With plenty of resources available to you, you can open up a new window to your soul and your inner mind.
We hope that this article enlightened you and showed you more about the significance of your dreams. How will you interpret and reflect on your nightly dreams in the future?
