Why Interpret Your Dreams
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Dreams are Unbiased Messages From the Unconscious Reflecting Your Emotional Energies That Influence if Not Control the Ego LIfe
Dream therapy {interpreting your dreams} can aid in gaining emotional well-being. By consciously examing and understanding dreams one can find connections between the dream images/actions and waking life, opening the mind to strong emotional energies that have become the core of personality, personal attitudes and actions in the current life. Dreams reveal who you are and why you are that person, what caused you to be the person, and most important what is out of balance in the emotional life. Dreams are from the unconscious beyond the control of the conscious ego. This is the function and purpose of dreams. Nature's tool to inform and help resolve emotional conflicts.
As an evolutionary process, dreams are and always will be a contribution to aid a person in fulfilling his or her whole potential. Dreams focus on the areas that a person neglects, that threaten full growth potential. When interpreting dreams, it is extremely important to pay attention to the context that the symbols are in, because a symbol in different contexts can have different meanings. Dreams have both a literal application but the language is primarily symbolic, metaphorical of emotional energies {as well as the literal appliactions addressed in the next paragraph}. It is important to note any association with the incident that comes to mind, such as people, background, etc. point to aspects of the dreamer with the images depicting emotional energies. Dreams mostly use vivid pictorial language, something that is universally developed where an image does not just signify itself, but a multiplicity of associations to oneself. Your dreams are about you, and your emotions, with other people being in relationship to those emotions.
A Focus on Early Life
More Freudian Than Jungian
We all have 'issues'. And because everything in life is a psychological event those experiences that possess strong emotional energies stay with us, if not consciously then unconsciously. Many of these emotional experiences infuence our personal attitudes and often our personality. Especially if they occur early in life when the developing brain takes in the surrounding environment. What is 'learned' in early childhood, those experiences that were 'not usual/not normal' to normal development, or experiences that caused pain or great anxiety are implanted within the psyche and can influence if not dictate formation of personality and personal attitudes. Such experiences are permanently fixed in the unconscious and can become 'motivator's for who we become and drive a person to do what was learned in early life. Or in some instances do the opposite since as individuals our personal DNA regulates certain actions or re-actions to a particular experience. Whatever the action it is stored within the unconscious and relived in our dreams.
We tend to act out what we 'unconsciously know', especially what we learn growing up. This is a fundamental part of nature in all animals. Even though a child may not consciously remember the event or the experience the emotional energies are stored within the unconscious. If you grown up in an environment where there is spousal abuse those experiences can {and often do} leave a deep mark on the psyche. Often the child will act out those same abusive tendencies, they too can be abusive toward their spouse. The simpliest experiences such as parents smoking will more often than not influence the child to smoke later in life. What you see {experience} is what you do. The developing brain of a child is influenced by environment *. This is why we often have dreams of small children or past childhood homes or environment. The child grows to adulthood seemingly with out harm but the 'inner' child is wounded and needs healing. This is the primary reason why we dream. To heal the wounded 'inner child'.
Then there are the personal 'traumas' in life. Pyschological and/or phyiscal abuse that are so traumatic, the memories hide like a shadow in the brain and can't be consciously accessed because they protect the individual from the emotional pain of recalling the event/experiences. These suppressed memories can cause debilitating psychological problems, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorders. Often it is much later in life that these memories begin to resurface sometimes stimulated by a current waking experience related to the traumatic experience. Perhaps the most notable example of suppressed memories are from the wide spread abuse of children in the Catholic church by priests. Once opened the memories rush out to consciousness and the pain once again resurfaces. Dreams replay these experiences in mundane ways using its symbolic language in an attempt to bring out the experiences so there can be a realization of the trauma. Only when there is a conscious awareness can healing take place.
Read from Science Daily How traumatic memories hide in the brain, and how to retrieve them
Dreams are a direct link to the unconscious and by interpreting your dreams you can access these emotional energies. It is not unusal to forget, ignore or even repress experiences that possess strong emotional energies because they were/are painful. But these experiences are often part of the buiding blocks for personality and attitudes and when you do not know they exist you go through life being influenced if not governed by them. When you do become aware of them you can take steps to resolve the issues and in the process remove their influence. Dreams attempt to reveal these issues so they can be addressed, and resolved.Dreams are intentional tools provided by nature to restore balance to the psyche. The body has the immune system, the psych{ology} has the dream.
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Additional Reading: The importance of early bonding on the long-term mental health and resilience of children
Additional Reading: Here's How Psychologists Actually Analyze Your Dreams