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> What rubs me the wrong way, however, is that the paper also implies that the less anxious you are the more normal you are in your dreams. Hi, thanks for your
by FailMore 8y ago
> What rubs me the wrong way, however, is that the paper also implies that the less anxious you are the more normal you are in your dreams.
Hi, thanks for your comment. To be clear, it is not a value judgement by any means. We do not have responsibility for the feelings that we have and how they are surfaced in dreams. I have found it is the case that as an anxiety is worked through (e.g., I was anxious about standing up for myself, and practiced this in real life and found that I did not need to be so scared of it) the behaviour in the dream shifts to suit the demands of the situation more. These changes could be in accordance with the reconsolidation of the fear memory in the retrosplenial cortex (an area of the brain thought to be responsible for storing episodic fear memories which is more active during REM sleep than during waking). However, this is not where the process ends. When an anxiety is dealt with, another one surfaces and the behaviour is again at odds with the demand of the situation. So the 'normality' is short lived (and is not useful).
It is the case that individuals who experience less fear have more positive dream content, such as those with non-functioning amygdalas (Domhoff, 2017), individuals with greater wellbeing (Sikka, Pesonen, & Revonsuo, 2018), and even the Dalai Lama (Mehrotra & Lama, 2005). Those who have greater wellbeing also have fewer recurring dreams (Gauchat, Zadra, Tremblay, Zelazo, & Séguin, 2009). These are not my views, and I do not have an opinion on what type of content is 'better', but they are the results from other studies.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoThanks for your response. Yes, however, what none of these addresses is when the response is incongruous with reality but normalized in the dream- it establishes there is a specific demand of a situation in a dream that is congruous with how reality would respond as reasonable. My criticism is that this doesn't apply to dreams that explicitly have their own "reasonable" behavior rules as established in the dream- off the wall things. In a dream where drinking unicorn blood is the norm, is the reasonable behavior to resist doing so or is the reasonable behavior to follow the norms of the dream, and what does it say about onesself to not want to or want to do this goresome act? Imagine that this act is viewed neutrally in the context of the dream. In a dream where it is dangerous to make friends with pepole, what does it say if you resist and purposefully befriend someone even if you're scared of friendship? It's reasonable to befriend people in waking life, but it's unreasonable to befriend people in a context where friendship is explicitly dangerous. By the paper, it may mean one is anxious about conformity- but in this case conformity is nonsensical/unreasonable.
- FailMore 8y agoThe norms of the dreams should be accepted. If it is the case that drinking unicorn blood is normal in the dream, then it should be viewed as normal in the interpretation. The theory does not seek to normalise the dreaming situation, the norms of the situation are normally extremely useful in the interpretation.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoHm. I’d like to try applying this theory to my dreams, but I’m having some difficulty in a few edge cases (that have proven to be sticking points in the past). Would you mind if I reached out to you on your opinion on how they should be interpreted according to this proposed paradigm? And what channels are mode convenient for you? Thanks again for your responses.
- FailMore 8y agoYes, please reach out to me. My email is visible on the paper.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoTried the email on the paper but I got in response an address not found return. Is the email correct? I double-checked it and I did send it to the email on the paper as it was typed.
- FailMore 8y agoFor some reason I can't reply to your other comment, but yes, please reach out to me.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]