dreams 2nd draft

"..as men of the world, we hardly know of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do.."
-R.D. Laing
I'm not sure if I necesarily believe that my dreams are part of my experiance. Ardie Laing is claiming that our experiance is the absolute reality of whats going on, and a dream is not reality. It is a place our unconcious creates, either to play out hidden desires/wants/needs, or simply something that is influenced by outside noises.
Those dreams that are developed by our unconcious when we are in a deep sleep, present to us what we normally may not want to accept or acknowledge. It is coming from a part of ourselves that we normally do not listen to, for one reason or another. However, it is all part of who we are, and part of ourselves.
I feel dreams are not necessary to our existance. I feel that a disconnect from our dreams would not be the worst thing to experience. I feel that the dreams are all coming from some where inside of ourself, so while the dream may be presenting to you something you normally do not think about or see that way or acknowledge, it does not mean that you could not notice these things without the help of the dream. It is all coming from within you.
In the New York Times article, "In the Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why We Dream at All", by Natalie Angier, it discusses what might cause certain nightmares. It begins by describing a man that started out with a traumatic childhood, being physically abused by his schizophrenic mother as he would lay in bed trying to fall asleep. He grew up to be a relatively normal man, until one nght when he awoke to find a burgalur going through his things. He then began to have horrible nightmares in which there was a middle aged woman intruder, and a knife hung above his head.
A psychologist, Dr. Ross Levin said; "The old fear memories have not gone away.. [they] were easily reactivated by the recent trauma." The doctor claims that nightmares can often be altered by using certain excersizes in which we gain more control in our dreams.
I found this part of the article to be interesting. It shows you how past experiences and traumatic events in our lives can lead to our dreams. Unresolved issues in our daily life can affect our dreams in very abstract ways.

When we first started examining dreams, I noticed that I often didn't dream at night. My dreams would mostly be the kind that occur due to outside noises. I would wake up, eat some breakfast, turn on the news, then fall asleep as the news is on in the background. These dreams would all be scenerios my mind has developed that incorporated, or was based off of what I was subconciously hearing from the news as I slept.
As we got in the habit of writing down our dreams after we had slept, I began having more vivd and deeper dreams at night. I began to notice very repetitive things in my dream. Often, at some point, I would think "This is most likely a dream" however when I woke up the feelings would all be very real. I would wake up either relieved or dissapointed that it was all a dream. If it were a dream involving being chased, I would wake up with my heart racing and feeling very anxious. I would often wake up confused, and only half aware as to what was going on.
Another very common aspect of my dream would be that I would be with people who, in my dream I obviously know and are very good friends with, but in reality I have no idea who these people are. They would also never have a clear face, or I would just never get a good look at it, so it makes it impossible for me to try and figure out who they might be, however in the dream that's never a problem.
I've noticed that I have very abstract dreams. And recently, as I've been noticing them more and writing about them more, they've been more and more violent and disturbing. The majority of them have involved either killers, running from some kind of monster, being kidnapped, or fighting someone.
A dream that I once had during the course of this dream unit, involved being kidnapped. I was in a taxi cab, and it was during some kind of riots, so the cab driver had to pick up multiple people. We stopped by some kind of riot, there were buildings burning, and people running. We stopped for a man and when he came into the cab, we asked him what was going on. He then proceeded to pull out a gun and force us to to drive where he said to. I kept whispering to the driver that he should do something, that he could easily get the man out. He was paralyzed by fear, or just refused to help us. He was too concerned with getting himself shot then saving all of us. Finally, we got to a gas station where apparently the persons partner was there with other people they had kidnapped. During the course of all of this, I just kept trying to text my mom or something to let someone know where I was. The entire dream was full off fear and anxiety. When I woke up, I was just so relieved that it was all a dream. I had similar anxiety ridden dreams, in which Jeffrey and I were being chased by some killer and he kept pausing and tying his shoe or looking at some sign. I kept trying to run because I knew the killer was close, and I just kept screaming because I was getting so concerned. Another dream I had, the 11hth and 12th graders went on a classtrip together and I ended up fighting some girl and getting all of my anger out.
The majority of the dreams I wrote about in a dream journal involved some kind of violence, or extreme amount of anxiety.

addition to dreams chunk

In the New York Times article, "In the Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why We Dream at All", by Natalie Angier, it discusses what might cause certain nightmares. It begins by describing a man that started out with a traumatic childhood, being physically abused by his schizophrenic mother as he would lay in bed trying to fall asleep. He grew up to be a relatively normal man, until one nght when he awoke to find a burgalur going through his things. He then began to have horrible nightmares in which there was a middle aged woman intruder, and a knife hung above his head.
A psychologist, Dr. Ross Levin said; "The old fear memories have not gone away.. [they] were easily reactivated by the recent trauma." The doctor claims that nightmares can often be altered by using certain excersizes in which we gain more control in our dreams.
I found this part of the article to be interesting. It shows you how past experiences and traumatic events in our lives can lead to our dreams. Unresolved issues in our daily life can affect our dreams in very abstract ways.

dreams first draft

"..as men of the world, we hardly know of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do.."
-R.D. Laing
I'm not sure if I necesarily believe that my dreams are part of my experiance. Ardie Laing is claiming that our experiance is the absolute reality of whats going on, and a dream is not reality. It is a place our unconcious creates, either to play out hidden desires/wants/needs, or simply something that is influenced by outside noises.
Those dreams that are developed by our unconcious when we are in a deep sleep, present to us what we normally may not want to accept or acknowledge. It is coming from a part of ourselves that we normally do not listen to, for one reason or another. However, it is all part of who we are, and part of ourselves.
I feel dreams are not necessary to our existance. I feel that a disconnect from our dreams would not be the worst thing to experience. I feel that the dreams are all coming from some where inside of ourself, so while the dream may be presenting to you something you normally do not think about or see that way or acknowledge, it does not mean that you could not notice these things without the help of the dream. It is all coming from within you.
When we first started examining dreams, I noticed that I often didn't dream at night. My dreams would mostly be the kind that occur due to outside noises. I would wake up, eat some breakfast, turn on the news, then fall asleep as the news is on in the background. These dreams would all be scenerios my mind has developed that incorporated, or was based off of what I was subconciously hearing from the news as I slept.
As we got in the habit of writing down our dreams after we had slept, I began having more vivd and deeper dreams at night. I began to notice very repetitive things in my dream. Often, at some point, I would think "This is most likely a dream" however when I woke up the feelings would all be very real. I would wake up either relieved or dissapointed that it was all a dream. If it were a dream involving being chased, I would wake up with my heart racing and feeling very anxious. I would often wake up confused, and only half aware as to what was going on.
Another very common aspect of my dream would be that I would be with people who, in my dream I obviously know and are very good friends with, but in reality I have no idea who these people are. They would also never have a clear face, or I would just never get a good look at it, so it makes it impossible for me to try and figure out who they might be, however in the dream that's never a problem.
I've noticed that I have very abstract dreams. And recently, as I've been noticing them more and writing about them more, they've been more and more violent and disturbing. The majority of them have involved either killers, running from some kind of monster, being kidnapped, or fighting someone.