The dream that woke me up

Dreams are sometimes so strange to us that we often feel the need to share with people the few details we can remember about them. Dreams have been said to be much more important than people might think, but I seem to be having less of them. 

I can't confidently say I have had a dream in some months. Perhaps I can't recall having any. But I just had one this night from which I had to forcefully wake up to escape from the danger I was in.

I dreamed that I had a pregnant wife and own a tavern in a town so unfamiliar. I was standing outside and saw a gunman shoot a man just few buildings away from the tavern. Within seconds I saw more gunmen trooping out from nowhere. The first thing I did was to help my pregnant wife escape through an "escape route" at the back. Then I returned to sit with the one customer we had at the time pretending to have noticed nor done anything. Within seconds, a gunman walked in, I can't recall the words that were exchanged but I remember him walking away after shooting the customer and then I.

I didn't die from the shoot, but pretended to be. The plan was to escape after the gunman left the tavern. I needed to stand up and escape out the same route I sent my wife but I'do forgotten how to stand and escape. I found myself still glued to the chair and in the same 'dead posture' when he returned, not alone this time with with the other gunmen and their was with them. They came in to celebrate their triumph or whatever as I could here chants of victory.

I was in pain, but I had to endure, not make a sound, and I also breath slowly so they don't notice I was still alive. Then one of them sat next to me. I had to hold my breathe, but for how long? At that moment, the overwhelming feeling was emotion – pain, fear and anxiety about the worsening situation and my inability to escape. It became clear there was no escaping for me and the pain became unbearable. I had to forcefully awaken from the nighttime hallucination we call dream. Though it took a while but I succeeded.

The time was about 3:45 am when I woke, I went for a pee and returned to continue my sleep but here I am minutes later sharing the dream with you. Sleep left me.

I had some thoughts:

• Why didn't I escape with my wife? Why return to the tavern?

• Why couldn't I stand to escape after the gunman left?

• Why was it my tavern they entered to celebrate? As there were numerous others.

• What are dreams for?

• Why can't I remember most of the details about the dream?

• Why was it difficult waking up?

Do we have full control of what happens in our dreams?

I ended up with this question in my attempt to figure out the answers to my first three questions above. I want to believe that it’s often the case that we are simply a witness to our dreams, not active participants.

For now, let’s address other questions above.

What are dreams for?

There are many ideas.

One is that dreams may have an evolutionary function, to test us in scenarios that are important to our survival.

This might be a good explanation for why people often report being chased or attacked in their dreams. I have had such dreams.

Another is that they may act to soothe the harsh impact of emotional trauma.

Also many people have attested to the power of dreams for spurring creative thought, like Dmitri Mendeleev dreaming up the structure of the periodic table of elements.

Why are dreams hard to remember?

I stated earlier that I have not dreamed for a long time and some people insist that they never dream, but we could all be wrong. I think everybody dreams more often than we think but we don’t all remember them. This could be down to brain activity:

Those of us who tend to remember dreams have greater activity while asleep and awake in two parts of the brain involved in promoting images and storing memories than people who don’t remember their dreams.

It also has to do with how and when we wake. Waking up during or just after the dream, enable us to grasp hold of the dream before it slips away. I woke up during the dream and I was able to remember snatches of the dream I was having. I can't say same for other times that I wake with an alarm clock as often struggle to keep hold of that memory. Sometimes I remember I had a dream but can't recall what it was about. Perhaps that sudden switch of focus from sleeping and dreaming to being awake and turning off the alarm interferes with the process of remembering.

Though we may not access specific memories of things that happened while we dream, sometimes we can still have general memories about the people and places in the dream.

Difficulty waking up properly from some dreams

When in a difficult situation, even if you realize it was a dream, it doesn't always come easy to simply wake up. Sometimes, to wake myself up, here are some actions which help:

• Deciding to wake up. I have to tell myself that I want to wake up at that moment.

• Focusing my ming on moving a part of my body. I always start with a finger or toe. But when this doesn't I move to an arm or leg before I could wake up.

• Lastly, I try blinking rapidly or focusing my thought on a real life place, event or memory.

One or a combination of these always work for me.

Do my dream mean anything?

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

Though these ideas of Sigmund Freud are now believed to be out of favour within science, I still want to believe that some interpretation of dreams is possible.

What we dream about and the emotional tone of the dream probably reflects what our brain considers important at that moment. Some research suggest that if we are anxious about something, our brain may as well give a dream with anxiety as the dominant emotion. Also our experiences in the day can be mapped to the content of our dream – but a lot of apparently irrelevant and unrelated events also creep into dreams.

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