Man am I excited to be releasing this podcast! THIS IS WHY WE DREAM. Dreams function as a way to “forget”8 experiences which no longer apply to an individual’s life; a kind of re-structuring, re-mapping process. Dreams appear to act as an intermediary, making distinctions between which memories will help navigate the uncertainty of the future and which ones are to be rendered obsolete. If we remembered everything—all stimuli ever encountered since birth—we would blow-up! The brain needs to filter the infinite amount of information it receives from the outside world across time, deciding which of it will be strategically useful for survival purposes. How does the brain know what to remember? Well, shouldn’t it remember only the really important stuff? Shouldn’t it focus its attention on when we nearly died, for example, so that that never happens again? Emotionally significant experiences take priority. The brain needs to remember emotionally significant experiences so that if they were to happen again, it will know what to do; it will know how to respond. This is why people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder relive they’re frightening, nightmarish experiences. They cannot get over the emotionally significant experience; they cannot detach the overwhelming emotion from it. The brain is constantly trying to map the experience, which can be—and often is—incredibly volatile, existentially speaking. An aspect of trauma therapy, therefore, is to help the client detach from the experience. Reach out if you want your dreams analysed! It's something I love to do with people to help them cultivate greater awareness! Enjoy the show guys!
