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Hoang Ngoc Minh Le

Ms. Orana Meenongwha

English 10/ 10:05

May 23, 2017

Dreams

Introduction

When we sleep, sometimes we dream. What is dream? Dream is a long chain of thought,

image and feeling while we were sleeping. Dreams are basically stories and images our mind

creates, makes while we sleep. Dream can also say as the language of a persons subconscious

mind. As can see, dream is a difficult term that not really have the real definition, because

each person has their own thinking, view about something in life. But all the definition conclude,

dream is not real, but it matters. While having read these definitions, we still have some

questions that running through our minds, such as: Why we dream? Why dreams look so real?

Why we cannot remember everything that we were dreaming of in detail? Questions about dream

keeping increasing.

Once again, there are many theories, meaning and answers for the question why we are

dreaming?, but there is no real idea, definition that everyone would accept it, it has a wider

meaning than we thought. Scientist, psychologist said that, the dream could affect the persons

feeling. Dreams could make that person happy, please, maybe scared, sad or even obsessed.
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Linking to health, dream also can warn them (person who is dreaming) about their physical/

mental health status by presenting some special events, things in dream that could help us so

curious then we must do search to find out and understand about self-health issue. In short,

dreams are somehow important that could affect person emotion, feeling, mental thinking.

People might think that dreams are very vague, doubtful, and not really essential for us to

find out and understand more about it. No, it's not really like that, dreams are also very

interesting when you understand, get to know about it clearly.

In conclusion, the purpose of this research paper is to make you, the readers, to interested

into it (dream), helps you to understand more about yourself and your dream(s). Answer for you

the question that you could keep asking yourself, which related to dream(s).

Dreams occurrent

A person has to go through three stages to start the dream. To be more specific, there are

three stages of sleep and the occurrence of the dream start at the last stage, stage number three

(William Blahd, 2016). Begin with a person started to close eyes, however, it is easy to wake up,

it took up from five to ten minutes. The second step is the light sleep, the temperature of the

body of who was sleeping will drop, heart rate slows down. Its mean that their body has ready

for the deeper sleep. Finally, the most important part of this research paper, it came to the stage

of deep sleep and started to dream. It takes 90 minutes from the first step to the third step for a

person starts to have REM (Rapid Eye Movement). While a person is sleeping, eyes will move

quickly under the eyelid, heart rate, and breathing. REM takes place when a person is at the

deepest level of sleep (Essay/Term paper: Dreaming and sleeping, n.d.). REM sleep is when you
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typically dream. There may have images float by in earlier stages, but the actual, the real dream

state occurs in REM (Walcutt, 2016). At this period, owners body is creating a built-in

protective measure to keep them from harming themselves while sleep, it was a normal reaction

of bodies when their owner started to have REM sleep. Instantly, the brain will transfer to work,

develop from long-term memory into short-term memory. This is one of the reasons why you

cannot remember what you have the dream or not really in detail. Not just only that, there are

sometimes that a person cannot even notice did they dream or not. Professor Mark Blagrove at

Swansea University stated that dream easily is forgotten once we wake up if we do not

consolidate them, or in the other words if we do not change it from short-term memory into long-

term memory immediately since waking up (2008). He, Professor Mark Blagrove, also explained

more that our brain neurochemicals, the chemical substance in neural activity, during sleep are

different from us during wake up (2008). Another reason, perhaps the dreams brought to them

the bad feeling or the feeling is not special enough or not touching enough for that one to

remember, they will also forget about it. That is how stages of sleep, brain function cooperates,

collaborates with each other to create dream(s).

Dreams function

Many people think that dream has no meaning or it is meaningless. But it is not. Dream

has its own function and there is some meaning that people even do not notice about. The

purpose, function of the dream is still not really total understood. Many scientists are still

investigating the meaning of dream. Each theory may answer some specific question about

dream but each answer could contribute some part and may conclude to the final, overall answer.

Mastin (2013) state that perhaps the best answer to dreams was to regulate, analyze, explain, and
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remember recent events in lives, it was kind of mental housekeeping. Most dreams are based

on large part of everyday experiences. Dream happen was to incorporate memories, or in that day

that persons experience a lot of types of feeling. The process of emotions may also contribute

with the reasons why people dream and function of dream (DerSarkissian, 2016). There are some

theories said that dreams supposedly deal with problems person cannot solve in waking life and

offer the solution (Domhoff, n.d.). As it can be seen, a dream could somehow support people in

daily life behavior. This fact is not really effective because the nature of the dream is really easy

to forget and that person might not really mind about that. By dreaming about the experience of

recent days, reliving experiences through dreams helps to make body, brain easy to learn and to

consolidate long-term memories. It also provides a chance to delete unwanted or waste data from

memory (Mastin, 2013). As mentioned previously, real dream only occurs when the body is in

the deepest stage of sleep. If that person does not dream anything at all, they have not had a

really deep sleep. This contributes to another function of dreams: an alert of health issue. In

addition, the meaning of a dream is also very important, people may forget it and think it just a

normal phenomenon while dreaming, but there is some secret behind them. People will not know

that secret unless they start to question themselves and doing research about dreams.

Meaning of dreams

Secrets of dreams, they are not fanciful. They have been proven by the scientist. Each

dream has its own secret, and the scientists said that the secret was somehow linked to the health

issue of the unit, a person whose is dreaming. If do not believed, here are some example about

the common dreams that had seen a lot among many people, including me. Nightmare, a big

common word when people think about dream, it was a type of dream and very important to
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telling someone about theirs health. According to a study of more than 60,000 people, suffering

from an irregular heartbeat increase can lead to the risk of nightmares threefold, increase in

nightmares (Wighton, 2013). The increasing in the heartbeat could brought to the heart disease.

Kate Wighton also state that impending migraine, a type of headache, could be worn by

nightmares. The pain would attack at night and often preceded by bad dreams that involve

themes of anger and aggression (2013). Everything about topic started to get interesting when

vampire dreams came. As a psychologist, Partica Garfield decades of experience about the

connection between dream and illness (Hurd, n.d.). Garfield pointed out to the psychologist in

the audience about vampire dreams, dreams of getting a bite on the neck, can warning about

thyroid condition or other throat aliments. On the other hand, not just only health issues could be

worn by dreams, emotion also could be worn too. There are symbols in dream could be alert.

Firstly, dream that contains animal(s). Animal often represent the part of a person mind that

connect to nature and survival (Turner, n.d.). Being chase by animal could suggest that person

that they are holding back represses emotion, such as fear or aggression or threaten. Exams,

usually seen in students, could signify self-evaluation and the content of the exam could reflect

the personal, private life. Continually with dream that a person dreaming is falling. Turner

mention falling is a common dream symbol that relate to anxieties about letting something go,

losing control or failing after success (n.d.). Accorrding to recent studies, dreaming about losing

teeth is an indicator of anxiety, and could possibly, depressive states (Interpret Your Teeth

Dream, n.d.). Last but not least, one of the common dreams symbols was trapped. It could be

being trapped as literally, could be feeling lost or even being buried alive and cannot escape.

These dreams usually is a significant of a person that him/herself having a deadline job, someone

holding them back in their work, struggle in relationship, also telling about real life inability to
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escape or make a right choice (Trapped Dreams,n.d.). Anyway, these was scientists predict and

some of them have been tested through experience. The person has to know and understand

themselves, they cannot depend too much in dreams and forgot about reality that the best way to

know about their health is going to check in the hospital.

Conclusion

All thing considered, when a person is sleeping, the percentage of having a dream is high.

Dream is a long chain of thought, images, stories and only happen in the REM (rapid eyes

movement) sleep, a deep sleep. While body is reaching a deep sleep after 90-minute start from

the time they close their eyes, owners body is creating a built-in protective measure to keep

them from harming themselves. Instantly, their brain will transfer to work as a short-term

memory instead of long-term memory. This is the reasons why a person cannot really remember

what they have dreamed because when they were waking up, the brain, once again transfer to

work in the long-term memory, left everything behind in the short-term memory. Moreover,

dream is not useless. It has its own functions. Scientist have researched that mostly dream was

being re-showed what happen to a person. Dream reminds a person about the occasion that they

have been suffering, living with in recent days. Hence, the first function of dreams is to regulate,

analyze, explain, and remember recent events in lives, it was kind of mental housekeeping.

Secondly, some theories stated that dream supposedly to deal with the problems that a unit have

and could not solve in the daily life. This was not really effective, but the second function of

dream was to guide, offer, support people in their daily life. Next, by dreaming about recent

days situation, dream could be training a person brain to consolidate long-term memory, and

provide a chance to delete the unwanted memories. Last but not least, dream only occurs in the
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deepest stage of sleep (REM sleep). Hence, if a person does not dream at all, he might not had a

deep sleep and could lead to the alert of health issues. People may not have enough knowledge

about dream. Once they do not understand, they will forget about it then conclude to forget about

its functions. To make the topic more interesting, here is some facts about what a persons dream

mean. One types of dream, which is very important to people health. If the number of nightmares

they got increasing, this could be the signal of heart disease, impending migraine (type of

headache). Vampire dreams can be warning about thyroid condition or other throat aliments.

Not just only health, dream could reflect the emotion that a unit have been suffering at that time.

Each dream has its own symbol. The common symbol that a person could be notice easily was

falling, animal chasing, losing teeth, and being trapped. These could reflect a person about their

negative emotions. Study about dreams is hard, know about dream is harder. But, when

understand and applied in daily life, it turns out to be very interesting.

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References

Carol DerSarkissian (September 17, 2016). WebMD. Retrieved May 11, 2017, from

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/dreaming-overview#1

Essay on Psychology. Research Paper on Dreaming and Sleeping (n.d.). Retrieved April 25,

2017, from https://www.dreamessays.com/customessays/Psychology/10871.htm

Interpret Your Teeth Dream (n.d). Retrieved May 17, 2015 from

http://www.teethfallingoutdream.org/dreams-about-losing-teeth/

Kate Wighton (2013). From nightmares to bizarre nocturnal visions: What your dreams can

reveal about your health. Retrieved May 17, 2017 from

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2460192/What-dreams-reveal-health.html

Luke Mastin (2013). Sleep - Dreams - The Function of Dreams. Retrieved May 11, 2017, from

http://www.howsleepworks.com/dreams_function.html

Rebecca Turner (n.d.). 30 Common Dream Symbols and Their Meanings. Retrieved from May

17, 2015 from http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/30-common-dream-symbols.html

Trapped Dreams (n.d.) Retrieved May 17, 2015

from http://psychiclibrary.com/beyondBooks/trapped-dreams/
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APPENDIX