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toothache?

I woke up this morning and had to shake my head at my latest dreams.

I don't know how many people even remember their dreams at night let alone take the time to think about them, but they are fascinating. I'm one of few people who have vivid and often intense dreams everyday and actually remember them. According to studies that have been done on this topic, everyone dreams every time they sleep (whether they remember it or not). The brain takes the last 24 to 48 hours worth of material (everything you see and experience) every night and processes it in the filing cabinet that is your memory.

My dreams sometimes have similar themes to my day to day life, or are full of childhood memories, or are recurring and nightmare-like with no direct connection to my everyday life. It is clear that the world of dreams is a world of symbols. You would think this would make it easy to interpret them, but certain symbols can mean one thing to one person and something completely different to another. For example I am terrified of spiders so if I happen to dream about spiders they often represent something that scares me, but for someone who likes spiders this would likely not represent the same thing.

Last night I dreamed a lot of strange dreams, but the one that stuck out to me the most was one where I vividly remember my surprise when about 3 or 4 of my bottom right teeth fell out and my mouth was bleeding quite a bit. Now this may sound pretty gross to some people, but this is a dream that I have had often when things around me seem to be changing faster than I am comfortable with or I'm bottling up my feelings or thoughts on something.

According to an expert in this field,
"When you dream of your teeth falling out it is often because you are feeling similar emotions in your waking life to those you felt as a child. Your dream uses the lost teeth symbol as a kind of shorthand for all those feelings and memories you had back then." Jane Teresa Anderson (http://www.dream.net.au/)

This makes me wonder how well I am dealing with recent changes in my life (Jonathan's death, my family being away, etc). I know I felt frightened and overwhelmed a lot as a child. There is so much to growing that is hard, but besides that I also had a very difficult childhood. I'm going to take this dream as a gentle reminder to care for myself and to not avoid my pain.

Comments

  1. MichelleNovember 13, 2009 at 1:03 PM

    I'm blogging about a dream I had last night too!
    I figured I'd find my dream on the dream analysis site you linked to (I was sure it's a relatively common dream), but I didn't... is there a "search" option?

    I agree with you that growing up is hard.
    Whenever you need an outlet to express some bottled-up thoughts or feelings, you are welcome to call me and we can go for coffee. Of course, that's not the only time/reason we can do coffee!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AmandaNovember 13, 2009 at 2:21 PM

    Hi Michelle!

    Haha that is too funny. I guess we sometimes think similarly when it comes to desserts, so why not when it comes to blogging! Try looking up your dream at the below link. Jane looks at common recurring dreams here and that is where I found mine.
    http://www.dream.net.au/library/recurring_dreams.cfm

    Thanks for the offer of being someone I can talk to about the hard things. I'll let you know if such an occasion pops up and just enjoy your presence during our upcoming get-togethers for now(are you still doing the candy dipping party?)

    See you tomorrow at Coras!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ~mNovember 13, 2009 at 5:06 PM

    i dream about wiggly teeth and such on-and-off. i've heard it can also have something to do with relationships/balance... because each tooth has a pair. but maybe that's a crock :D

    ReplyDelete

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