I remember a video where Robert Waggoner mentioned something about a woman who was able to actually ask her dreams to be free from anxiety, and I find this very interesting.
How can a dream help you feel free from anxiety, just like that?
I don’t mean to say that I doubt Robert’s words or anything, I just find it pretty fascinating and would like to know more about how this actually works.
How can a dream suddenly make you feel carefree and delighted like that?
A big chunk of it would simply be believing that it worked. I doubt that the words themselves held a lot of power, but to the lady the words are able to give her the belief that her anxiety had gone away. Of course, you could also always go the route of “this is a dream, so I’m not going to worry about anything.” But again, your mind is more open to suggestion in dreaming, so it may be worth giving it a shot.
Short answer: I agree in whole with Rhewin.
Long answer: As someone who tries to be as rational as possible, I’ve dabbled in “magic” and a lot of what I’ve come across that is supposedly meant to have a significant, “spiritual” effect on an individual is simply tricking yourself into believing something without forcing it. The human mind is an incredibly powerful thing and our personal beliefs (guided by whatever brain and body the universe decided to give us) are very likely to be the driving force behind everything we can, will, or ever be able to do.
The psychology behind dreams is still embarrassingly untapped. Everyone experiences it, but little is done to research it. Theories have been made that dreams are the brain’s way to piece together memories to create a story. Our judgement/caution center is turned off so that story is incoherent as HELL. Another theory is the popular Freud-esque theory that dreams are the brain’s way to relieve or communicate urges to our being (his focus on sexuality) in the form of symbols. So dream interpretation exploded (which is a load of bull honkey).
Either way, our dreams are images of things we have seen, heard, and felt in real life.A person who has been blind his entire life does not see things in his dreams because he doesn’t know what seeing is like in the first place. From this it is clear that our dreams are something dependent on information our brains store.
I like to think that the so-called “subconscious” – again, not something fully understood scientifically or even labelled correctly – is what drives dreams. And it is through the “subconscious” that we can “reprogram” ourselves.
It is like subliminal messaging on a personal level. You create an image for yourself (sigil), put energy into it, focus on it, love it, hate it, whatever… Put it somewhere significant. And forget its meaning. The next time you see it, you will only recognize it as something you have to do and its meaning will be lost, but since somewhere in our head is the memory of its meaning, we remind it every time we look at it. This is meant to bypass the psychic barrier of our conscious mind and trigger something in our unconscious mind.
I was recently diagnosed with celiac disease (auto-immune reaction to gluten, similar to an allergic reaction but instead of the immune system attacking the foreign substance, it attacks the body itself – but that’s off-topic ANYWAY…). It took me about a month of not eating a certain food for that notion to come into my dream world. I not only believe but I know that if I eat a dinner roll, I’ll get sick. However, sometimes in my waking life, I wonder if I’m able to eat a piece of bread without dying, but I know and I “know” that I will probably die. I have eaten food in dreams containing gluten and have often had a moment of clarity where I think “Oh God, I shouldn’t have eaten that” then I go puke it up. LOL.
Another example would be reality checks. In your waking life, you know you’re awake, but to effectively do a reality check you have to have that moment of “knowing” that you could be dreaming. If you do a RC out of habit, it loses meaning and you – like me – will probably do a RC in a dream and conclude that you are not dreaming.
The whole notion of “knowing” drives our beliefs. A monotheist “knows” a god exists, but has no proof. A psychic “knows” he can tell the future, but has no evidence.
By talking to a DC or the dream itself, I gather, is bypassing the whole process. Dreams are what happens in our heads and while we are in a dream, we’re still a slave to something… So I have a belief that the something is my subconscious. That is my “knowing”. I have yet to actually ASK a DC to change something in my psychology or behavior, but the moment I have the chance, I will make an attempt.
As far as I know, remembering dreams on their own relieves some anxiety from my depression. It gives me something to look forward to as I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning instead of dreading the new day and life’s responsibilities. It’s a great, worthwhile hobby.
I think there are many ways that dreaming can relieve stress.
Disclaimer – Most of what I said (save for the theories about dreaming mentioned) are not backed by scientific facts. They are personal anecdotes which won’t hold up well in a debate of the topic, but I figure there is some science behind what I’ve said. An article about the “science of why we don’t believe science” comes to mind in that it is hard for factual, scientific evidence to overcome beliefs. It’s more of what we “know” than what we know… if that makes sense.
I feel like I’ve rambled too much.