Do you ever wake up with a taste of salty sand in your mouth or have a spine-tingling feeling that you can’t shake off all day after dreaming about something disturbing that you can’t quite remember?

Dreams are like short movies that we become immersed in during sleep. They are generally out of our control (read about Lucid Dreaming) and stem from circumstances that occur in our previous waking hours or from our physical, emotional and mental health at the time of sleep. We all know they can be ridiculously incoherent and nonsensical but when we analyse the content, it is usually relatable to an event, person or place that has featured in and around time of consciousness.

Whether we remember them or not, all of us dream. It is vital for our mental health and is often considered overnight therapy that assists with processing emotions, stimulating creativity and consolidating memories. Most deep vivid dreaming takes place during the deep, rapid-eye movement (REM) period of sleep that occurs in the second half of our sleeping hours. This might explain why lack sleep can lead to to mental struggles the next day as our brains haven’t fully re-calibrated during the night.

From research, here are just some ways that dreaming helps with our emotional well being:

• Memory consolidation - when we dream, information is transferred from short-term to long-term memory, like a filing system prioritizing important information for retention.
• Problem solving - while we sleep, the brain tries to work solving problems and issues. Maybe this explains why sometimes, our night time emotional state often appears less heightened in the morning and things don’t seem all that bad.
• Emotional balancing - dreaming can assist with reconciling conflicting thoughts and emotions that our day time brain is consciously not equipped to perform.

It's recommended to write down details of remembered dreams if you'd want analyse the sequence and recurrence of similar themes. When dreams go to the dark side, this usually relates to stress and anxiety. Nightmares are often triggered by trauma and psychological issues, but other factors can impact our nighttime terrors including media use, late night snacking and use of substances and  medications. 

Dream interpretation can be a fascinating insight into finding out more about your inner subconscious being and more often than not, is surprisingly accurate. Read more here. (Sleep Foundation). There are many websites out there that will help you to analyse your sleeping hours.