The Mental Emotional Health Blog

My previous post distinguished between Repressed and Suppressed memories, and I have some more to say on the subject of memories. Some people do not believe that repressed memories exist (seems more the case with males than females for some reason).  In my professional opinion do repressed memories exist? Absolutely.

Repressed memories happen most often around a traumatic event or situation. I have shared the following ideas and metaphor with people that have been through trauma and have reported blocks of time missing from their memory:

The mind is like a huge house with many doors. Some doors are open just about all the time, and some are closed but aren’t locked. Sometimes when something happens the mind doesn’t feel you are ready to deal with, certain memory doors become locked and hidden. After a period of time, maybe even years, some of those hidden doors can be “found” and opened. The mind decides you are more prepared to start trying to make some sense of a traumatic or intense event. This can start with dreams, nightmares, brief glimpses of memory, or pretty much the whole memory all at once. In talking with other people that have experienced the sudden retrieval of memories they weren’t aware of before, this can happen when a person is in a good place in life. It’s almost like the mind says, “Okay, now you’re doing better and you’re stronger. Let’s try to figure this memory out.” That can be distressing. Maybe for the first time in years they feel healthy, happy, and relatively comfortable. Then a memory comes back and nails them.

If a repressed memory does come back that is distressing and will not go away, you can practice suppressing the memory. Suppressing is more or less choosing to put a memory out of your mind. I plan to list some ways to do this in a future post.

Oh, I don’t know what your dreams mean. But it’s fun to guess isn’t it?

There are plenty of books claiming to interpret dreams. But I feel you are your own best dream interpreter. You are the only one with your specific memories, experiences, and hopes. Still, it doesn’t hurt to ask someone close to you for their ideas about what your dreams might mean, and it can be a fun exercise.

So why do we dream? From talking with clients and throwing in my own dream experiences, here’s my working hypothesis. Dreams are the mind’s playground and research lab all rolled up together. When we are unconscious, the brain doesn’t have to pay as much attention to what the senses are taking in from the environment, freeing it up to focus inward. Then the mind can consider what happened just before falling asleep or the jerk that cut you off on the road the other day. Sometimes the mind looks back to important memories from childhood or a dramatic event at any age. Some people that have been through trauma or abuse can get their memories “stuck” onto the traumatic situation, which can continue through dreaming. Maybe that’s why some abuse victims dream the same event over and over years afterward. I wonder if somehow the mind keeps playing the memory over while it looks for a way to adjust personal perspective, sort of like an investigator watching video of a crime repeatedly to see if something was missed.

Sometimes dreams mix memories together. Some people dream about a certain place, but with people that wouldn’t be there. An example would be dreaming about a current co-worker talking with you about your current job, but you’re both students in your high school that your co-worker never attended. I think in dreams like this, the mind is just trying different possibilities out of curiosity.

Other times, dreams are just abstract and don’t seem to make any sense. I don’t know why I dreamed about a multi-colored horse running underwater (while I was also underwater watching the horse) when I was a child. Some people dream about faceless people, some dream they are in very vague settings with very vivid emotions.

In closing, I’m guessing dreams cover the whole range of importance, from no direct life relevance to very specific meaning. I still think you’re the best resource for finding that out, though.

Have fun, and happy dreaming!