Sleep in a dream, nightmares and flights: how to perceive your dreams?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Yaroslav Aleksandrovich Filatov, psychiatrist, author of the first scientific Internet dream book on Runet with 15,000 registered users, tells how our brain works in a dream, how to correctly approach the interpretation of sleep? is it good to fly in a dream, why do dead people dream and is it possible to really die in a dream.

Why study dreams

How did you get started with dreaming?

In 98-99, when he started working as a psychiatrist, he began to use dreams for work. Dreams are something that a person may not tell about himself or tell in a different way.

It was the heyday of Runet - I decided to upload my cool collection to a scientific Internet dream book. He took over a domain - and in six months about 15,000 people were registered on it. Even Kommersant wrote about me.

At first, the portal contained descriptions of dreams from my practice. But the form of the site allowed you to add your own dreams, describe them, collect - you could keep your own diary, track recurring dreams. Some people had hundreds of dreams in their collection.

I helped someone decipher them, deciphered something in the process of psychiatric activity.

Did you do this on a charitable basis?

I tried to monetize it. The situation was complicated by the fact that I lived in Khabarovsk, and all visitors to the site are mainly Muscovites. And when the boom in banner advertising came, I had already canceled the project. I didn't earn money, but I got a huge unique experience, improved my qualifications.

I made some money on other entertainment. In the early 2000s, I had a paid telephone service - you call the line and listen to your horoscope. So I invented this horoscope myself. As a psychiatrist, my medical ethics did not allow me to harm people, so my horoscopes were mostly neutral.

Are you now applying knowledge about dreams in practice?

Certainly. Now the skill has been perfected. Previously, it was a kind of unexplored land - dreams. There was a lot of conflicting information, ranging from Freud, ending with shamanic-gadalsky dream books, in which you can simply get lost. There was no systematization.

Now, in 2-3 questions, you can understand what happens to a person by what kind of dreams he dreams, what he dreams most often, whether dreams recur. By all this data, you can track the course of a person's life - and see if everything is changing for the better or for the worse.

If a person does not remember dreams for a long time, then either he is sleeping superficially, or there is not enough time to "sleep" before dreams.

Sleep is a physiological hallucinosis, a person is in a fictional world that does not exist

When the brain switches from a waking state to a sleep state, the body relaxes. And from the degree of relaxation, we will receive this or that depth of this hallucinosis. If a person sees dreams as if from afar, does not understand - whether he is sleeping or not sleeping - this is also a "bell", I draw attention to this.

About stereotyped dreams, fish, and why folk dream books work like broken clocks

How do you decode dreams?

When you look at a person for the first time, you begin to evaluate him from afar. I also look at dreams - dreaming / not dreaming, more often good or nightmares.

If the dream is pleasant, then most often people themselves ask what this or that object or plot means. And if not, you have to find out what causes dislike and why.

In a dream, we are in an analogue of the physical world. There is "I", there is the environment. Only in the real world is our body our body. And in the world of dreams, the body is consciousness.

So, if someone attacks you in a dream and wounds you, for example, with a knife, in life he is trying to inflict trauma on you.

The world around us in a dream is our entire psychic universe. This is our memory, ideas, ideas.

If a person has a depressive mood background, in a dream he may find himself in a rainy area, there will be swamps and cataclysms around.

Conflicting thoughts in a dream are manifested by an attack on the body. And, for example, persecution is some kind of discomfort that we endure. We run away from some decisions, but we cannot run away.

What do people dream about most often?

Dreams with persecution, wars, and multi-part ones - are most often dreamed by good clients of a psychotherapist.

Those who have a neurotic disorder, some kind of unresolved intrapersonal conflict.

Most people have normal dreams that serve the good wishes and nozzles of the day. If the parents did not buy a toy for the child, then most likely he will dream about it today, and he will at least receive it in a dream. Likewise, in adults - the events of the previous day in a less conflicting vein form the basis of sleep.

"I dreamed of some kind of garbage, doctor, tell me why" - this is only 10 percent.

Quack dream books, it seems, also sometimes tell the truth. For example, a girl dreams of a fish - and the next day she has a positive pregnancy test. Where does it come from?

The dream interpretation, even if it is sucked out of the finger, is still the result of mental creativity. Therefore, some elements may be close enough to reality. There is the effect of a broken clock, which shows the correct time twice a day.

Consider a moment when a person falls asleep with a full bladder. In a dream, he will look for a toilet, or something very close to this will happen. Body signals penetrate dreams. Both body signals and signals from the outside world can be interwoven into sleep.

Being 4-5 weeks pregnant, a woman may not feel anything. But in the fallopian tubes, in the uterus, in the small pelvis, certain processes take place. The hormonal background is changing. These things are monitored by the nervous system, and the signals are converted into sleep objects.

It is not necessary to dream of a fish here - a woman can simply see herself pregnant. The fish is either a reaction to a gurgling in the stomach, or, more likely, a society-imposed attitude.

At the age of 16, the girl was told about this omen, and now the brain received information about pregnancy and connected it with the well-established image of a fish.

It's like 2 + 2 = 4. A person sees 4 and realizes that it is 2 + 2. Not 3 + 1 or 4 + 0, but a predefined pattern.

The fact that perhaps a person never wakes up, and lucid dreams

How long does the dream state last in reality?

There is such an expression: "Life flashed before my eyes." It happens in a dream. But in fact, this is a subjective impression. A person sees 2-3 pictures that stretch in his head for hours. But these are rare cases, mostly the time in a dream coincides with the time in reality.

They say that dreams are dreamed only during periods of "REM" sleep, which happen 4-5 times for several minutes during a conditional night?

Dreams start dreaming as soon as the brain turns off the body. This is a mechanism that emerged in the process of evolution. Previously, the day was divided into 2 parts - day and night. During the day, the animal ran, hunted, survived. At night, when the brain continues to create reality, it was necessary to turn off the muscles so that the animal in the dark, and even with closed eyes, would not rush to run in pursuit of hallucinations.

Actually, those who did not learn to turn off the body and sleep - died out.

We all have an evolutionarily programmed brain to turn off the body once a day so that it does not fall anywhere, does not break. The brain itself at this moment does what it has been doing since birth - it generates reality. And we continue to live in this reality.

I have such a concept that we never wake up - we just spend part of the day in such a dream, which is close to objective reality.

Accordingly, as soon as we close our eyes, we immediately begin to dream. Without any phases.

Are so-called lucid dreaming superimposed on your concept?

Lucid dreaming is a scientific fact, it has long been proven, and it is not a topic for any speculation.

Scientists agreed with a person that he would give a signal in a dream. An electroencephalograph was connected to the subject's head, according to its data, it was determined that the person was in deep sleep.

At the same time, a person with his only muscles that do not turn off during sleep - the oculomotor muscles - gave scientists signals. For example, 3 movements with the eyes upward, 3 movements to the right - by agreement.

This proved that the person was in a lucid dream.

What are these dreams useful for?

On the one hand, this shows the degree of ownership of one's own psychic world.

In order to begin to be aware of yourself in a dream, you need to go through a certain mental path. Few people succeed systematically out of the blue. If you are "good at lucid dreams" - this shows a certain degree of self-regulation, personality maturity, stability of mental processes. The degree of self-awareness.

As soon as a person begins to understand a certain point of himself, which does not float on the waves of external disturbances, but exists separately, the likelihood of falling into a lucid dream increases.

As a psychiatrist, I often ask my patients a question - if you remove all sensory influences on the body - how quickly will you be captured by your own dreams and forget that you have been deprived of your sensory experience?

What if today your mind is just a dispatcher handling incoming calls?

Lucid dreams do not affect the quality of sleep, sleep rate?

If a person sees a dream, then he is already relaxed enough. Nothing prevents the brain from creating reality, including a conscious one. It doesn't matter what exactly he creates - nightmares, ordinary dreams - he does what he should. Another thing is that at a conscious level, we can badly digest it.

The brain of a schizophrenic works no worse than the brain of a healthy person, but consciously, subjectively, everyone feels differently.

Is it possible to die from insomnia

Should you take pills for insomnia?

The word "sleep" is ambiguous. A man comes to the doctor and says: "I do not sleep well." The doctor replies to him: “Here, we have“tombs”.

In psychiatry, there is simply a multitude of substances that can knock out a person. At the same time, every second medicine simply turns off consciousness.

But shutdown is different. It is one thing to turn off the disturbed body so that the brain can dream, simulate reality, and resolve some conflicts. Another is just to turn off the signal, like unplugging the TV from the socket.

The drugs that knock you out make it even worse, because the conflict is not resolved. The brain's job is to reconcile us to conflicting parts of reality. This is what dreams are for. If you turn them off, then another problem will be added - the realization that time passes, but nothing changes.

Is it possible to teach your body to sleep for short periods of time, like Stirlitz, and get enough sleep?

The body is secondary in this sense. There are watch centers - we can develop them - that will keep track of the time to the nearest minute. And after that, set yourself such an internal alarm clock - and wake up when you need it.

Do you need to sleep all night from 10 pm to 7 am, or can you break sleep into sections, like some great people did?

Rumor has it that Leonardo da Vinci, Tesla, Churchill, and many others practiced this way of life. In fact, there is only one limitation - the daily routine. If you go to the office every day, then it will be problematic to do this. And by and large, the evolutionary mechanism does not care how long your body was turned off. You can sleep for 15 minutes every hour - only this is tiring, not everyone can withstand this rhythm.

How does the biological clock work? The body produces certain neurochemicals that accumulate. Deep sleep, let's say, neutralizes these substances and releases the brain until they accumulate again. When we have slept, the "pool" of these substances begins to fill up until the next "emptying".

What happens to a person if they are deprived of sleep?

The person will die.

The evolutionary mechanism is very simple. Every 12 hours, the animal's body had to be turned off. It could resist for some time, plus or minus 15 minutes - this did not have a detrimental effect in any way.

If neurochemicals are not neutralized, then after a while they will begin to affect the brain toxicly. The brain is destroyed, the animal dies.

On average, you can go 5 to 10 days without sleep. After 5-6 days, hallucinations begin - the dream breaks out into real life. A little later, brain cells begin to die from intoxication.

About people who do not dream

Have you met people who have never had a dream?

I did not have such, but there were people who said that they did not dream for a long time. I recommend to them to be puzzled by the question, because this is a sign of anxiety.

This condition can be observed, for example, among hunters in the taiga. The person sleeps very lightly, reacts to the slightest rustle. This shows that the watchdog centers do not allow a complete shutdown. Psychic energy is spent on the maintenance of any processes.

Or a mother who watches over a sick child - deeply she will not shut down. This is a sign of inner tension.

Good or bad - you need to look separately in each case. It may not be good.

In alcoholic intoxication, a person also does not dream. What is the reason for this?

The reality we are in is 100% chemical. If we now add a pinch of a neurotransmitter, serotonin, for example, or a toxin from a sore throat, then the depth of our consciousness and feeling of being included in the world will immediately change dramatically.

Even if the body temperature rises by a couple of degrees, our reality will float.

Alcohol, as a fairly strong chemical mediator, changes the inner reality. Since it is an inhibitory mediator, a dip is formed - as with anesthesia. The deeper the intoxication, the deeper the failure.

But at the same time, personality structures that have been inhibited can be activated. Alcohol, to make it easier to remember - the brake of the brake system. The impulses that you are holding back on a conscious level - lustful, aggressive, or whatever - are thrown off the spot.

It is not for nothing that they say: "What is on the mind of a sober, is on the tongue of a drunkard." This is a very true proverb.

What causes sleep paralysis?

In sleep, the brain is less limited by that rigid synchronization with the senses that occurs to us during wakefulness.

When there are no signals from the receptors, a rampage begins for our real mental. For the brain, sleep is the same reality that surrounds us.

If the reality of sleep suits the brain at a sufficient level, a failure occurs. And the person begins to fight with hallucinations, communicate with them, somehow interact. At the same time, he will already be awake and see these hallucinations in the real world, but the muscles will remain inactive for some time.

We can see a similar scene in Christopher Nolan's Inception. At the end, the main character launches his totem and does not wait for the result of the check - he is quite satisfied with the reality in which he is, and the result is not important to him.

A little about the movie "Inception"

Is it possible to have a collective dream, like in this film?

The analogue of collective sleep is telepathy. As soon as the first verified telepath appears, then it will be possible to talk about collective dreams. So far, science has not seen such facts.

It is possible that in the future, with the help of some nanostructures that entwine human neurons, it will be possible to create a connection between two people.

Mercy Shelley has a good 2048 book. So just about this and the fact that information technology can greatly complicate the work of psychiatrists.

And a dream in a dream?

To interact with animals and plants, the brain first creates an object in its head. And as soon as this happens, the object in our head begins to live its own life. Including other people.

When we are awake, the behavior of these objects in our head is synchronized with the real objects. But as soon as the object is digitized by the brain, it seems to receive its soul. It becomes, so to speak, a subroutine. It can work autonomously.

Our own view of the world is created, and there can be several such pictures of the view. At one moment I am an exemplary family man, and at another I am a street rake, figaro. These two realities in the brain of a healthy person can coexist independently and not intersect.

A dream in a dream shows that one of the realities is trying to take possession of the other reality. Therefore, in a dream, a person wakes up from one picture of the world and finds himself in another.

Some of my patients had up to 3-5 such awakenings in one sleep.

About prophetic dreams, death in a dream

Talk about recurring dreams

Dreams usually play up the events of the previous day.

But sometimes there are moments that a person regularly dreams, for example, a school exam that he cannot pass. In this case, dreams need to be monitored. To begin with, was it a good dream or not. And for improvement or deterioration, you can predict the next day.

The day before yesterday the man stood on the edge of a steep abyss, yesterday it was already a hill, and today he easily jumped from hummock to hummock. This may mean that in real life a person manages to resolve some problematic situation.

Reminds prophetic dreams

Our brain has been engaged in world-building since childhood. Everything that we see around is a product of the work of our gray matter. Based on life experience, we can predict any events. Models of all the people around us have been created in our head - so we can sometimes even finish sentences for other people, think them out.

Dreams are also part of this world, this array of data in our heads. But actions in a dream are devoid of conscious evaluation, and the brain processes information without filters. Therefore, the quarrel that you dreamed today can happen in real life tomorrow - your subconscious mind has already predicted it and showed it to you.

And if a person flies in a dream?

There are many interpretations of flight. In addition, there are certain nuances. It is necessary to find out whether something is holding back our consciousness - whether it is attached to reality. If a person is flying, then other characteristics need to be monitored - whether this state of flight suits him as a social person.

It's one thing, a child - he can promise something and not do - he does not have any constraints, morality. And an adult can in life move away from any uncomfortable decisions, avoid them, that is, move away from reality - and thus move away from the earth in a dream.

For example, a person is an entrepreneur. Flies in a dream. Most likely, this means problems in business - he cannot find a foothold.

Why do dead people come to us in a dream?

The model in your head does not matter whether the person by whom it was created is still alive or not.

If a person was a positive hero for you during his lifetime, you should listen to the words that he says to you in a dream. If this person was unpleasant to you, you need to think about the fact that you have some kind of internal conflict.

And what does it mean to do something that is not characteristic of a person in reality? For example, in a dream, a person plays the guitar, although in life he did not take it in his hands?

Such uncharacteristic things may well mean that a person has a latent predisposition to this action.

It is impossible to play the guitar in a dream if you do not have the ability to do so. It's just that in your conscious life you suppress it: "Which one of me is a guitarist?", "Which one is a poet?", "Which one is an artist?"

It is worth paying attention to these skills and not jamming them.

If you, for example, communicate in a dream with a celebrity, it means that you are mentally close to her. You have the makings of such behavior - to speak beautifully, to present yourself.

The brain needs to do a huge psychoanalytic work to create a model of the conditional Marilyn Monroe. She will be endowed with certain qualities - you could have spied them on the real Marilyn Monroe, but, at the same time, you still rethink them, integrate them into the image.

What happens to a person who dies in a dream?

We are, in general approximation, some kind of psychological program. To be able to exist, it relies on other programs. If these programs are based on some defective provisions, then it may well turn out, as they say, "fiasco, bro."

We find ourselves at a broken trough. If the brain, as a result of its predictive activity, comes to such broken-down results, then it becomes disappointed and dies.

It's another matter if a person dreams of killing another person. Most likely, part of his psychic reality is at war with the reality of the victim. It is likely that in the near future the relationship of these people will end or they will face a serious transformation.

Can anything useful happen in a dream?

Certainly. For example, a person is sitting at a doctor's appointment. The doctor says: “That's it, the fourth stage, metastases in the lymph nodes. Smoking is still harmful. A person realizes what nonsense he has been doing all his life. And if it was possible to turn everything back, he would stop smoking and swear at him.

And suddenly he wakes up. The degree of awareness is tremendous. It is unlikely that he will continue to smoke.

Often, dreams in which a loved one dies help us further understand how important this person is to us. We are reconsidering our relationship with him towards deeper communication. It's also a pretty productive moment.

Or vice versa - the person died, but we don't care. This pushes us to take a more adequate position in relation to this person.

Can a person in a dream experience such a strong shock that his heart cannot stand in reality?

Yes, sometimes people die from a heart attack in their sleep for precisely these reasons. The brain simulates a way out of a conflict situation. He loses this situation, his heart gets an adrenaline rush, tries to contract - but his capabilities are limited. And, in fact, that's all.

Hypnosis and psychopaths

Is hypnosis close to sleep?

Hypnosis is a derivative of sleep. The question is where the attention is focused. If the brain is carried away by some object, for example, looks at a glowing light, other parts of the body do not obey its commands. Thus, you can control them from the outside.

Is it possible to determine any deviations of the psyche from dreams?

From dreams, it can be concluded that a certain stabilization work is necessary. If we see that a person is close, as ordinary people say, to madness - we can prepare him, facilitate the return to normal functioning after the psychosis has passed. In the usual case, this process can take up to 5 years, with preparation it is much shorter.

In addition, after such preparation, a person can calmly coexist with his hallucinations - he simply understands and accepts them.

Schizophrenics who hear many voices in their head due to developmental disruptions or due to upbringing - learn to pay attention to them adequately. These voices become not a burden for them, but advisers.

So you can get along with imaginary friends.

Is the content of a psychopath's sleep somehow different from a healthy person?

The reality of a psychopath is different from that of a healthy person. Accordingly, the brain in a dream also builds a slightly different picture of the world.

Van Gogh, for example, painted pictures in his own style, not because he came up with it - but because this is how the world saw it.

Do nightmares say something about mental health problems?

In the inner reality of a person who is having a nightmare, there is some kind of strong conflict. Nightmares should be taken seriously, without thinking that they are shameful.

Better to deal with nightmares to a psychologist. And - to the one who knows, and not the one who simply gives you a sedative, turns you into a vegetable.

Does the pain that a person feels in a dream take place in reality?

Symbolic pain in sleep, such as pain in the arm, is related to work activity. The belly is for the digestion of reality. Legs are our connection to reality. You need to look at which part of the body the problem belongs to, and solve this problem with a psychologist.

Most often, such pain will be speculative - as if you can only imagine how this part of the body hurts.

If it is a recurring, distinct, described pain, it is worth seeing a doctor. Most likely, you really have some kind of problem.

Is professional deformation reflected in dreams?

Professional deformation is, first of all, a distortion of inner reality due to the long-term impact of a traumatic situation. Someone becomes callous, someone disintegrates, someone begins to pathologically lie. It's the same in dreams.

What dreams do sleepwalkers, newborns, blind people and cats see?

What does a person with sleepwalking dream about?

Sleepwalking is an evolutionary failure. The person is in a dream, and the body has not turned off. If he lived some time ago, he would be a candidate for not leaving his genes in this world.

How do some people sleep with their eyes open?

Such people most likely see in a dream a layering of reality and a picture completed by the brain. They only see what the brain wants to show.

Do newborn babies dream?

I believe that the brain starts dreaming even before birth. After all, the child reacts to external stimuli - pushes, turns over. He reacts to something positively, to something negatively.

This can only be the case when the brain creates a mental world for itself. At some moments in time it is primitive, but reality is already reflected, modeled. There are some models, some kind of forecast.

If we abandon the dichotomy that there is a dream, but there is reality - and accept that there is only a product of the mental activity of the brain to reflect reality - then as soon as the child begins to respond to external stimuli, he begins to dream.

What dreams do people who are blind from birth have?

A person may be blind - but he is talking to you. He knows how things behave, what is hot, what is cold. He has a complete picture of the world in his head, it's just not visual.

David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel conducted a study on newborn kittens. They stitched up their eyes for up to 10 weeks. After removing the stitches, these kittens could no longer see anything, since there is a critical period in the development of the brain. If the visual cortex does not receive any data during this period, then it will atrophy forever. If a person was blind in childhood, no one will return his vision in adulthood.

About cats. Do animals dream?

You can determine this yourself - when, during sleep, your cat begins to jerk its paws, move its closed eyes.

This is the same evolutionary mechanism - semi-lunaticism. This problem was solved a million years ago in the process of evolution. The cats that got up and ran - most likely died.

There is such a concept - "demotivated cats". A cat with which they do not walk for a while, do not play - do not pay attention to it - becomes sleepy. Sleeps literally all the time. This does not mean that the cat is lazy and does not want to move. This means that he has disconnected from reality.

The brain receives the sensations it needs in this way, albeit a little surrogate. In his reality, he runs, frolics, catches mice.

It can also occur in people - a person will wake up to satisfy physiological needs and go back to sleep for new sensations that he lacks in reality.

In humans, this drowsiness has a medicinal value. The brain devotes more time to modeling reality, visualizes conflicts, experiences them. As a result, a person comes to some kind of insight, wakes up more adapted.

If the sleeper does not show signs of dying, then dragging him around to the doctors is counterproductive.