How your dreams can change your life

We all dream every night. Sometimes, we can remember these dreams, and if you happen to wake up with a crazy dream still partly on your mind, you should write down as much as possible! When we dream, scientists think, our minds review some of the most influential of thoughts that we had over the course of the day. That way the mind 'tidies up', which helps process and evaluate information, while simultaneously preparing for the next day. 

So our dreams are about what's on our minds. If you watched a movie before going to bed and realized you were revisiting your memory of the movie in your dreams, you know how stupid your dreams can be. But sometimes by writing down and later interpreting them you can learn a lot about yourself and what your mind is going through. 

I'm a dreamer type of person. So maybe you can't relate to what I'm about to show you, but just hang in there and you'll see that meaning can in fact be found in your dreams.

To illustrate my point, I have no choice but to tell you about a specific dream that helped change my view on life.

Me and some friends had a picnic in a forest near a lake. We left our bags behind and went for a walk around the lake. When the roads diverged, my friends started vanishing. I took the left road, which led into the lake, and just before drowning I was able to escape by grabbing onto a branch. [I was alone in a dangerous situation, but I could escape, luckily] Next thing I know, I'm inside my room, where my brother is searching through my desk.

He finds my knifes, takes them and I could read in his eyes it's because he doesn't want me to hurt myself [I was struggling with self harm at the time]. I was thinking to myself 'are you fucking kidding me?' and the dream sequence ends. Now I'm back at the lake, wading through the waters . It seemed like I was on a volcanic island, sort of like Hawaii. The weather got worse by the minute, there were landslides and the water levels were rising. The lake had turned into a churning river and the stream washed away the ground beneath my feet. [I'm in a drowning situation again.] I was trying to escape, thinking 'what if I die now', but then I remembered that this was just a dream. [I am fine, really. if I die, that's the way it is, but I won't die]

I return to the crossroads, where one lead into the water, but this time I decided to follow the other one. I remember walking with my mother, later with my best friend [I was no longer alone bu decided to get help]. With every step we took, advancing deeper into the forest, the colors became more and more vibrant, flashy and everything turned beautiful [that's the right road to follow]. We saw tree saplings with white stems, growing perfectly healthy, red-orange  leaves at the top. My mother called the spruce-like trees 'torches'

I was walking up to one of the saplings when I saw it grew the most beautiful leaf I'd ever seen. Unlike the other torches, i t grew a purple-blue-shaded leaf, it was soft as satin and felt rubbery. 

I took it with me and I walked on, happily. The forest turned brighter end even more crazily lit with colors. The moss on the ground was stained by sunbeams cutting through the mystically glowing leaves of the forest of dreams. Looking at the ground, spiraling wildly with its schemes and colors, it reminded me of the tapestry I have in my room. I knew that I wanted to make this moss carpet my new tapestry. I wanted to decorate my room, the division of space that is no-one's own but mine, with the stunningly beautiful moss tapestry. I ask my best friend for a knife and begin cutting the moss. [knife is now a 'productive tool', rather than a 'destructive weapon']

At the time when I had this dream, I've been struggling with depression, self-harm, social anxiety and an eating disorder for more than two years. This dream, simply by remembering it and writing it down right after waking up, changed my life. It helped me realize that I needed help from the people around me. I accepted it, went to a psychologist and I've been recovering ever since. 

It's weird how analyzing the own mind can lead to such important insights. I don't know whether it was god who showed me what I needed to see, or if my unconscious mind did it on it's own, but however it came to be, I'm just glad that it did happen.