Dreams and how they Affect Our Reality

By: Hannah Marie Kahl

What I think
I wanted to know more about dreaming. Dreams are interesting and I have always felt that they connect to the way we
live our lives

Why do we feel like were falling in a dream? Why do we have reoccurring dreams? Do our nightmares affect our true fears? Do our dreams affect our reality.

Stages of Sleep
In understanding how dreams
affect our reality, we first need to understand sleep.

There are 5 different stages of

sleep

Stage One Sleep

Also known as light sleep Drift in and out of sleep eyes move very slowly and muscle
activity slows

When the feeling of falling

occurs

Stage Two Sleep

Most important stage of sleep We spend 50% of our time sleeping
in stage two every night

Our eye movement stops and our

brainwaves become slower with occasional bursts of rapid waves

Stage Three Sleep

Our brain waves become extremely slow These slow brain waves are called delta waves

There is still no eye movement

It is usually difficult to wake someone during stage three sleep Is also known as deep sleep

Stage Four Sleep

There is no eye movement or muscle activity It is very difficult to wake someone during stage four sleep

It is also considered as deep sleep

In most children this is where most bedwetting and horrific nightmares happen sleep

Sleep walking is also a result from waking someone up during this stage of

Stage Five Sleep: REM Sleep

REM sleep stands for Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Our breathing speeds up and becomes shallow

Our heart rate and blood pressure rises

Our eyes jerk around rapidly in our skull Our bodys muscles become temporarily paralyzed

During this stage is when our crazy and bizarre dreams take place

Continued
REM sleep begins after 90 minutes of
sleep It takes place in the Cerebral Cortex, which is the part of the brain used for intellectual development For that reason infants sleep in REM for 50% percent of their sleep, because their brain is still developing This is also a stage when many nightmares occur

Nightmares and Anxiety in Elementary-Aged Children: Is There a Relationship?

This study was conducted for the Child: Care, Health, and Development Purpose: Wanted to determine whether a relationship exists between
childrens anxiety level and nightmare occurrence.

Process: Sixty elementary children and their parents were given surveys to
complete on the nightmares of the child. The children were asked if they ever had nightmares, how often they had nightmares, and the intensity of the nightmares. The parents were asked the same. Then they had to complete a State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children to test for anxiety as well.

Continued
Results: children who experienced
nightmares have significantly higher levels of anxiety than children who do not experience nightmares. nightmares as very scary had significantly higher levels of anxiety than children who rated their nightmares as a little scary.

Also children who rated their

Dreamlike Mentations during Sleepwalking and Sleep Terrors in Adults

Purpose: To discover the mental patterns associated with nightmares and
sleepwalking

Process: Forty-three patients were studied during sleep for their sleep
walking patterns and the events that occurred and twenty-five were used a control group

Example of what was observed: a girl was observed in the video of her
getting up from bed, opening her eyes, and screaming because she thought she was being locked in a box and suffocating

Continued
A father reported a time he took
his infant daughter out of her crib, took her to the attic, and tied her up because of a dream he was having. their behavior. Most of these occur during stage four sleep and REM sleep.

Results: dreams affect people and

Sigmund Freud
He is the most well-known
psychiatrist of all time

He believed dreaming was a safety

valve for unconscious desires

He studied his patients to find a He found they directly relate

connection between their dreams and their reality

My Survey: What the People Think About Dreaming

I conducted a survey to see what
day to day people thought about if dreams affect our reality or not

Some of the questions I asked were Do dreams affect your mood? Do you feel like your nightmares
reflect your true fears?

Continued
One of the questions that really was
interesting was How long do you sleep a night?

76.56% of people said that they

received 6-8 hours of sleep, which is what our bodies need to be fully rested

I want to know if how long we sleep

affects the way we dream

Wrapping it up
After all of my research I realized
how helpful and hurtful dreams really are.

We need to take our dreams more

seriously, because dreams say something about us; they are our own realities being played out in our minds