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The ancient Greeks and Romans believed dreams revealed the future and even messages from the dead. Freud thought they expressed our repressed desires. Today, most of us are a lot less serious about the way our minds wander while we sleep.
Still, it’s hard to resist the urge to interpret dreams – particularly when they’re strange or unsettling. After waking from a taboo dream or terrifying nightmare, we often question what it reveals about who we are. Who wouldn’t wonder if our hidden fears and ugly impulses emerge as we slumber?
The sleep scientists over at Leesa.com surveyed 1,000 people to get insights into the dreaming and nightmare habits. The results are pretty crazy.
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Leesa.com
There’s no way to predict exactly what will show up in our dreams, but some scenarios and themes seem pretty common. For example, more than three-quarters of men and women experienced dreaming about public nudity. Psychologists suggest this dream could indicate that you’re concealing something embarrassing from those around you or possibly feeling inferior. Other common dream plotlines included verbal fights (which women experienced at a higher rate) and being in trouble with law enforcement (experienced by a larger portion of men).
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Leesa.com
If a lot of people dream about physical combat, who are their most frequent opponents? Strangers were the most common enemy in these dream showdowns by far, but many respondents also reported squaring off against people they knew intimately. While sleep researchers and psychologists caution against reading too much into the people who appear in your slumber situations, it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable when you run into someone after dreaming about beating them up the night before.
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Leesa.com
If sex dreams are fairly common, who are our sexual partners in these fantasies? For 60 percent of women and 68 percent of men, a friend of the opposite sex played the role of lover. Actually, several common sex fantasies involved someone our respondents knew well, including an ex-partner or co-worker of the opposite sex. Experts, however, warn us not to equate a sex dream featuring someone we know with a real desire to sleep with them. The truth is often more nuanced: They may represent an abstract characteristic we seek in a partner, such as confidence.
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Leesa.com
Although most people experience nightmares infrequently, some people find them deeply disturbing and disruptive to their sleep: They can even cause a disorder in extreme cases. While our respondents reported several unpleasant emotions in connection with their own worst dreams, shame and fear were felt most frequently. Interestingly enough, women reported feeling shame and fear at higher rates than their male counterparts, a result that may reflect the waking experiences of men and women as well. Recent studies indicate women experience guilt-related emotions with greater frequency, perhaps due to culturally enforced gender roles.
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Leesa.com7
Leesa.com
Nearly half of respondents believed dreams revealed their deep desires (no wonder so many felt ashamed or concerned about the content of their nightmares). This concept probably stems from Freud’s idea that dreams reflect our unfulfilled impulses, although many scientists find this notion too simplistic. Whether dreams indicate anything about our true inclinations, they seemed to exert a harmful influence in some cases. In fact, nearly 4 in 10 respondents reported a dream had adversely affected their daily life.
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Leesa.com
Our findings reveal the weird wanderings of our minds at night and the strong emotions that strange dreams bring up. But however odd we find our own nightmares, our results should help normalize the strangeness of certain uncomfortable dreams. As revealed by our study, most people have felt uncomfortable about the content of their dreams, including feelings of shame in many cases. Perhaps in interpreting our dreams, we should strive to be kinder in our judgments about ourselves. Whatever your strange dreams may signify, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
To see the full survey results, head over to Leesa.com.
