Can a Dream Affect Reality

Every human being is prone to dreaming but not at an equal rate, some experience more dreams than others. For many years, psychologists and scientists have taken a considerable amount of time to investigate if dreams affect reality.  Psychologists agree that dreams and reality are related with countless studies showing that there is a strong connection between the conscious mind when we are awake and subconscious mind when we are asleep. Scientists, on the other hand, have conducted researches to come up with a definitive answer as to whether dreams affect reality. There has not yet been found a definitive answer but what the scientists know for real is that dreams are affected by the reality we live in each day (Geuss). The believe that dreams are affected by our life facts has resulted to some researchers to theorize that if reality impacts dreams, then it is just easy that a dream can transform reality.

Scientists and psychologists have spent a considerable time trying to interpret why human minds create such bizarre as we sleep. They have sought to figure out what happens when we dream, why it happens, why we dream, and what it means to us. Answering these questions would help us to discover whether dreams affect reality. However, the issues that pose a dilemma to the scientists and the psychologists is, Do reality impact dreams or do dreams affect reality or do both reality and dreams affect each other? Some believe that it is the reality that affects the dreams and not the dreams affecting reality. Others are in agreement that the dreams are affected by reality but also the dream plays a significant role in our life realities by affecting how we think and behave.

To prove that reality affects dreams psychologists like Patrick McNamara made a discovery in 2001 where he found out that social relationship affect dreams. He investigated 300 university students on their attachments to relationships. He discovered that students who had a high level of insecurity in their relationships had a very high probability of experiencing dreams almost every time. The dreams of the insecure people were also found to be intense as compared to the students who were secure in their relationships. In explanation of this McNamara claims that there is an area of the brain known as anterior temporal cortex which is responsible for coordinating both attachment and sleep. The dreams that the insecure people experience are therefore aimed at filling the gap in their relationships which ends up in creating a lot of activity at the night. Therefore, in this case, we can say that dreams are influenced by the level of loneliness and individual experiences in their relationships.

Some of the psychologists also believe that people forget dreams if the bizarre is unusual or boring and thus the do not have an effect in their realities. They emphasize that only the dreams that have common or very realistic actions like washing clothes or checking mail commit people to a memory to learn from them. Unusual dreams are therefore irrelevant and cannot create any effect into our lives, and people quickly forget them and move on. However, other dreams that have been particularly crazy waking the victim in the middle of them have long lasting effects. The crazy dreams are similar to reality because they are related to seeing something in real life. Such dreams, therefore, have a long lasting effect on us and are likely to affect our lives. For instance, if you are in a dream that you experience a particular person committing murder in the street, and you wake in the middle of the dream, it is not possible to remember the hundreds of people in the street, but you will never forget the murderer.

Studies depict that dreams especially nightmares play a significant role in affecting our emotions. For instance, a survey conducted to 147 students who were asked to record questionnaires about their well-being from the dreams when they woke up every morning.  The research showed that there was a strong connection between the number that an individual had and the emotional state during the day. People get depressed because of their experiences during the night whereby the nightmares seems to be disturbing their relationships with the other people. The nightmares thus affect the reality of life be influencing our emotions and how we spend our day after the dream has occurred.

After a tragedy happened in the town of Aberfan South Wales in 1960’s where a heavy rainfall, a pile of slag collapsed and covered a school where over one hundred people died. A psychiatrist known as John Barker of interest to study whether the students had dreamed about the incidence went to the school to record statements about the incident. Interestingly a third of the students were discovered to have experienced dreams related to the occurrence before it happened.  Cases similar to this are very common where the victims of tragedy had reported in the peer-reviewed medical journals of having dreamt about a tragedy before it happened. Furthermore, the history of America about Abraham Lincoln had indicated that he had a dream about his assassination before it happened. Dreaming about a tragedy before it happens depicts that dreams have an effect on our reality life. Dreams that bring a lot of different factors together has a higher chance of ending up in coincidences and therefore dreams can in a way predict the future.

Research conducted on people who experience amnesiacs and those with mental and physical disorders. The study aimed at finding out why the dreams of this type of individuals are usually full of bizarre and very odd. The study learned that this kind of people usually keep their memories in their subconscious mind and when they dream they try to access the memories which create a condition similar to trying to fit a puzzle in place. The experience gives the individuals waking mood which affects the people lives in their reality as a result of insomniac struggling which extends to when they wake up.

Some psychologists state that depending on the nature of the nightmares that people experience that plays a significant factor in determining the mental state. There is a correlation between the mood and the nightmares experienced during the previous night. The proponents of this hypothesis claim so terrible or good mood is determined by whether we had a bad or good nightmare respectively. They further argue that for an individual to have a good reality in future, he must have experienced a series of good dreams. The opposite is true, where if a subject continues having some bad dreams then he is likely to experience a bad future. Therefore, it means that if a person experiences bad dreams over an elongated period the there is a high probability that the individual will experience a good reality ("The Relationship of Nightmare Frequency and Nightmare Distress to Well-Being" 105-178).  It is a fact to many like in our dreams to have bright futures in our lives when we are young can, in the same way, be translated in the dreams where if we experience good dreams they are likely to assure us of a bright future in reality.

Dreaming is crucial in our lives as it facilitates the development and function of our consciousness. Reality and dreaming for sure related and dreams helps to relate our conscious with the daily activities. Dreaming mind shows that a human being is aware of his or her consciousness. As we dream we create possibilities that are likely to be experienced in reality, and this help in the development and preparedness of the mind in case what we dreamt takes place in reality. In this way, dreaming contributes to creating intelligence where an individual can be prepared for an event.

To conclude, dreaming is an immensely composite matter which cannot be undervalued as a simple occasion in human beings. Dreaming is closely related to our lives because we cannot live without them. The activities we go through everyday influence us to dream and as earlier mentioned dreams are closely related to our realities. In one way the realities are a major cause of the dreams as many of the scientists and psychologists claim. Although some of them do not relate the dreams to the realities, we experience in our lives. But from the discussion above we can see that dreams are to some extent responsible for the realities. Therefore, we cannot ignore the fact that dreams are only caused by the realities but are also the cause of realities. From the essay, it is evident that the dreams we experience during the night play a major role in influencing our emotions and how we relate to people. The emotions and our relationships with people as a result of the dreams cannot be ignored as they are a sufficient proof of how dreams influence reality. Scientists and psychologists should consider investigating more on this to find out to what extent the dreams affect reality.