Just as grieving can affect our life throughout the day, the sorrow of grieving can infiltrate our dreams during sleep. This makes sense if we consider that dreams are typically the subconscious restructuring of our waking thoughts. A period of grief can lead to fitful troubling sleep as our sleeping mind confronts the issues of sadness and loss.
On the other hand grief can lead us to try to escape our emotion by excessive sleeping with disjointed dreams or ambiguous vague night visions. Perhaps the mind in these cases is unable to process the grief or may be trying to avoid the grieving experience.
Sometimes when there is no apparent grief in our waking life we might experience dreams about grief. Some of these dreams are recalling past grief events perhaps due to something elicited during the previous day or maybe even due to an anniversary date or anything else that might have evoked the grief memory. In other dreams we might experience grief about an event that has not happened. In this case the grief is probably due to a fear of loss that has been prompted by something that has been on our mind.
Have you ever woke up feeling sad or perhaps even crying? When you have suffered grief how was your sleep and dreaming affected? Do you sometimes become sad thinking about a loved one or friend whom you think might soon die?
WOW! That was a brilliant Post, Grief is such a global topic. Where to begin. I have woken up crying and baffled, but not for years, more out of fear of someone dying vs. actual deaths. Once it is a fact I am good at acceptance.
ReplyDeleteI think that a dream that allows you to feel such deep emotions and release is cathartic.
Your post really made me ponder as my parents are very elderly and grief is something to prepare for.
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Oh yeah, I've woken up very sad and weeping thanks to a sad dream. And I live in constant fear that I'm going to lose my husband. Took him over 30 years to track me down and he's the love of my life and I am always so worried about him.
ReplyDeleteLosing a loved one can be a very sad and hard thing.
ReplyDeleteDreams fascinate me, and my dreams have always been graphic and detailed. Last autumn as my brother was in hospice I wrote about a piece that was beyond personal grief, a sadness about the state of the world. It was on my personal blog, http://reasoncreek.com/2014/11/02/veil-thinned-traveled-along-folds/ not my new project blog that is in the current A to Z challenge. You might be interested the post.
ReplyDeleteDreams fascinate me, and my dreams have always been graphic and detailed. Last autumn as my brother was in hospice I wrote about a piece that was beyond personal grief, a sadness about the state of the world. It was on my personal blog, http://reasoncreek.com/2014/11/02/veil-thinned-traveled-along-folds/ not my new project blog that is in the current A to Z challenge. You might be interested the post.
ReplyDeleteI do think your subconscious unravels quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteAfter my dad passed, some of my siblings had vivid dreams with him and I never did. I had someone to tell me that it was because I had no unfinished business with him. I will say we had a good relationship my entire life.
Several years later, I did have my dad come in a dream and I woke up. All day I had thought that this world was all there was. There probably was no God, etc. I have fought being a skeptic my entire life. I believe my dad came in my dream to let me know there was something beyond us.
2014 was a tough year for me dealing with the grief of pain and loss. In my experience, it's something I couldn't escape even in my sleep ...
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post Arlee. Spot on where you say '...as our sleeping mind confronts the issues of sadness and loss'. - especially when we haven't fully confronted grief in our other real life. The unconscious knows.
ReplyDelete