Most of my dreams are about me against a ticking clock. I'm not going to make a plane. I'm responsible for packing my entire family. We have to get out of here. I'm folding clothes that are the size of a mountain.
Now, Katie, tell them about your dreams. Oh, that is your dreams. That sounds a lot like real life.
You think I'm processing what I feel like all day?
Yeah, that's very similar.
Hi.
I'm Katie Low's and I'm a dreamer, and.
I'm Adam Shapiro, and I am living my dream.
Because I get to host the podcast with you.
Katie, Ah Adam.
This is Chasing Sleep, a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia in partnership with Mattress Firm.
This episode is about sleep and dreams.
We've been keeping dream journals and we're logging our dreams from the night before.
Today is the day when we're going to talk to the experts about dreams. I'm dying to know. How's your dream journal? Looking for today's discussion.
It's a little weird.
We've been keeping dream journals for about a month now, and according to psychology experts, there are a number of benefits to keeping a dream journal.
For starters. It can help you be.
More creative and think outside the box when you're awake. So I'm super curious to hear about your overall experience keeping a dream journal. Did it teach you anything surprising about yourself?
Yes?
I mean, first of all, I've always just in general thought I was somebody that couldn't remember their dreams.
I found the same thing. And I also found in keeping our dream journals that I have like recurring elements in my dreams. I can't wait to read your dream journal.
I can't wait to read your dream journal.
All listening. Full disclosure, we haven't seen each other's dream journals.
As far as you know, really well, we have the same password. I'm joking. I'm not going to read your dream journal. I dodn't know your dream journal.
This is such a fascinating topic, and Katie and I cannot wait to hear what our guests have to say about dreams in sleep.
To help us figure out what dreams are and why we have them. We are joined today by doctor Robert Stickgold, co author with his colleague Anthony Zadra of the book When Brain's Dream. He's done groundbreaking research into the links between dreams and memory consolidation and learning. He's a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
And we're looking forward to decoding the often confusing content of our dreams with Justina. Lastly, Justina is the author of several books, including Wake Up to Your Dreams, Transform Your Relationship's, career, and Health While You Sleep. She is also the founder of the Institute for Dream Studies. Welcome Justina. Yes, before we talk about specific dreams, Bob, what is happening in our bodies and especially in our brains when we're dreaming.
Well, you're going to love this answer. We don't really know. We know it's different than your brain, for example, when you're in rem sleep or rapid eye movements sleep, when you have your most intense dreams. But to be clear, dreaming, like consciousness when we're awake, is still a mystery. We can't see it in our brains. When I talk to my students, I always stun them by saying, there have been no scientific experiments that have proven that humans are conscious.
I can tell you how the brain changes and that must have something to do with why dreaming happens. But we don't know where consciousness, including dreaming, comes from. So what happens in your brain? While some areas turn off, most notably an ugly name dorsal lateral prefrontal cortext.
That Katie say that three times fast, Katie.
I think I had to say that in the show once when I was a brain surgeon.
I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.
It's a region of your brain that's used when you're making decisions. It's executive control, it's impulse inhibition, and when you go into rem sleep that shuts off. So all of those processes are unavailable to the dreaming brain, which is probably why we act irrationally and don't feel like
we're in control. We lose connections between but a structure called the hippocampus, which is critical for memory formation and the rest of our brain, so that when we're dreaming, we can't call up a recent memory and actually remember it.
It's really bananas wow.
And then on the flip side, the emotional system in the brain, the limbic segment of the brain that's ramped up all the emotional structures in the brain seem to go into overdrive, which is probably why our dreams tend to be so emotional. But you'll notice I'm always saying, which is probably why, because we just don't know how to test these things. We don't know how to see consciousness.
We cannot see dreaming in the brain if we've got two hundred and fifty electrodes on their brain, if we've got them in a fMRI scanner, where you can say, oh, oh, oh, now, now there's a seventy percent chance that she's dreaming, But we can't say, look at that she's dreaming.
Justina, you are considered a dream expert and founded the Institute for Dream Studies. I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on why we dream, what purpose to dream serve?
Oh my goodness, for me, there are many purposes on a personal level, and the people that I work with, we advance in our consciousness and our ability to problem solve, and we can see things more clearly that we can't see very well in our waking lives. I say that dreams are like for me, it's a twenty four to seven in our therapist comes free. You don't have to set up an appointment nothing, you know, you just have
to pay attention, which is really hard for people. But for many of the reasons that Bob was talking about, you know that we are not wired to remember our dreams, so we have to make special effort. The reason I pay attention to my dreams is because it makes a huge difference in my life and a huge difference in my relationship with other people.
And Bob, what would you say, why scientifically do we dream?
So you know, the word why is one of those words that can be spun seven different ways. And I think just you know, what you have said about the way you and I think, myself and others can and do use our dreams when we remember them is spot on. But I would argue as a as a sort of total biologist. While we're sleeping, our brain is working full time. It is spending eight hours processing all the memories that
are formed during the day. For every two hours we spend a week taking in new information, it takes an hour to process two hours of input. We don't remember more than maybe, if you're really good at a ten or fifteen percent of our dreams, and we get these fleeting moments that we remember the are these whole long dreams that we remember, but still there are a small
fraction of that night. And so Tony Zadro and I recently came out with a book called When Brains Dream, in which we put forward this next up model of dreaming, which says that the biological function of dreaming is network exploration to understand possibilities. We know that when we're asleep, and especially in rem sleep, our brains connections are subtly manipulated, so it's much easier for the brain to find sort
of unusual, distant weak connections between ideas. So you know, yeah, I mean I So you know, I'm driving home from work and some guy runs the stop sign and almost crashes into me. In that night, I dreamed that I'm at an amusement park on bumper cars. Sure, which makes perfect sense, yes, but really doesn't speak much to the issue of what happened yesterday. I'm just in the bumper car was my son Adam, who's just having a great time, and I'm saying this isn't fun. I don't want to
be here at all, you know. So there's a whole other side of the story. How do we find the meaning of all of that. That takes a lot of time, and that's what our brain is doing.
Justina.
I wanted to know with what you do, tell us a little bit of the story about how you found your way into your field of dream studies.
You know I had as a child. I loved my dream so it was very creative and I loved them, but I had nobody in my family to talk to about my dreams. It was more like, let's talk about something important now, you know, and that's all make believe and everything. So when I realized that these could impact my life, I joined a dream group.
That is absolutely fascinating. So it's a group of people who get together and talk about their dreams.
Right, I want to join one?
I would I don't know. I don't know if it's for me. I mean, if there's wine.
Yeah. And with the very first dream that I shared, my life changed. I had been to counseling, I had done all kinds of things, but I had never seen it from the perspective of my dream and it was it was amazing. And so with each dream I shared, it just was more and more of an open winda to who Justina was. Authentically. I had been told so many different stories throughout my life of who I was.
None of them felt like me, but I believed it because there are adults in your life telling you this, this is you, this is what you know, what you're good at or what you're bad at, or this is what you deserve or not deserve, and this.
Is who you're going to be when you grow up.
Yes, how do you help people understand their dreams?
Well, a mato for dream synergy is dreams plus action equals change because the dreams come to us naturally every night, like Bob said, but we have to provide the action as individuals. Katie, you have all of your life experiences, Adam, you do, and they are going to be used. All of those life experiences to create and manufacture your dream. If I start looking at your dream without you and tell you what that means, then guess who's that's about.
That's about me. And that's why we cannot interpret other people's dreams.
Thank you, because we do not have the ability to be the other person. We have to put our paper beside our bed to record our dreams because we're not remembering. We have to pay attention to that and learn that metaphorical language of.
Dreams, Right, and Bob, do you have you found in your research a bunch of differentiation between men and women in dreaming and specifically sex dreams.
I mean, men tend to sleep with in their dreams, tend to sleep with women they don't know, women tend to sleep with men that they do know. I did one study looking at differences between men and women, mostly in the emotions that they express in their dreams, and there were surprisingly few. I had thought we would find that men would be more angry in their dreams and women would be more fearful in their dreams, but the numbers were identical between men and women for both of those.
Well, sex dreams really affect so many people, and I've seen people's lives. The marriage is shaken apart because recurring dream of having sex with another partner, and it really upset the spouse. Of course, and once you look at that in dreams again we have to think of metaphorical language. So as an example, this person came in to me and had their spouse had had a lot of these dreams. So then we talked to the spouse, I ask, what
does this ex girlfriend represent to you? Three words and so, just to be brief say, the three words were creative, fun, and adventuresome. And so then you think about what part of you is like that, and this particular person said, there isn't a part. It used to be that way when I was in college, but I do not have a bit of that anymore. What the person was hungering for was having an eimate relationship with that part of himself.
So if we look at characters as aspects of ourselves, we have a broader and a better perspective of the parts of ourselves that are playing and reacting to ours back and forth. So characters are so much fun and dreams because we start seeing ourselves in new ways.
Oh there's so much more I want to find out, but let's take a quick break.
You're not dreaming.
Chasing Sleep is back and we're talking about sleep and dreams with Justina. Lastly, from the Institute for Dream Studies and Sleep researcher Robert Stickle. So, Adam and I have been asked to keep journal about our dreams since we've been preparing for this episode. Bob, Justina, I think Adam and I would love to get your help better understanding our dreams.
M hmm.
So, Adam, do you want to start us off and share one of your favorites?
Oh? Yeah, I will say so.
Many of my dreams seem to have a common theme of me being a fish out of water and having no idea how to handle the situation I'm in the middle of. The dream took place at a health retreat. The first night everyone had to eat socks.
Oh do you remember more?
Or I do?
Remember that we were staying at my grandmother's house and that it was very cult like, especially about the socks. I just don't understand how I'm going to eat these and get them down.
The first question that I always ask the dreamer is how are you feeling? I'm all about emotions, and Bob mentioned about the emotions in the dream and that part of the brain being available to us the mad, sad, glad, or afraid. If we can narrow our emotions down to that, then we can take some action. But how were you feeling? If I ask you mad, sad, glad or afraid.
During the dream or talking about it?
Yeah, during the dream afraid?
Afraid?
Yeah? Probably?
And do you know what you are afraid of?
Oh?
Good question.
I was afraid that I was going to choke on the socks, for sure, but I always I.
Could never do your job, Justina, or I would be laughing at everyone.
I couldn't well.
And I think I was also just sort of afraid of where this was all going.
You know, what was the point of this retreat?
Was there confusion in there too?
Yes, lots of confusion. I was sort of baffled because.
I feel like confusion is one of the hurdles that we have to get over, because confusion leads us to more confusion. And I started realizing this with the more people I worked with, that it is not a well defined emotion. It's not an emotion at all. We get confused because I'm afraid and I don't know what's coming next. Whereas if I say I'm afraid, right, what am I afraid of?
Now?
I'm afraid of choking on the socks? The next thing, if it were my dream, is that I would want to find out is what is that? What are the socks representing to me? So if you gave me three three descriptive words of socks, what are they dry?
I would say they are stretchy and fluffy, fluffy?
And what purpose would you say they they serve.
Right, they keep your feet healthy and they keep it from they protect your feet from you know, well, Katie's feeling this right.
Oh, my goodness, are the socks connected to Adam has been dealing with plantar fasci itis for months and he's been dealing with so many like different variations of sock and feet things to protect his foot.
But it could also be metaphorical.
Yes, and you know where you were. What kind of retreat was it? That was the first thing I heard?
Oh right, it was like a health and fitness retreat.
Health and fitness, yes retreat. And so the next thing that I'm really interested in is the grandmother, right, So what what are the things that you associate with your grandmother's house? Just what first comes.
To my Yeah, liked quiet.
Which would represent for me a really boost to my health if I'm in a sunny, quiet, relaxing place maybe and it would be real opposite from my daily life.
Right.
Oh, remember how it was at grandmother's house. Maybe I need more of this now.
Right, And I'm being taken away by this sort of cult like health retreat that's forcing me to right, oh, interesting to sort of eat the thing that protects my feet from her getting.
So to think of it as not sucks at all, but the metaphorical language of a sock to me represents protection and it's for me. I've had several dreams where the protection was for I realized my soul soo ul instead of sol e. Dreams love that where they shift.
Wow, we are brilliant people.
I know. That's what. I can't believe it.
I am so much smarter in my dreams than I am in my waking life.
We all are. That is highest intelligence because we are not confused by other things that we've been told and that we've learned, and our belief system. So the belief gets in the way.
Bob, I wanted to ask, I wanted to ask you the details of the dream. Are the details of a dream more significant than the emotions? What does the research say about that?
I don't think the research has anything to say about that. About what's important, Christina, that was a beautiful presentation and I was really impressed by it. And it's working on metaphor, and it's working on weak associations that have been somehow pulled together. I mean that, as Justina points out, becomes useful but even if you don't remember the dream, you're gonna wake up and you're gonna say, I need to do something about my.
Feet, right, don't take anything likely. I have in the thousands and thousands of dreams that I've worked with with people, I have never found one thing in the dream that did not have significance. And when you say, oh, I'm so smart to be able to create that, even though I'd majored in art all of these things, it was my dreams that showed me that I am a creative person, and I believe we all have that capability.
Katie, what about your dream? Well, we got to get to yours.
Oh yeah, yeah, so yeah, I want to hear. So here's my dream. My family and I are in Mexico. We're in a boat, like a really lovely fishing boat, those ones that have the rods sticking out and on the white captain's leather fancy chair. So this is like a nice boat. Is the director of my son's nursery school. He's driving the fishing boat. There are huge swells and a hurricane is in the distance and is touching down in the water. Yeah, it's the hurricane.
Was so clear. I am freaking out.
And the director is so calm in a T shirt, lounging back in his captain leather white chair.
This is the most Katie dream I've ever I could ever like create on my own.
I couldn't write a more Katie dream than this.
So Katie tell us about Mexico. Oh, what does that represent for you?
Well, we had just gone on a family vacation there, and.
What was that like? Like great anxiety producing, relaxed anxiety producing?
Did you ever feel like you weren't in control and people who were in control did not know what they were doing?
I felt very out of control the whole time.
And this guy give us three adjectives.
He's in his late seventies and he's one of the leading experts on early childhood development.
He's really really confident.
You know, you trust him, but he's also very opinionated, and it's his way or the highway.
And I have two ways that I can be. Now, do you know that part of yourself that is well known in their field? Yes, they are confident.
Yeah, I can be that way in some fields.
So sure, Because we're always balancing these aspects of ourselves, it seems like, would you rather be that person. Yes, okay, and now to learn to access that. And I love that description of the white chair. I would draw that. I would buy one and put it in my house and sit in it to remind myself that in this chair here is that part of myself.
And and you know, yeah, grounded, calm, unaffected, like not easily thrown around by life's waves and tornadoes. Correct, Yes, Adam, are you losing your mind right now?
And how this has been nailed? Bob? What do you think did dreams change as we age?
As we get older, dreams tend to get more pleasant, And we don't know whether that's biology talking to us or just life smoothing out as we get older. Kids kids have lots of animals in their dreams, much more than adults do. But you know, and kids imaginative play, there's a lot of animals, and you know, they're dolls and this and that, and we quote gives those up as we become grown up. And so I suspect they disappear from our dreams because they've disappeared from our waking life.
That's interesting, That's I mean?
Is that why our five year old is constantly waking up with these extremely visceral, scary nightmares, and that's not something that's a part of our lives in our thirties and forties.
Kids have them more than adults. We don't know why. There's no suggestion that having nightmares is itself either pathological or indication of other pathologies. They're just bad luck in.
A way, Bob about stress? Is stress reflected in our dreams?
Come on, Katie, you know that's your whole dream life. Oh yes, everybody in our culture are running crazy. We're running twenty four seven. We're under stress. We don't know how to deal with all the demands in our lives in addition to having individual things that are so stressful.
I have a follow up for Bob that I just I was wondering.
You were talking about the amount of information that you're getting during the day and then how long.
It takes to process all of that.
Have you noticed a giant difference in the studies because we're all ingesting so much information before we fall asleep, you know, like between watching TV and looking at our phones and answering emails and texting people and looking at instat.
So at sleep onset. It says, if our brain is in fact cataloging what it needs to work on in our dreams that night. And if we interrupt that normal process as we're lying in bed falling asleep by tramming something of a nature that we would never evolutionarily have seen, which is like car crashes and people fighting and screaming
and jet planes and everything happening. Right, if we don't give our brain the chance to do that review of a day, then yes, those things influence your dreams, and know that's probably not what your brain was trying to get to. I worry a lot about the fact that we used to spend hours every day doing nothing and now we cannot tolerate that.
Oh, it's terrifying.
Even in an elevator when you look around, I'd sometimes like test myself.
I'm like, you know.
What, this entire elevator ride and waiting at the office, I'm not going to look at my phone at all. I'm just gonna sit here and have thoughts and daydream. This is where ideas come out of and where I can process worries or things like that, and everyone else is on the phone.
You're exactly right, Katie, I think you actually end up with a shallower society that people who store away all those memories and don't process them. That's the biological role of dreaming.
This has been an absolutely fascinating podcast, and I want to thank both of you guys for all of the time and energy that you put into this.
Wh is so much fun, so much fun.
We're gonna have to do this again, Bob together.
Yes, you guys should take it on the road. Mind blowing episode of Chasing Sleep, Katie.
And you know what I really feel strongly about is I loved keeping the dream Journal, but I was like, I mean, of all the things going on in my life, really going to keep up with this? And now that is a definite yes, right, I mean I I just think there was so much to uncover and unpack about what I'm currently going through by taking a closer look at my dreams.
Well, we couldn't have had two better guests for this.
You know what I find to be so interesting is that we don't know, you know, we're dreaming or why it happens. And they and they confirmed that right right, And at the same time, they still had this wealth of knowledge about dreams and how to dissect those dreams, what questions to ask and how.
To decipher them, because what we do know about dreaming is that understanding your dreams means understanding yourself.
And this is the thing that's really blew me away.
It's all metaphorical, like that's what I felt like, kept coming up when Justina is asking were you mad, sad, glad or afraid? I started on my own making amazing connections between my waking life and my dreaming life.
And two episodes down, and this Chasing Sleep podcast has been a dream come true.
Butt up bub And for our.
Next episode next week, a topic we know a little about sleep and parenting, do we?
Though I don't know.
I thought I knew about parenting before I was a parent, Now I am not so sure.
I definitely want to find out how to keep a certain five year old in his own bed.
Same here.
In the meantime, we really want to hear from you. Go to your podcast player, then rate and review the show. We'll read every single one and I'm very sensitive, so thank you in advance.
You can also find us at Shabby Chaps on Instagram and KTQ Lowe's on Instagram, and don't forget to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Chasing Sleep is a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia in partnership with Mattress Firm.
Our executive producer is Molly Sosha.
This show was written and produced by sound At Brands Dave Beeson, Jason Jackson, and Michelle Rex.
Chasing Sleep is hosted by Katie Lows and Adam Shapiro. Until next time, we hope you're living your best while sleeping your best.