TELL YOUR BAD DREAMS

When I called my brother Stu and told him about a nightmare I had, he smirked, “I finally had a good dream, so I’m not going to tell it to you.” Our mother always cautioned her family to tell all their bad dreams. Good ones, she insisted, keep to yourself. 

I never understood where my mother got that idea. That is until my husband interviewed a dream therapist on his radio show. Suddenly, it became clear. After analyzing my mother’s warning, the therapist agreed with my husband's conclusion that she was suggesting you should "tell the bad ones to get them to go out in the open."

Readily accepting my mother’s thoughts on dreams, the therapist determined, "Oh my God, she was so smart. That's wonderful." She went on to say, "The bad dreams are there for that reason...A nightmare or recurring dream is your healthy unconscious, successfully grabbing your attention because it's good to talk about it." "That's very Talmudic for her to say," she continued, "they talk about it in the Talmud, encouragement about speaking about [bad] dreams." 

That made sense, for my grandfather, I was told, read bible stories to his children. Possibly, when my mother was growing up, the telling of dreams was one of the things they discussed in her household. After all, how would my mother have dreamt up a caution to tell bad dreams and not good ones?

Would children have been taught to distinguish which dreams to tell if their ancestors hadn't studied Talmud? Have you heard of telling only bad ones? It’s something I dream about knowing.

“Medical Definition of REM sleep
Medical Author: William C. Shiel Jr., MD, FACP, FACR

REM sleep: REM sleep is the portion of sleep when there are rapid eye movements (REMs).

Dreams occur during REM sleep. We typically have 3 to 5 periods of REM sleep per night. They occur at intervals of 1-2 hours and are quite variable in length. An episode of REM sleep may last 5 minutes or over an hour. About 20% of sleep is REM sleep. If you sleep 7-8 hours a night, perhaps an hour and half of that time, 90 minutes, is REM sleep.

REM sleep is characterized by a number of other features including rapid, low-voltage brain waves detectable on the electroencephalographic (EEG) recording, irregular breathing and heart rate and involuntary muscle jerks.”

It’s 2021-What would my mother have said about Dr. King telling his good dream?