There are a vast work of literature that delve on the importance of sleep patterns in response to various physiological and psychological aspects. As such, the majority indicates that chronic sleep deprivation disorients and destabilizes the physical health including immune function, pain perception, inflammation process, insulin resistance, glucose metabolism, and hormone regulation among others (Roberts, 2018). Besides, exercise and diet are other key domains that contribute to healthy behaviors. Therefore, in this paper, I will reflect on three major dreams that I experienced in ten days. As such, I will be using Sigmund Freud’s theory to reflect on various aspects of the dreams in each case including the latent and manifest content. Latent content is a representation of the hidden psychological denotations and interpretations of the dream while the manifest latent entails the actual thoughts, content, and images within the dream. However, tracking my sleep patterns proved to be a daunting task for me because I quickly forgot my dream shortly after waking up.With such amount evidence that sleep patterns can result in poor health, this paper is based on my ten-day journal that tracks my sleep patterns as well as dreams and daily routines to reflect on how they relate to our mental and physical health.
My first dream occurred on the second day and was dominated with superstitious aspects. In this particular dream, I was flying to New York, and it was on Friday the 13 th , a day normally that linked to superstitious aspects of unluckiness. I dreamt falling from the sky. As such, to make the dream to be felt more realistic, my mind incorporated the environmental aspects such as the turbulence zone and the voice of the captain.Although the dream was vivid with my heart almost throbbing out of my heart, I woke up before I could hit the earth’s surface to my realization that it was just another nightmare. These characteristics of this dream describe the manifest contents including excitement to meet my family again, anxiety issues, and deeply rooted superstitious beliefs — no latent contents in this dream since it was a stress-induced dream.
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My second dream occurred on the fifth day, and it revolved around my social life. In this dream, I pictured myself in Miami beach with my friends who all had their partners except me. As such, I kissed my friend’s partner and his partner was not upset at all. However, I noticed that the redness on my friend’s shirt caught my attention and I became fixated as the sun was shining from behind them. Suddenly, I woke up with mixed feelings of concerns, regrets, and happiness among others. The manifest contents in this dream are the sun shining from behind, the redness of my friend’s shirt, my friends and their partners, and the beach. On the other hand, the latent content might be jealousy since my friends were in a relationship and I was not. Besides, I was insecure I might eventually lose them altogether as we do not hand out like we used to. Furthermore, the fact that the previous day I had taken a sneak peek on my friends’ pictures on Facebook while on the beach might have further reinforced the dream.
My final dream revolved around my emotional aspects. In this particular dream, I pictured myself with someone we had previously broken up, and we were back together, happy, and preparing to get married. Besides, the physical context of the dream was in my friend’s house where I was very jovial introducing this partner to everyone before our wedding day. Based on the contents of the dream, the manifest contents were my friend’s house where we previously had good times together, my friends, and my ex-partner. On the other hand, the latent contents were the fact that I desired to see my ex-partner again, I might have been missing the best times we spent together while completely happy and the fact that I was searching for another partner with a similar personality. As such, this dream might have been influenced by the fact that a few days ago I had a conversation with my ex-partner, as we are still good friends, and was struggling with the new relationship, problems similar to the ones we had while we were together. This conversation forms the basis of my dream alongside my underlying emotions.
As far as psychological health is concerned, for the past two weeks, I had been fighting stress, and my mind was tired due to worries and anxiety regarding the various task for both school and job that I am required to finish with limited time. Since I had taken two weeks to leave, I would sleep for five to seven hours a day or even more in some days depending on how I spent my day. As such, my sleep schedule is normally strict with a routine of going to bed at 2200 hours and waking up at 0600 hours. On the other hand, as far as physical fitness is concerned, I go to the gym,and when not in the gym I do physical fitness exercises at home. Finally, I take care of my body by taking a balanced diet and essential foods more often such as grains, fruits, vegetables, and fruits among others.
The analysis of the above sleep patterns, dreams, exercises, and diet is an indication of how psychological and physical health interact particularly about sleep and dreams. According to Carpenter (2001), good sleeping habits helps an individual to adopt a good lifestyle hence quality sleep is significant in the daily routine of a human being for proper and optimum functioning. Besides, quality sleep is essential for survival as at this time the majority of body toxins are being removed from the brain. Moreover, the quality of sleep has implications on the health of the systems and tissues in the body such as respiratory system, heart, mood, metabolism, circulatory, etc. Sleep deprivation increases the risks of cardiovascular, metabolism disorders such as obesity, high blood pressure, and psychological risks such as anxiety, stress, and depression (Weinstein, Campbell &Vansteenkiste, 2018). As such, I noticed that stress had negative implications on my sleep and the fact that the quality of sleep I have is not good enough as well as occasional social drinking might have furthered the anxiety and stress problems.
In conclusion, the information garnered from this sleep pattern analysis will influence my future behaviors and awareness since I have learned to avoid any anxiety or stress-inducing situations before sleeping, consumption of alcohol, late-night meals, and sleeping environment that is not serene such as noisy settings. Besides, good sleeping habits improve the quality of sleep. As such, adoption of these new habits including time management, physical exercising, and improved social interactions will help me in improving my lifestyle as well as avoid suffering in the future from physical and mental-related problems. As Roberts(2018) states, it is undeniable how dream impacts on our social behaviors and these dreams can be our life projections.
References
Carpenter, S. (2001). Sleep deprivation may be undermining teen health. Monitor on Psychology , 32 (9), 32.
Roberts, I. (2018). An Exploration of the Adaptive Functions of Dreams and Empirically-Based Methods of Dream Interpretation
Weinstein, N., Campbell, R., &Vansteenkiste, M. (2018). Linking psychological need experiences to daily and recurring dreams. Motivation and Emotion , 42 (1), 50-63.
