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Introduction
When it came to my sleeping and dreaming patterns, there was a definite connection between getting adequate sleep and being able to have pleasant dreams. The more hours of sleep I had, the more pleasant my dreams were while the reverse was also true wherein shorter sleeping hours manifested themselves as disorienting dreams that made me feel tired when I woke up.
Do note though that having dreams is not 100 percent necessary so that I could have a good night’s sleep. There was one day where I was so tired that I immediately fell asleep and woke up feeling well rested despite having no dreams. This shows that dreams do not necessarily impact the quality of an individual’s sleep patterns.
Impact of Life on Sleep Schedule
My life has a positive and negative effect on my sleep schedule. Since my class schedule has been spaced out enough, this has allowed me to normally get enough sleep while only needing the bare minimum amount of caffeine in my system. However, there are some instances, such as group meetings, where I need to get up early to make it there on time.
As a result, this severely cuts into my sleeping patterns since I am anticipating having to wake up earlier than usual and this affects the quality of sleep that I have. It is usually the case that the more sleep I have, the better my behavior, and critical thinking capabilities are. All in all, I do get roughly seven to eight hours of sleep per night and, as such, I can be considered as being fortunate since this is the recommended amount of sleep that a person should get each night.
Getting Enough Sleep
Overall, I would have to say that I am getting enough sleep, but there are days where I need to abruptly change my sleeping pattern so that I can make it to a group project. It is on those days that I barely get enough sleep, and this shows in my relatively lethargic pace and my inability to properly concentrate on that day.
I did notice that sleeping in the afternoon to make up for lost sleep hours during the night was not as effective as simply sleeping for an extended period. This shows that extended REM sleep may be a contributing factor towards enabling a person to feel fully rested.
Theories of Dreaming
The current theories on dreaming consist of the following:
a.) Freud’s wish fulfillment – dreams enable people to manifest emotions and actions they otherwise cannot do in reality.
b.) Information processing – dreams act as a means of allowing people to sort out what they experienced that day
c.) Neural Activation – dreams are merely random memories stored in our subconscious that are brain turns into stories
d.) Cognitive Development – dreams fundamentally act as simulations of our lives and enable us to learn from them
e.) Physiological Function – dreams serve as a method for helping our brain rest.
After going through the contents of the dream journal, I can state my dreams and the resulting sleep patterns that manifest from them are often influenced by the activities that I engaged in during the day. This was prominently noticed when I dreamt about the RPG gaming that I was playing on a particular day as well as imagining myself as a character in a fantasy setting after reading fanfiction about it.[“Write my essay for me?” Get help here.]
This reveals a connection to three of the dream theories discussed in class, namely: Freud’s Wish Fulfilment, the theory of information processing as well as the theory of neural activation. What I derived from the journal was that my dreams were, in part, a manifestation of the information that I gained earlier in the day which manifested themselves as a form of “review” for me to go over in my sleep. This was evidenced by how I dreamt of what I did in Deux Ex: Mankind Divided and thought of what I could do differently next time. Aside from this, dreams as a manifestation of fantasies, as per Freud’s theory, was correct as well since I did enjoy the thought of being in the Harry Potter Universe.[Need an essay writing service? Find help here.]
Overall, I would have to say that the theory of information processing makes the most sense to me since dreams seem to be an accumulation of past events that rewind themselves in my mind, yet have a different perspective. In a way, dreams could be a hold-over from the hunter-gatherer period of humanity wherein dreams acted as a means for early hunters to review the actions they did when hunting prey and to revise them as necessary based on the outcome. This would explain why dreams continue to manifest in the present since people make mistakes all the time with dreams acting as a means for us to review the ineffective actions that were used so that they can be avoided in the future.[Click Essay Writer to order your essay]
