What Can You Learn From Dream Journaling? with Alaina Tiani, PhD

Podcast Transcript

John Horton:

Hello and welcome to another Health Essentials Podcast. I'm John Horton, your host.

The key to unlocking any mystery begins with collecting clues. That's true when it comes to a thrilling whodunit case. It's also true when you try to figure out the meaning of your dreams. Keeping a dream journal can help you understand what, if anything, your subconscious is trying to tell you while you sleep. The activity may even reveal deep secrets about yourself over time. So how does dream journaling work? I'm going to crack that case today with psychologist and sleep medicine specialist Alaina Tiani. Dr. Tiani is one of the many experts at Cleveland Clinic who join our weekly podcast to offer insight into our health. Now, let's see what we can learn about ourselves by sleuthing on our sleep.

Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Tiani. Thanks for stopping by.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Hi, thank you so much for having me today.

John Horton:

So I have to be honest, when we decided to tackle this topic, I thought dream journals were kind of a newer concept, and then I read a theory that cave drawings may be early examples of dream journals. So have we really been fascinated by dreams and kind of chronicling them for that long?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

For as long as humans have been here on Earth — and as we know, it's not just humans — other animals also have dreams that we've kind of tried to figure out what are these dreams for, what do they mean, and lots of theories over time as to the meanings of those dreams, depending on the culture or possibly religion. I think the ancient Mayans even had certain thoughts about dreams and their role. Some cultures, which believe dreams can tell us prophecies, and maybe some psychologists and maybe the late 19th, early 20th century such as Freud and Carl Jung, who also thought that dreams are sort of this window to the unconscious — and in particular with Freud — may be representing some repressed desire. So yes, lots of thinking and theories about our dreams over the years.

John Horton:

Clearly, it is something that has just fascinated us for as long as we've been around. But when it comes specifically to dream journals, we've clearly moved past drawing in caves, but is the basic premise behind doing a dream journal kind of still the same as it might've been back then?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think there are a number of ways that we can keep a dream journal. So a journal doesn't necessarily have to be pen and paper. A journal could be sketches or drawings of themes or symbols or scenes from our dreams. It could be an audio recording of verbally talking through what we remember from our dream experience. So I think there's definitely several different mediums through which individuals might be able to track these dreams over time.

John Horton:

Well, let's get into a little bit of the benefits of keeping a dream journal. I mean, aside from just kind of chronicling what's going on in your head at night, what else could you gain from doing this?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

I think probably the notion that it will really help you to remember details and remember different patterns, different themes that may pop up from night to night, that maybe can even help to create these links between your dream life and your waking life. So there's also some thought that it could help individuals with creativity. So there's been many musicians and artists over the years who have talked about the influence that dreams have had on their work, or that some of their best ideas came to them in a dreamlike state. I think the other piece is kind of recognizing, and maybe even processing, some emotions that you may not fully be aware of in your waking life.

John Horton:

So if you do write those dreams down, is it more of a seeing the pattern? And then, you could maybe figure out, is there maybe something that's bothering you during the day that you're not, I guess, paying a lot of attention to, but it's kind of coming through a little stronger as you sleep?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Yeah, I think there's a number of things that you could kind of keep track of with a dream journal, so I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do that. It's just thinking about what pieces of the dream experience are most salient to you.

So things like the characters, the people in the dream, the context or environment, the colors that you're noticing in the dreams or the different symbols that you're noticing that pop up, that these can sort of help to give you a good picture of what the dreams are looking like night to night.

And then, also, the piece of the emotional side — how you're feeling during the dreams — and maybe trying to make connections between the feelings you're having in the dreams and what that may say about some of the emotions you're experiencing during the daytime. I think that piece is where we get more into the maybe analysis or interpretation of dreams. And again, there's not a right or wrong way to interpret those. I think those are a highly subjective experience that is very individual. It's kind of a singular experience, and the same dream could mean something very different to two different people.

John Horton:

When you talk about the analysis of your dream journal and your dreams, is that something that if you keep this journal, that you should go through and look at things every once in a while to try to find patterns? Or how do you use that journal to gain something out of it?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

I think that probably is very individual as well. Again, no right or wrong answer there as far as how to use it. Some individuals may just find it fun or interesting or maybe as a form of entertainment to look back on their dream patterns. Others may choose — if they're working with a therapist or mental health provider and are noticing certain themes in their dream — may decide to bring that up or even address that with the help of that provider or trained professional. So I think there's definitely a lot that you can use the dream journal for. It's just depending on your intentions and what you're seeking to get out of it.

John Horton:

Now, when we talk about ways to do it, obviously, the classic example would just be pen and paper on the nightstand, but it sounds like you can capture these dreams any way you really want to.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

You can. So I think it might even be helpful to experiment with maybe starting with a journal and then deciding if it maybe makes more sense for you to record them. Maybe it's easier to discuss the dreams in more detail vocally, but then perhaps that might make it a little bit more difficult to visually go back and review the patterns over time. So that might be something to experiment with.

People might also consider keeping one diary or journal that involves both daytime thoughts and experiences and then the dream or nighttime thoughts and experiences, and making comparisons there.

There's also several mobile applications now that have been designed to support dream work and tracking of dreams and patterns over time. So I think there's a lot of options for people depending on their preferred medium.

John Horton:

Well, there definitely is an app for everything. So it doesn't surprise me that you can find one of those for dream journaling, too. This is all … it's so fascinating. Actually ahead of this, ahead of our podcast, we reached out to our followers on social media and asked them if they had any dream-related questions, and lo and behold, they did. So let's tackle a few of them.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Sure.

John Horton:

So one of our followers wants to know why dreams seem to fade out of our minds so quickly after we get up in the morning. I mean, you just kind of wake up and — poof — they seem to disappear.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Yeah. So sometimes, we actually might not remember our dream immediately in the morning. And then, sometimes actually later on in the day, there might be something that somebody says or something we hear triggers a memory of the thought that we had, the dream that we had that night. So that can definitely be the case. But what we do know is that we're more likely to remember our dreams if we wake up during the REM phase of sleep — REM, which stands for rapid eye movement — and that's the stage of sleep where we're most likely to dream. Technically, we can dream in any stage of sleep, but the dreams tend to become a little more vivid during REM sleep.

John Horton:

And that would be during the middle of the night, right? That's like when you wake up at 1:00, 2:00 in the morning and just go, "What was just going on?"

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

So you could have REM periods. Typically, REM periods get longer and longer as the night goes on. So generally, the longest REM period does occur into the second half of the sleep window, typically toward the morning.

John Horton:

Well, that kind of leads us into another question that we got, which was, if there's a best time to write or to do your dream journal, even if that means as soon as you wake up, if it's whatever time it is, jotting that down.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Yeah. I think probably keeping the journal nightly or daily would be great as far as looking at patterns night to night and week to week. But I think it depends on what your goals are. So for some people, waking up in the middle of the night and immediately jotting down a dream might feel too stimulating or promote more sleep disruption. So perhaps they may choose to just write down whatever they happen to remember the next morning. So I think it really depends on how much detail you're going for and if you're trying to remember every dream or maybe just the dreams that happen to stick around with you in the morning as far as keeping track of those.

John Horton:

All right. One last question from the crowd. We had someone else who wanted to know how a dream can feel so real that you wake up wondering if it really happened.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

So when we do sleep studies with individuals, we are able to look at the different brainwaves that they go through throughout a night of sleep. And the brainwaves that we experience in REM sleep are kind of similar-looking to the brain activity that we have when we are awake. So that's why we actually call REM sleep … we call it a paradoxical sleep because your brain is actually still very active, but you're sleeping. So a lot of the same brain regions that are active during the wakeful hours are active during dreams. So parts of the brain that process real sensory information during the daytime and wakefulness can be active during REM sleep. We don't always have rational parts of our brain. For example, our frontal lobe and things may not be quite as active during REM sleep. That's the part of our brain that does more rationalization and critical thinking. So that's why we might just kind of accept some of the bizarre things that are happening in our dreams as true or as real.

John Horton:

Well, I know I've had some wild dreams over the years, but we don't have enough time to get in all those today. But let me ask you, if someone is interested in keeping a dream journal, what tips do you have for them?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

I think finding a method or a medium that feels most natural to you and most helpful so that you'll continue to do it is a good idea. And just thinking about the pieces of it that are most salient to you. So you could keep track of all the five senses that you remember from your dreams: themes, colors, symbols, feelings, emotions that you're experiencing, how vivid the dreams felt.

Know that there's really no right or wrong way to keep a dream journal. It's highly individual. There's lots of fun ways that you could interpret these things or analyze them. At the end of the day, we don't know exactly why we dream or what the purpose of dreams are, but we do know that it's a universal experience and I think we've been fascinated by them for a long time.

John Horton:

It's all so fascinating, and just that … this is all kind of happening in your mind as you sleep is just, I think, what has drawn people to this whole concept of dreams throughout time.

So before we part ways today and start looking for a notepad to jot things down, is there anything else that we should know about dream journaling and what it can do for us?

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Again, I think it's just very individual. It can be kind of a fun way to take a deeper dive into some of your maybe unconscious thoughts, feelings, emotions, and really kind of have fun with how you're interpreting it and what those dreams mean for you.

John Horton:

Well, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us today, Dr. Tiani. This is truly fascinating. I'm looking forward to writing some things down the next time I wake up and remember what was going on in my head that night.

Dr. Alaina Tiani:

Awesome. Thank you so much.

John Horton:

Approximately one-third of your day is spent sleeping. A dream journal allows you to capture thoughts from this time and maybe even learn a little about yourself in the process. Why not give it a try starting tonight?

If you liked what you heard today, please hit the subscribe button, and leave a comment to share your thoughts. Until next time, be well.

Speaker 3:

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