Last night I was on a steam train, going abroad while, at the same time and with a growing sense of panic, I was trying to bake a loaf of bread. I knew I didn't have enough time for the loaf to rise and the stress was getting to me.

By the time I woke up from this, my most recent dream, my heart was racing and I felt breathless.

Dreams like this aren't a rare occurrence - my dreams are regularly vivid, colourful and panic-inducing. Some are one-offs while others are repeated over and over again.

I often dream I'm searching for something in an old, crumbling house, or discovering abandoned rooms in my childhood home. Occasionally, the dreams will become nightmares, featuring bereavement, murder or terrifying chases up spiral staircases.

‘Women have more nightmares, more emotional dreams, more surreal ones and greater trouble sleeping.’

But why women’s dreams are brighter than those of men?

Women may recall dreams more effectively because we bestow them with more significance than men do.

Men probably dream about racing a car or making money or traveling all around (for free) while women (me, generally speaking) dream about falling off the edge of a plank, losing a loved one, getting trapped in a place that I am unfamiliar with and, more recently, dreamed that buildings were crumbling like crackers all around me...and I stood on the only last remaining solid building in the whole...whatever that was.

Things changed for me when I read in a magazine that most men do not dream of car racing or making money. They dream about sex....and a lot of violence. No, seriously, they do (you KNOW they do!) but both types of dreams don't always occur in the same dream. They are sometimes caught kicking and screaming in bed because an unknown and unseen attacker is trying to steal his laptop but he is blinded with some kind of white light, namely his eyes were closed and you have switched the lights back on because he has been kicking you...and you are MAD. On other nights, men can be found gripping the bolster just a little bit too hard.

Because of our physical and biological differences, it makes sense that men and women dream about completely different things and it is sad when I found out that women tend to have more nightmares. It's funny, then, that with such violent dream, why don't men classify their 'dreams' as nightmares. For women, we can't quite call a violence-filled dream a dream....it's a nightmare, no matter how you looked at it.

Here are a couple of facts that I found out when I was trying to figure out what my dreams/nightmares were all about in real life. Apparently, when one dreams of falling buildings (earthquake or shoddily built buildings), it means that person probably feels unsafe in real life. That person could also be moving from one period of his or her life and things are unstable at that point in time. And when men dream of violence, murders, twisted plots to tackle someone else, war, weapons, fast cars....it is usually in relation to their work matters.

Both men and women have a common ground and that is, as I have discovered, dreaming about falling, unable to move, being chased, drowning, being secluded or trapped. Men just have it less. They all signal distress that we are experiencing in real life and is in no way at all indicative of the future. Dreams and nightmares is the result of our brain (the nerves) summarizing the events of the day up and then, so to speak, put them all in little compartments in our heads.

Would I exchange my horror-filled dreams with the violent ones that men have? No, I don't think so. Not any day soon, anyway.

Well, my dear men, please, tell me what are you dreaming at night about? Do not be shy… If you have something you do not agree with me, please share this!



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