Hey guys!
I ran across an article in a daily newspaper concerning depression and sleep. I found it a bit disturbing , if what the writer implies is true.
His name is Joe Griffin and he is a psychologist researching dreams and their relationship to depression, if anyone has ever heard of him.
I have translated the artice from greek, I hope it’s accurate. Here goes:
Normal sleep does a great job for our system. Every night it turns off the switch of automatic (raise) level. Dreams are metaphorical translations of these self observations- the feelings and thoughts that are being produced under heavy load - which become inhibited at the moment they are produced, since the individual who is in this bad psychological condition doesn’t manifest himself, and so they find a way out during sleep. The pattern of (raise/arousal?) can be said to be deactivated. People, however, who are depressed feel such an unrest inside that self-observations generate an overproduction of dreams, a process which consumes large portions of energy inside the brain. That explains the fact that these people wake-up and feel tired instead of refreshed .They can’t concentrate their mind, and sometimes they wake having mixed feelings… Research has shown that whichever therapy prompts patients to look into their pasts has adverse effects, since the process aggravates the problem and so it deepens the depression level
Now I’ m not implying anyone is into dreams because of that, but to be honest with you, every time I feel depressed (it can last for months) I tend to read more and think more about dreams and OBEs. Even if I don’t think about it, it comes up by itself. The reason I started in the first place was I experienced the prelude to an OBE *, and that was at a time when I was VEERY depressed, didn’t go to uni at all ** , nor did I study or read or do anything creative or productive with my life. At that time, my dreams were plenty and really vivid and archetypal. And I slept a lot. (I could numb my whole body in 2-3 minutes then !! Now I can’t numb it in less than 20 minutes, and I must really want to) So what do you think about all of this? Has anyone noticed the same? And if so, isn’t that saying something not-so-good about dreams and our desire to pursue them?
- I had only read once about it and wasn’t sure I wanted to believe such things-so it was out of my mind for a long time
**people do that anyway here in Greece- we just have to be successful at the exams