Dreams

Before reading this mini essay on dreams, I would like to briefly remind you to sign up for my writing contest here. It took me less than thirty seconds to fill out the form, and you have two more weeks to put together a submission. Writers of all levels are welcome! Learn more here.
Also, a quick apology for the new header picture. It's been cut off, and I'm working on that.
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          Dreams. We’ve all experienced them when we lay down our head and say ‘Good Night.’ To Sigmund Freud, dreams were unconscious wishes. He thought that something was wrong if you had boring dreams or constant nightmares.
          Since Freund, many more theories as to why we dream have been drawn up. One possibility would be that we dream to practice responses to certain situations. Finnish Cognitive scientist Antti Revonsuo displayed that the amygdala (the fight or flight portion of our brain) is more at work during our dreams. Revonsuo and others believe that, because of the changes in the amygdala, we are practicing those reflexes.
          Some scientists see that dreams could be when our brain goes through and cleans off what we need to forget and saves what we need to remember. They reached this conclusion because the brain is much more random during this dreamy la-la land. This randomness could be our mind’s attempt to find old memories to clean out to make room for new information.
          Still other scientists believe that there is no meaning to our dreams. Maybe there is no conscious behind the film, maybe it is our consciousness that wants to see this unknown meaning.
          You, too, may have a theory on why we dream. There are so many; how will we ever know which one, if any, is the true reason? I’ll let you sleep- or, shall I say, dream- on that.

Ilana Simons. "What Do Dreams Do for Us?" Psychology Today. N.p., 11 Nov. 2009. Web.

Tears- My Mini Essay

Recently, the topic of crying has been on my mind, as well as other body functions under the control of the medulla oblongata, but mostly crying. I figured I could organize and share my thoughts by writing it all out in an orderly format.


I've read a wonderful article from WebMD.com on the topic, and it explained a lot. Basically, we cry for many reasons: maybe to get attention, but also to express that something needs to be addressed- pain, fatigue, joy, whatever. And a fact I personally found interesting is that PhD student Lauren Bylsma surveyed how we feel after a good cry. She talked to 200 Dutch women: Most of them felt better after sobbing, but ones with higher depression or anxiety levels felt the same, if not worse.

 Stephen Sideroff, PhD is a staff psychologist at Santa Monica--University of California Los Angeles & Orthopaedic Hospital and is the clinical director of the Moonview Treatment Center in Santa Monica, Calif. He says that for various reasons, people suppress their tears. To the rest of the world, the deadness inside caused by suppressing those tears looks like depression. You can be sad without being depressed, and if you're quick to cry, that doesn't make you depressed. And suppressing your tears may cause a threat to your health. In the words of British psychiatrist Henry Maudsley, "The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep."

So in conclusion, don't be afraid to let the tears flow! Crying in public may be humiliating, but when you feel tears coming, get them out! As we learned from Lauren Byslma, crying makes those without high depression or anxiety levels feel better, and as from Stephen Sideroff, holding back your tears may pose a threat to your health. I think it would be better to just cry.