Ok everybody! Let's talk about dreams for a hot second! I notice a pattern of members posting about dreams that involve their OCD obsessions. The dreams trigger distress, which is followed by rumination and reassurance seeking to get temporary relief. I wonder if part of the issue is that our cultures often do a bad job of educating us about dreams in general. So, psychoeducation time! We often think that when we fall asleep, our brains "turn off". This couldn't be farther from the truth. Our brains are just as active when we are asleep as when we are awake. They are just active in a different way. We cycle through multiple phases of sleep every night. The cycle where we dream is called REM sleep. It stands for "rapid eye movement" because during this phase of sleep our eyes dart around under our eyelids as though we are watching something. Everyone dreams during rem sleep every night, some people just don't remember it in the morning. All mammals have rem sleep. You may have noticed your dog or cat twitching as they sleep, maybe making little running movements. that's them dreaming in their REM sleep. Unlike during the other phases of sleep, we are mostly paralyzed while we dream. in fact, in experiments where scientists damaged the part of cats brains that are responsible for the paralyzation, the cats wobbled around acting out pouncing and chasing in their sleep- presumably actually doing what they were dreaming about. We don't really know why we need it, but we know it's important. Anything you can think about while you're awake, you can dream about. In fact, dreams are often much less loosley tied to reality. It's like our imaginations have totally free rein. We do know that things we spend a lot of time thinking about when we are awake (like obsessions) show up more frequently in out dreams. That's not surprising. After all, the same neural pathways that are responsible for our obsessions during the day are still there at night. Dreams are not inherently meaningful, despite what dream dictionaries or fortune teller a might insist. There is no reason to out loads of effort into interpreting them. They are just something out brains do to stay healthy. Maybe with the exception of trauma nightmares. Does that information help? If you've got more questions, ask them in the comments and I'll do my best to find resources to answer them