These are just some of the questions I have genuinely been asked (sometimes frequently) about dreams. If you’d like a chance for your dream question to be answered find out more about the The Dream Download™ here. You might also like my book Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal.
Frequently Asked Questions
“I heard that to dream of pregnancy is an omen of death. The same for teeth.”
Dreams have symbolic references. Pregnancy dreams are often about giving birth to an idea, and teeth dreams will depend very much on how you feel about the dentist.
“Is it true if I dream something three times it will come true?”
I don’t know where this myth came from, but I’ve heard it a few times. If this was the case most people who have recurring dreams (and many people do) would be predicting the future every day.
Recurring dreams are more likely a message about an unresolved issue or a problem you’re trying to solve; they are simply asking you to take the time to explore it. That’s not to say that some people don’t have dreams which come true. There is a famous example included here.
“I was told every character that appears in a dream is a reflection of your own personality.”
This is a theory (not a fact) although it’s fair to say every character who appears in your dream is serving a purpose.
However, if you are dreaming of people at work, your dream and its interpretation is usually about your relationship with those people. The same applies to dreams which feature friends or family members (ie it’s often about your relationship with them). Remember when you apply a specific theoretical model to dream analysis, you are only getting one bite of the apple.
Keeping a dream diary is a really useful way to understand why you dream what you do. I offer a dream diary template in my book Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal.
“Is it true that if I hit the bottom in a dream, I will die?”
Many people have had a falling dream, hit the bottom and lived to tell the tale. You can read more about falling dreams here.
“People say we dream every night, but I never dream?”
Science now shows that you do; you may not remember your dreams but we are all dreaming every night. You can actually have as many as five dreams if you happen to sleep for an eight hour period (although many people don’t sleep that long – I talk about this in Answers In The Dark), with the longest dream of the night just before waking.
There are lots of reasons people don’t remember their dreams, how busy you are is one example. It’s been suggested that people with acquired brain injuries or strokes may have less dreams, or problems remembering them, but their dreams may come back to them once the initial trauma of what’s happened has passed.
“Dreams don’t mean anything”
If there’s one thing we can learn from history it’s that for thousands of years we have considered dreams to be important. It’s unclear why some may have drawn the conclusion that dreams don’t mean anything, but we now know for sure that they do.
Anyone who takes the time to explore or interpret their dreams will be able to make a connection to a meaning, even if it’s that they’re under stress, feeling anxious or troubled by current events. Dreams can hold clues to what’s on our minds, and how to resolve it, so it’s worth paying attention to what they have to say.
“What is a Dreamologist and is that different to Oneirology?”
Dreamologist is the word I use to describe the study and exploration of dreams, as I engage in it. Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams, so for example the parts and function of the brain that may (or may not) be involved in our dreams.
The work I do is focused on people, behaviours and the types of dream experience they may have, as well as certain types of night-time phenomena – like hearing your name at night or ‘Old Hag’ Syndrome. It’s a subtle distinction, and the one I make.
In my media appearances, I am often referred to as a Dream Expert, though again I make the important distinction that this means more that I have studied the subject of dreams all my life. In Answers In The Dark, I make it really clear that as the dreamer, you’re the best person to decide what your dream means, though I offer some tips as well as The Dream Download™ to help people explore them.
Delphi is the author of Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal, out now on Amazon and Hive. The Dreams Maven™ is part of the Helping You Sparkle™ portfolio. You might also like Monday Mojo™.
Out Now
The 4 am Mystery: That’s an actual thing by the way. Even before a global health crisis, people found themselves awake in the middle of the night. Answers In The Dark aims to join the dots between sleep, dreams and our mental health, specifically how grief shows up, even if no one has died.
It explores some of the Big Myths of sleep, offers a Sleep Cycle Repair Kit and tips on how to decode your own dreams. Out now on Amazon and Hive.
#1 Best Seller on Amazon for its category.
© Delphi Ellis, updated 2023 – please note this content may also appear elsewhere as promotional material for Answers In The Dark.
The Dreams Maven™ 
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