Sooner or later, everyone loses someone close to them – it’s unfortunately, a part of life.
The loss of certain people we care about can hit us harder than we expect. For instance, have you ever dreamed about someone who has passed away?
The reason they show up in your dreams might be something you never expected.
Losing a loved one is very hard, and how you process the grief is up to each person. Some shed many tears, while many become silent and go retreat into themselves.
Some people might ignore the topic or act like it doesn’t bother them. However, there’s one thing that a lot of us share – dreaming about those we’ve lost. When we sleep, our subconscious takes over, and if you’ve ever had a dream about someone who has died, it could mean something important.
So, can dreams carry messages from loved ones who have died?
Patrick McNamara, who is an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University, talks about a special kind of dream called visitation dreams. These dreams happen when someone who has passed away seems to visit you while you’re dreaming. McNamara describes them as “dreams of the bereaved where the dead appear to the bereaved in dreams and look to be very much alive.”
The 67-year-old neuroscientist writes a blog for Psychology Today using the name Dream Catcher. Throughout the years, McNamara has shared his ideas and discoveries about dreams and what they mean. He believes that visitation dreams usually have a reasonable explanation.
They help you cope with your grief, loss, and sorrow.
In a blog post, he shares a dream he experienced after his parents died. He describes it as a visitation dream, and this led him to believe that these kinds of dreams might mean there is life after death.
McNamara says that if someone like him, who looks at dreams with a scientific and doubtful attitude, feels sure that he just talked to his deceased parents, then imagine how much more convinced someone who believes in dreams would be!
Patrick McNamara isn’t the only one who is interested in these dreams, and there have been several studies that dig deeper into this phenomenon.
In 2014, a study was published in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care that looked into how grief dreams affect people. The research showed that dreams about those who have passed away happen often, can be very significant, and help with the healing process after a loss.
Dreams often featured themes like remembering old times or experiences, seeing loved ones who have passed away without any sickness, recalling moments from their illness or the time they died, imagining them in the afterlife looking healthy, happy, and at peace, and even receiving messages from them.
In 2016, a group of Canadian researchers studied the dreams of 76 middle-aged people who had lost loved ones. The results showed that 67.1% of these individuals felt that dreaming about the people they lost made them believe more in life after death. About 70% described their dreams of the deceased as “visitations,” and 71% said that these dreams helped them feel closer to their loved ones.
Psychologist Jennifer E. Shorter from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, has also done research on our brains and what we dream.
In her research titled “Visitation Dreams in Grieving Individuals: A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Relationship Between Dreams and the Grieving,” she mentions that it’s unclear how many people actually have visitation dreams.
But it can happen close to or long after a person has died. In her research, she has concluded that four factors characterize a visitation dream:
1. The people in your visitation dream look like they did when they were alive, although often healthier or younger.
2. The deceased often says something about how they are now, for example, that they are fine.
3. The message in the dream is experienced more telepathically than in the form of physical presence.
4. The dream is often calm and organized, almost harmonious.
Have you ever dreamed of a loved one who died? What did it mean to you?
You can share your thoughts in the comments below, and if you believe that dreams have significance, don’t forget to post this article on Facebook!