Can you let your emotions out through dreams?

Hi everyone! I haven't posted in quite some time.

I had a dream last night (that i really don't remember much of) where I was SOBBING and sobbing and sobbing. I know it wasn't like something bad happened in my dream and I was crying over that, but more of a release sort of thing. I vaguely remember waking up in the middle of the night breathing like you breathe when you sob. You know, gasping for air?

Funny enough, I went to bed with a heavy heart, and woke up feeling a little lighter, but it is always worst at night time. I don't EVER cry in real life. Last time I did was 2 years ago when my kitten died. I've teared up every once in awhile thinking about him, but that is it.

Wouldn't it be great if I could just cry it out in my dreams, and never have to do any of it while I'm awake?

Yes, I think you can let your emotions out through your dreams, and it sounds like you did that.

I wouldn't use the word "great", as I think doing this while awake has tremendous value. But maybe your doing this in your dream can help model to you how to do it, and so you can learn to do it in your waking moments too. Now that you have cried in a dream, you know you can do it! And you also had the experience of it making you feel "lighter", which hopefully will be reinforcing.

Sounds like a very powerful dream.

lol i have been thinking about this basically non stop today.

its something to think about, for sure. it scares me sometimes to think that i dont FEEL until its too late and my subconscious has to take over.

i cry on the odd occassion when i'm sleeping. it's weird, but healing.

i wonder why you think it's better to cry whilst asleep than awake? either way you are still experiencing the crying?

for the record, i've become a heavy duty sobber over the past few years. not a tear when i was younger, but i've let loose with myself on a regular basis recently, and maybe twice with austin-t.

I agree with sunset. But crying in your dreams would show that you have a serious need to release that in your waking as well. Maybe just sit in the closet and have out a good cry, or cry into a pillow. It is okay to cry, crying is healing.

I think you can be in touch with pain in your dreams but not sure that you can release it that way. Just two maybe three times in my whole life I have had dreams in which I was overwhelmed with the most acute sorrow, and I sobbed my heart out - but only those few times, and the memories the next morning didn't make me feel any better. I felt tired I guess.. Mostly I felt as if I had seen something abnormal and scary; as if an *enormous* fish had risen to the surface of a lake, and then had sunk back down out of sight.

As I have only found this pain in dreams, I figure it must be there at the core, but T and I have not reached it (should I say, reached it yet? but frankly, the idea of reaching it in daylight hours, alone or with her, scares the socks off me).

Thanks guys. I guess I want to not deal with crying in real life, because its more distant and not real when it is in a dream. It kind of scares me because any other dream when I've been crying, it is in reaction to something that happened. While I don't remember what I was crying about, I am pretty sure it wasn't in reaction to anything in the present.

So crying about the past is scary?

I guess? I don't feel like I should need to cry about the past.

Really? Wow, I have done a lot of crying about the past. The best part is once you express those feelings you can release them and you don't have to carry them around anymore.

I get that, but I have to CONNECT to those feelings first This thread really has made me think, and I thank you all for your input.

Yeah, that's right. I'm glad your thread got you thinking!