At some time in life, everyone feels the hurt of losing someone they care about.
However, losing a specific person can affect us more than we expect.
Have you ever dreamed about someone who has passed away? You might not have thought about what it means for them to show up in your dreams.
Each person has their own way of grieving after losing a loved one. Some people cry a lot, while others become quiet and keep to themselves.
Some folks behave like nothing has changed or try to ignore it. Still, a lot of people have the habit of remembering those they've lost in their dreams.
Our subconscious mind chooses what we dream about when we sleep, and if you've ever had a dream about someone who has passed away, it might mean something important.
So, can dead people communicate with us in our dreams?
Visitation dreams are experiences where people see those who have passed away, as explained by Patrick McNamara, an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University.
“These are dreams where the deceased appear to the living and seem very much alive,” McNamara describes.
The 67-year-old neuroscientist frequently writes a blog called Dream Catcher on the Psychology Today website.
McNamara has done a lot of writing about dreams and how to understand them. He believes that there is usually a logical reason behind visitation dreams.
These dreams help people heal from emotional pain.
He shares a personal story about a dream he experienced after losing his parents. McNamara suggested that this kind of dream, referred to as a “visitation dream,” shows that there is life after physical death, based on his own experience.
“Now, if I, a person who has studied dreams with a skeptical scientific mindset, couldn't shake the feeling that I had just talked to my deceased parents, how much stronger must be the belief of someone who is less skeptical about dreams than I am?” McNamara writes.
There are many others besides Patrick McNamara who are interested in dreams like these, and several studies have been done to find out more about them.
In 2014, a study looking at the effects of mourning dreams was published in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care.
“Dreams of the deceased happen often, can be very meaningful, and help with healing from a loss,” the study concluded.
The dreams included themes like “past memories or experiences, the deceased being free of illness, memories of the deceased's sickness or time of death, the deceased in the afterlife looking healthy, comfortable, and at peace, as well as the deceased sending a message.”
In 2016, a team of Canadian researchers studied the dreams of 76 middle-aged individuals who had just gone through a major loss.
People who recently lost someone they loved, 67.1% mentioned that dreaming about the person who passed away made them believe more in life after death.
About seventy percent said they felt like they were being visited by the deceased in their dreams, and 71 percent felt that dreaming of the dead helped them feel closer to those who have gone.
Jennifer E. Shorter, a psychologist from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, has researched how our dreams connect to our everyday lives.
The author of “Visitation Dreams in Grieving Individuals: A Phenomenological Investigation into the Connection Between Dreams and the Grieving” says we can't really know how often these visitation dreams happen.
However, they can happen soon after someone dies or even many years later. Her research found four key features that make a dream a visitation dream:
1. In a visitation dream, people who have passed away look like they did when they were alive, but they often appear healthier or younger than before.
2. The deceased usually mention something about how they are doing now, like saying they are okay.
3. The meaning of the dream feels more like a mental connection rather than something you can touch.
4. The dream is often calm and organized, almost like it's in perfect balance.
Have you ever dreamed about someone you lost? Can you tell us what it meant to you?
Feel free to share your story in the comments below, and don't forget to SHARE this article on Facebook if you believe dreams can have a purpose!
