Everyone experiences the pain of losing a loved one at some point in their life.
However, the loss of a particular loved one can have a greater impact on us than we anticipate.
Have you ever dreamed, for example, about a person who is no longer alive? Perhaps you have not thought about the meaning of their appearance in your dreams.
Everyone experiences grief differently after the loss of a loved one. Many cry bitterly, while others remain silent and withdraw into themselves.
Some people act as if nothing happened or try to avoid thinking about it. However, many people share the practice of remembering their deceased loved ones in dreams.
The subconscious decides what we dream about at night, and if you have ever dreamed about a deceased person, this could mean something.
Visitation dreams are what people have when they see visions of the deceased, according to Patrick McNamara, an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
“Mourners’ dreams in which the deceased appears to the mourners in dreams and seems very much alive,” as McNamara describes it.
The 67-year-old neuroscientist often blogs under the name Dream Catcher on the Psychology Today website.
McNamara has written extensively about dreams and their interpretation. And he says there is usually a rational explanation for visitation dreams.
They help in the healing process of emotional trauma.
He tells of a dream he had after the death of his parents. McNamara argued that this type of dream, known as a “visitation dream,” was evidence of survival after physical death, having had one himself.
“Now if I, an individual studying dreams with a skeptical scientific mind, could not shake off the belief that I had just communicated with my dead parents, how much more could the belief of someone with a less skeptical view of dreams be stronger?” writes McNamara.
There are more people than Patrick McNamara who are curious about these dreams and several studies have been conducted to learn more about them.
In 2014, a study analyzing the effects of grief dreams was published in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care.
“Dreams about the deceased occur frequently, can be very meaningful, and promote healing after a loss,” the study concludes.
Dream themes included “past memories or experiences, the deceased being freed from illness, recollections of the deceased’s illness or the time of death, the deceased in the afterlife appearing in good health, comfortable, and at peace, as well as the deceased conveying a message.”
In 2016, a group of Canadian researchers examined the dreams of 76 middle-aged people who had just experienced a major loss.
Of those who had recently lost a loved one, 67.1% said that visiting dreams strengthened their faith in the afterlife.
Seventy percent said they felt as if the deceased had visited them in their dreams, and 71% said dreams about the deceased strengthened their sense of connection with the deceased.
Jennifer E. Shorter, a psychologist at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, has also studied the connections between our waking lives and our dreams.
It’s impossible to say how often visitation dreams occur, says the author of “Visitation Dreams in Bereaved Individuals: A Phenomenological Investigation into the Connection between Dreams and Grief.”
However, this can happen shortly after death or years later. According to their findings, there are four distinctive features of a visitation dream:
In a visitation dream, the deceased appears as he or she was in real life, but is healthier or younger than in real life.
The deceased usually says something about his or her current condition, for example that he or she is doing well.
The meaning of the dream is experienced less as a tangible presence and more as a telepathic presence.
The dream state is generally peaceful and well-structured, bordering on harmonious.
Have you ever dreamed about the death of a loved one? Can you explain the meaning?
Feel free to share your experience in the comments section and share this article on Facebook if you believe that dreams can have meaning!