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‹ Mn Huna: Finding Refuge in Friendship

Episode 22: Our Dreams Untangle Our Days

January 23, 2018
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Dreams untangle our days. According to some theories, they give us a chance to work through in our sleep some of the threats and stresses of our days. So it’s no surprise that Houda’s dreams are shaped by her life—by the stress of moving to an unfamiliar country, by the grief of leaving behind everyone she knows, by the fear of violence that hovers in the back—or front—of her mind as a hijabi Muslim woman in America. And by what helps her feel safer here in America.

“[T]he threat simulation hypothesis suggests that dreams may provide a sort of virtual reality simulation in which we can rehearse threatening situations, even if we don’t remember the dreams. Presumably, this rehearsal would lead to better real-life responses, so the rehearsal is adaptive. Evidence supporting this comes from the large proportion of dreams which include a threatening situation (more than 70 percent in some studies) and the fact that this percentage is much higher than the incidence of threats in the dreamer’s actual daytime life. Furthermore, studies of children in two different areas of Palestine show that those who live in a more threatening environment also have a much higher incidence of threat in their dreams. Reactions to these threats are almost always relevant and sensible, so the rehearsal (if that’s what it is) clearly involves plausible solutions, again suggesting that they provide a kind of valid simulation of potential real-life scenarios.” The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest, by Penelope A. Lewis

The same day that we recorded this episode, a man attacked a group of young Muslim women sitting outside a cafe on University Boulevard in Tucson. He flipped over their table and yelled anti-Muslim insults at them.

هدى/Houda: من هنا :احلامنا ترتبط بأيامنا

Melanie/ميلاني: From here our dreams untangle our days.

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TAGS
dreams,   fear,   Refugee,   Syria,  

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