What Does It Mean When You Dream About Someone

When we say prevent a bad dream, we mean can you stop intentional dreaming about a certain person, like that ex. Short answer, probably not. Sorry! But it actually might not be such a bad thing. Hear us out.

"There is little one can do to stop dreaming about someone," Schweickert says. "Although dreams of your ex may be troubling, [these dreams] may gradually help emotional equilibrium. [Neuroscientist] Rosalind Cartwright found that women going through divorce who dreamed about their exes were better adjusted a year later than those who did not have such dreams."

Good news, right? The more dreams, literally the more healing. So don't try to interrupt the process, so long as it's not too frightening or disturbing.

"Ironically, trying to stop thinking about your ex during the day may lead to more dreaming about them at night ... a dream rebound effect," explains Schweickert. "If dreams about your ex are nightmares, it may help when awake to imagine and rehearse a more pleasant ending."

If you're dreaming about that ex (or anybody for that matter) all the time, it's still probably nothing crazy. Schweickert says during our waking life, we interact with about 150 people at least once a year, so that's about the number of people we dream about in a year, too. In other words, you interact with a lot of people, so you dream about a lot of people, too. But as for the regularity when it comes to one person in particular? It's just based on a random frequency.

"People occur in dreams with systematic frequencies," Schweickert explains. "Curiously, the probability distribution is the same as that of word frequencies. Words occur in English with various frequencies. For example, 'the' is more frequent than 'cup.' Frequencies with which people occur in dreams follow the same distribution."

As he puts it, if you spend time with someone, you're going to dream about them. "But the emotions of a difficult relationship with someone may lead to frequent dreams about them," he adds.