“The biggest myth about dreams is that they are frivolous manifestations reflecting basic occurrences of our daily experiences,” said Chicago psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber.

But dreams are actually an important part of self-discovery. (More on that later.) Below are a few fascinating facts and findings about dreams.

1. People with disabilities dream as though they don’t have them.

The following is an excerpt from a person who participated in a dream study:

“I was supposed to and wanted to sing in the choir. I see a stage on which some singers, male and female, are standing… I am asked if I want to sing with them. ‘Me?’ I ask, ‘I don’t know if I am good enough.’ And already I am standing on the stage with the choir. In the front row, I see my mother, she is smiling at me… It is a nice feeling to be on stage and able to chant.”

What’s particularly curious about this dream is that the dreamer was born deaf and doesn’t speak. Recently, two studies published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition have found that people with disabilities still dream as though their impairments don’t exist.

We live in the most prosperous society on Earth at this moment. You can walk into any Gap or Target store and choose from more than 2 dozen different types of jeans (and in some cases, more than 3 dozen).

All of that choice comes at a price, however. It’s called “decision fatigue” and its full impact is only starting to be fully understood by psychologists and researchers.

Our brains can suffer from “mental fatigue,” just as our bodies can become physically fatigued after a long workout. What is so surprising about this phenomenon is just how little people appreciate the importance of mental fatigue and its resulting decision fatigue — even when making decisions that can be life-changing.

As the U.S. and Canada enter into a heat wave, I get a lot of questions about how heat impacts human behavior and our moods. So three years ago, I wrote a blog entry that reviews the research about weather affects our moods and behavior. It’s still a good overview of the research in this area and worth the read.

But it’s nice to highlight a few points from that article, as well as other research, that demonstrates how the weather — and especially hot weather, in this case — can impact our mood. Does a heat wave lead to more violence? Do we have more or less energy during high humidity? What about depression and anxiety?

Read on for the answers.

Photo credit: Summer Beretsky

Whatever you do, DO NOT think of an elephant right now!

Seriously.

Don’t think about elephants, or big floppy elephant ears, or elephants at circuses, or elephants in the wild.

Now, be honest: you totally just thought of an elephant. Didn’t you?

That’s exactly how I felt all week when I tried to stay away from the internet.

When I opted to spend a week away from the internet and other technological devices, I expected my brief affair with the IRL (“in real life”) world to whisk me away into romantic oblivion.

Sadly, that was not the case.

It’s that time again if you’re a college or graduate student — time for finals. It’s also time to self-sabotage, to get in your own way in terms of effective studying. We stress out more than usual, even when we’re on top of the material, because of the anxiety surrounding test-taking.

But you don’t have to stress out about final exams. You can actually do better (and feel better about your performance) if you keep the stress at bay and focus on simple study skills over the next few weeks.

Here’s a few tips for coping with finals to get you started. None of these are going to be eye-opening or stuff you don’t already know… But sometimes we need to be reminded of the things we already know, to drive home their importance.

Although not all that common, psychotherapists sometimes fall asleep in session. Probably more common in traditional psychoanalysis (where the psychoanalyst is sitting behind and out of view of the patient), it far harder to do in more modern, time-limited psychotherapies where each session is more of an active, working period between therapist and client.

What is one to do when one is confronted with a sleeping therapist?

Stephen Metcalf, writing in New York magazine, set to find out by going back and talking to his prior four therapists, all of whom had fallen asleep on him. Was it him or them?

We all live two mental lives. When we are awake it is mostly ordered, rational, linear and bounded by rules, both behavioral and physical. When we are asleep it is chaotic, nonlinear, without rules, often without sense.

According to some, dreams are nothing more than the byproduct of a brain disconnected from its normal sensory inputs, freewheeling its way through the night. To others, dreams denote night-time learning or problem-solving, even automatic sifting of the mind’s detritus – useless information to be skimmed off the surface and dumped like so much mental junk.

Amongst the general public, though, there are much stronger beliefs about the power of dreams. So strong that, according to recent research, people seem to believe that dreams can predict the future.

For you, the idea of sleeping well might be as far-fetched as a unicorn …

In her insightful book, “The Superstress Solution,” Roberta Lee, M.D. assesses the stress level in most homes today, and offers a word of caution about chronic stress. In her introduction, she writes: