Waking up from a dream can be a pretty bizarre experience as you try to work out what's real life and what's not - and the same goes for nightmares.
Some can feel so real that you end up thinking about the dream for hours or days after, unable to shake the thought that they might have been trying to tell you something.
If you're curious about delving deeper into dreams and working out what they might mean, a dream decoder and spirituality expert has shared her top tips for doing just this with The Mirror.
Theresa Cheung has been researching and writing about dreams for the last 25 years and is best known for her book, The Dream Dictionary.
She believes that dream 'decoding' can be like a a "free form of therapy" as it allows you space to understand yourself better.
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Are your dreams really trying to tell you something? (stock photo) (Getty Images/iStockphoto)She explained: "When you go to a counsellor they'll ask you, 'Well, how does that make you feel?' Every time you have a dream, write it down and look at the symbols and images and scenarios.
"The first way to interpret them is to ask yourself how does this scenario make you feel and the purpose of that is to help you understand yourself better.
"All counselling and therapy tries to do is to help you understand who you are - and your dreams are doing that for free every single night.
"The big stumbling block people have is that they don't understand their dreams because dreams speak in a different language and the first task you have to do is try and work it out.
"The language actually is very basic to who we are as human beings, it's all symbols and metaphors and figurative language association."
Theresa claims even nightmares can be good for you (Getty Images/iStockphoto)The expert continues to share how the key to figuring it all out is to analyse your dreams in the same way that an English student would analyse a poem.
"Let's take you back to English literature lessons where you are given a poem and you have to go through it word by word.
"Look at the foreshadowing, look at the metaphors, look at the plans and how things can mean other things. That's exactly how you interpret your dreams.
"Sometimes dreams can be literal, but it's extremely rare. Around 99.9 percent of them are symbolic and it's up to you to look at these symbols from a personal perspective and try and work out their meaning."
And when you do figure out what your dreams are telling you, Cheung claims it will bring a "massive burst of excitement as well as stress relief".
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"Dreams really are our best friend, trying to help and heal us. Even nightmares," she adds.
"If people could simply understand that nightmares are a transformative gift because they are shining a light on issues in your waking life that you're not noticing that you urgently need to do.
"I'd compare it to when you have a cold or the flu and you have a fever, it's a good sign that you're healing because your body's immune system is kicking in to help you heal. You need to have the symptoms to get better. Think of dreams as your body's natural healing, helping you heal psychologically and release tension and emotions."
Cheung added that people who are having dreams about car crashes, drowning, teeth falling out, being naked in public or being chased are likely quite stressed, or have some anxiety to work out in their daily life.
The same goes for those who are having Alice in Wonderland-style dreams, where everything is massively disproportionate to reality.
"All these are signs that there's something that your intuition is noticing during the day but you're not noticing and you urgently need to," she warns.
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