What Do They Mean?

When I was having dinner with my friends the other night, we got to talking about dreams and their interpretations. In ancient times, they believed that dreams are prophetic. I think that's still true these days, but only rarely. My psych prof provided us with a Freudian explanation: that dreams are manifestations of our subconscious. They are a form of issue resolution and/or wish fulfillment.

When my friends and I decided to hang out here at home after dinner, we clicked on a couple of dream interpretation sites to get some idea what the elements of our dreams mean. Some explanations are believable while others are quite medieval in nature that I can actually picture a Professor Trelawney-type figure saying them.

So how do I know what my dreams mean? If they're supposed to be prophetic or mere wish fulfillment? Can dreams actually influence my waking hours? My feelings during my waking hours?

Because I feel like one of them did, and if, maybe, probably, that lone dream has resulted in all these crappy feelings and subsequent confusion... and if that was one of my wish fulfillment dreams... ARGH. Then all this is based on complete sleep BS.

It was said in one of the sites I visited that for dream recall, one must follow several steps: relaxing, sleeping for at least 8 hours, and waking up naturally (without an alarm clock or anyone/anything else to wake you). There might be another step which I forgot but whatever. It's weird because I remember almost every dream I have and I don't even follow these steps. Is there something wrong with my brain then? Or is it like, a superpower?

I'm going with superpower. :)