In your dreams 💭💤

a step-by-step dream interpretation guide

“It isn’t real”. I awoke chanting these words but it didn’t help. The dream lingered, dripping anxiety, waterboarded by my own subconscious. Moments ago, I had been trapped in a war camp with my dog. I had just been shot in the shoulder. There was a child who was being abused - I couldn’t help them. A bird attacked my dog and I had to slit the bird’s throat. But it was the end of the dream that was haunting me. I lock my husband out of my room. I see the door handle turn. He had copied the key to my room six times and never gave me a key. I could only lock myself in, but could never get out. I could never get out. 

This dream changed my life. Written out, it’s 3 full pages with 5 distinct sections. It’s the final line that I wrote that literally shook me awake - “I feel so broken.” I was broken. I just needed to hear it from my most inner depths to truly acknowledge it. 

Up until this dream, I had been trying to make it work. I kept thinking I was the problem, that I was doing something wrong, that there was something I could change to make our relationship better. This dream made me realize that there was something deeper creating the strain in our marriage. I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel safe to take up space.

I had a friend interpret this dream for me because I knew what it was saying and didn’t want to believe it. It was clear my body, my psyche, my soul, felt under siege. That my instinct was being attacked and it felt like there was nothing I could do. In the dream, I had a separate room from my husband (not in real life), which showed I couldn’t be myself with him. His entry was an emotional violation - he used me to complete the puzzle of his life. To be fair, I used him for the same end. We both felt we were incomplete and projected our lack onto the other. We both ended up marooned from ourselves. 

The key is a symbol to my authenticity and means an initiation that requires risk is around the corner. It was about unlocking my potential. How true that was. He copied my key 6 times (representing harmony, ironically - so to maintain harmony in the relationship, I had to dilute myself). In dreams, whoever is “in charge” is a big deal - who’s driving the car, who’s leading the way, who’s holding the key. It demonstrates who is “in charge” of your psyche. I had handed over the keys to myself - I had lost my own sovereignty.

I can still see the key in the dream. He dropped the original on the floor and it got lost in the forested shag carpet. I was on my hands and knees combing through the shag to retrieve the key, the object of my sovereignty. 

I haven’t told many people this. It was because of this dream I knew I needed to leave the relationship. If I hadn’t had this dream, I would probably still be married. I would still be unhappy. I would still feel broken. 

When I say I was broken, I mean my life was crumbling around me. It had to. I don’t mean there was something wrong with me, but I was fragmented, fractured. I abandoned myself to get love from him. I shut off parts of myself to be acceptable to him. In that way, I was broken because I was disconnected to myself. This dream created a bridge back to myself. I started painting again and through creativity, I found my voice again. I started practicing yoga for the first time and through my body, I discovered how to take up space. I turned my energy back towards myself and [re]discovered who I truly was. 

And I started dreaming again. Pages upon pages of dreams, night after night. My subconscious had found a way to communicate with me and now that I was listening, my psyche had a lot to say. So I listened. I started sitting with each dream as it came. I was in a war zone for a long time. Soon after I formally asked for a divorce, I was free. The war was over. I started dreaming about rooftop stone gardens instead. Dreams became the litmus test for my decisions - my subconscious became the voice I trusted the most. My life expanded. 

I haven’t been back to the war camp since. 

I’ve always been an avid dreamer - having mastered lucid dreaming before I even knew what it was. As a young child, I had a dream “menu” that I could select the type or topic of dream I wanted to have that night. If I was being chased, I could pause my dream and assess the situation, moving through multiple options and seeing which outcome I liked the best. Dreams afforded me the opportunity to feel truly empowered in my life, to experience a “birds eye” view on life. 

Do you remember your dreams? Do you know you had dreams but can’t remember the details?

If you have difficulty remembering your dreams, simply fall asleep with the intention to remember your dream (you can be extra specific and request to remember your dream until you write it down). Ensure you have a way to record the dream first thing in the morning. Dreams are a somatic experience so try to limit moving too much before recording the dream. Some prefer writing the dream with pen and paper, some find writing a note on their phone easier. Find what works for you.

I first learned about dream interpretation in my supernatural school at my pentecostal church. Genesis 41 was cited as one of the many ways for God to speak to his people. The pastor asked if anyone had a vivid dream and a woman in the row in front of me raised her hand. She described a recurring nightmare of her childhood home swirling in a tornado like the Wizard of Oz with a swarm of unusually large black birds attacking in sequence, tearing her childhood home apart. Something in the atmosphere shifted as she described this depiction of liminal space - a radiating stillness settled upon us all. The pastor’s interpretation sliced through the silence with a resounding timbre. I filtered through his Christianese and was left with something that just felt *so true*. Her child Self had experienced so much chaos, she was being torn apart by life’s upheavals because long ago, it was imprinted upon her that love hurts. It resonated deeply with the woman in the row in front of me and I was hooked. To derive so much depth from something we do every night made so much sense. It wasn’t the arbitrary guesswork of prophecy (or mediums) but it was following a set of symbols. (no judgment to either prophecy or mediums - I hold the both and of belief & skepticism) 

Dream work reminded me of a scavenger hunt as a child, putting together clues and following the path that was already laid. It felt mysterious and intriguing - I needed to learn more. I enrolled in a Psychology of Dreaming course in my summer semester and learned so much about the neuroscience of our dream experiences. It was my homework to keep a dream journal. Pages upon pages of standing before various authority figures, awaiting judgment. I would later learn the themes of a dream will stay consistent until you bring that complex into consciousness. I had to reconcile with my fear of judgement & shrinkage - rebellion cycle beneath authority. I had to internalize my own authority. I wouldn’t do that until leaving the church. 

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