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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My practicum supervisor introduced me to Carl Jung and his focus on dreams as a way of healing, but it wasn’t until I had been separated from my husband for three months that I finally made my way to a local Jungian Analyst. My dreams were relentless. I saw my analyst weekly and dutifully brought 7 dreams to each session - one for every day of the week and each at least 2 pages long. I had more dreams than we had time to interpret - my psyche was thrilled to have someone who could listen and understand its messages. I had dreams of plagues, of death, of life, of stars. I got to know returning characters and began exercising my lucid muscles again - I made changes in my dream world I could only imagine in real life. It didn’t take long before I had created my own dictionary of dream symbols - what they each meant for me. I was soon interpreting my dreams while I was having them. My subconscious had created an inner translator.
The first time it happened, my dream self was a child sitting at the top of a red metal slide - the kind that would get so hot in the sun. I could see the slide was slightly warped from the heat and the shiny silver slide shone. My other Self was the adult waiting dutifully by the side, ready to guide my dream child self down. Everything stopped. “Ah, this is my Inner Child learning to take appropriate risks by internalizing secure attachment with herself.” My conscious mind interprets the story of my subconscious as the story unfolded. Carry on. The dream continued. I slid down the slide and was caught by my Self.
I’ve never been any good at learning languages but dreams are a language I understand perfectly. I’ve become fluent in the dream world because I’ve spent a long time conversing.
These are a few dream interpretations I did over on my Instagram - every other Sunday, you can submit a dream for a free interpretation.
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Our subconscious is always working, always speaking, it is up to us to listen. Since dreams circumvent the censorship of our Ego, the communication from the dream may necessitate a call to action that disrupts the status quo of your life. Your dreams hold the key to the change you want in your life. They tell us where your energy wants to go. They uncover your deepest desires - the things you want that you’re afraid to want, should it ever be taken away.
What I love most about dreams is how logical they are. Dreams tell a story and when you know the elements to a story, you can identify its meaning. Dream interpretation analyzes the meaning of symbols within dreams from a mythological perspective that weaves the personal with the collective. Dream interpretations are very much like a formula - once you know the formula, you plug in the details, and you have your result. There’s obviously nuance, context and intuition attached the process as well - but this is the formula I use:
BEGINNING of the dream
Tells us which part of your psyche we’re in
MIDDLE
Tells us the impact of the activated complex
END
Tells us what to do next - where the energy wants to go
So in my fellow parishioner's dream, the beginning of the dream told us we’re in her childhood psyche because the location of the dream was her childhood home. The middle of the dream told us that the activated complex was chaos, the tornado - this could also indicate experiences of verbal abuse (there’s too much air and it’s dangerous air). The end of the dream tells us that the energy needs to grieve, she needs to see her childhood in reality - to “pick apart” the particular lens through which she experienced her own history. The energy wants to go back to childhood to collect her younger self that was stuck there.
Working with dreams requires understanding metaphor. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love metaphor - it’s become a running joke with clients, “do I have a metaphor for that?”. As a literary nerd, metaphors make sense to me as a way of expressing the unexpressable. So much of our human experience cannot be articulated within the confines of our language so when we describe how we’e feeling we use metaphor as a net to encapsulate our human experience as much as possible. I’m down in the dumps. I’m on cloud 9.
I’ve also found metaphor helps alleviate the potential for judgment. Do I actually want to tear my boss’ head off or do I simply want to feel empowered in my work? Metaphor is the channel for us to express our shadow, the hidden and true impulses of our human existence. The opposite of metaphor is concretization - taking everything literally. I’ve seen firsthand the damage that literalism can have, having witnessed a well-known pastor be fired from their church for suggesting Genesis 1 could be a poetic allegory. For me, metaphor has become a helpful chimney to allow the flames without the burn.
When we stay in the metaphor, we’re able to learn as the observer. We don’t get so caught up in grasping so tightly and we can be open to learn from ourselves.
Different Types of Dreams
Personal Process
These are the most common, reflective of our own healing. All of the characters represent a different aspect of yourself, based on your individual associations of those elements. Dreaming of your grandmother is indicative of an ancestral complex, dreaming of your dog represents your instinct.
Premonition
These can be a warning or dreaming of someone before you see them. It's important to look at premonition dreams through the lens of metaphor, the language of our subconscious. Premonitions aren't always a warning, sometimes they are an invitation to check-in & offer love, comfort & care.
Channelled Dreams
As we attune to our dreams, we might get messages for someone else. You might get messages from people in your dreams, who would represent themselves, not a metaphor. This message is very clear and usually has a "real life" element, such as receiving a message of assurance from an ill loved one.
Sorting
Our dreams sort through our day, but it chooses important elements. *For example, if you watch a movie and dream of a specific character, there's a reason you dreamed of that particular character & not another one.
Interpretation
Characters
Most dreams are reflective of our own process where each “character” in the dream represents a different piece of you. So if you dream of a dog crossing a bridge to
you, you are you in the dream, you are the dog and you are the bridge.
Associations
There are general meanings to symbols but your experience of them will be unique to you (for example, I love dogs so they represent really positive instinctual energy in my dreams but for someone who was attacked by a dog, it will mean something different.) If you dream of a friend, your association of that friend will change the meaning so in your interpretation, note how you experience each character in real life.
Location
The location of the dream tells us what part of your psyche we are in, what complexes are being aroused. If you are in a hotel or a transient place, it indicates you are in a time of transition. It is ideal to be in your own home, driving your own car. If you in someone elses' home or someone else is driving you around, you are not living your own life.
Details
The end of the dream will give us a call to action, it could be a warning of what will happen if you don’t do something or give a “recipe” for what to do next.
Common Symbols
Animals
Animals typically represent our instinct, but it depends on your personal association with animals. If you are afraid of dogs, a dream about dogs will be very different from a dog lover. Research what the animal means in different cultures, along with your own association.
Numbers
Numbers are common elements in dreams and we can find deeper meaning by analyzing the numbers that arise through the lens of numerology, even analyzing the date the dream occurred. 1- new beginnings, 2- twinning of ego|shadow, 3 - cosmic beginning, 4 - structural foundation, 5 - distance from where you are & where you want to be, 6 - harmony, 7 - complexed coping strategy, 8 - it is time to get to know yourself, 9 - self mastery, 10 - completion of cycles
Chased | Falling
Depending on what is chasing you in the dream, the interpretation can vary widely. If it is recurring, it is interesting to go to bed with the intention to not run away but learn from it. Oftentimes we are running from a lesson we need to integrate in our lives.
Teeth
When we dream of teeth falling out or growing in, it indicates ego death as we transition from our second childhood into adulthood.
Homes
The location of the dream indicates what aspect of your psyche the dream takes place. Homes denote WHOSE psyche. If it is your home, you inhabit yourself! If you're in a hotel, you're in a time of transition. If you're in your childhood home, you are experiencing coping strategies from childhood. If you're in someone else's home, it could indicate people-pleasing.
If today’s newsletter resonates with you, you can:
Share a snippet on social media and tag me @syconiumhealingpractice
Forward this email to a friend you think would enjoy it
Follow me over on TikTok for snippets of wisdom @syconiumhealing
Join other paid subscribers for weekly Sanctuary where I’ll be sharing spiritual practices, rituals, guided meditations, moon movements and more!
It’s perfect for existentialists or post-deconstruction exvangelicals who want to explore spirituality but don’t know where to start outside of expensive crystal shops and church pews.
Self-Care for Busy People Sunday March 26
Stay tuned for the NextGenMen Emotional Literacy series