If you find yourself frustrated with an apparent lack of success at either remembering or interpreting your dreams, take a break from it.  Simply stop trying to do anything with your dreams other than enjoy them.

Surrender to the joy and wonder that your dream world holds.  Sometimes when we try too hard, we end up holding the reins too tight and we don’t get anywhere at all.

Once you can feel relaxed and joyful about your dreams again, just let what you want to happen, happen.

Let your dreams come to you!

Once given the freedom to appear, you will soon find yourself flying to the moon and back at night in the wonderful world of your dreams!

Imagine you are suddenly taking an exam.  You’re not in school right now, so this exam is out of the blue but you are going to take it anyways.  If you are lucky you might know a little bit about the subject or be able to make calculated guesses, and so perhaps getting a passing grade, if, like I said, you’re lucky.  However if you had known you might eventually be taking this exam, you might have at least been studying this subject for a while, even if just a little bit at a time and you would probably have a much better chance of getting a passing grade or even a near perfect mark if you had studied a lot!

This is what can happen when a bad or disturbing dream suddenly appears and we take notice of it.  Suddenly we want to understand this dream and we try to interpret it.   The problem with this situation is that we have not done any homework, and so are ill prepared to take the exam as it were.

What is the solution?

The solution is to study!

We all have our own unique dream language.

We need to study and understand this new language much like you would learn any other language such as Spanish or Greek.

Like learning any language, it takes time.  You gain knowledge of a new language piece by piece; literally word by word.  Eventually you learn how to use those individual words to form whole thoughts and communicate messages, ideas and feelings.  Even farther still, once you’ve really mastered a new language you will be able to understand jokes, puns, and metaphors etc., that defy a literal translation.  That is where you need to rely on more than just the word used, but also incorporate subtleties of gesture, facial expressions, tone of voice etc..  Also things like social proprieties and cultural phenomenon even, can be yet another layer on which to base your interpretation on.   Eventually you will learn what is actually being said, not just the face value of something.

This is all true of learning your own dream language as well.

The more you practice interpreting your dreams, the more you are learning about your personal dream language.  The more symbols you learn, the more you can understand the whole picture.  Just as the more words you learn in a language, the more you can understand the whole sentence.

Once you have begun to master this new language, interpreting your dreams will get easier every time!

To start studying your new dream language, follow these simple first steps:

Step 1.

Figure out what some of your most common dream symbols are.

Go through your dream journal and pick out symbols that seem to appear often in your dreams.  Perhaps there are some symbols that seem to play an important role in your dreams whenever they appear?  What are some symbols that produce strong feelings for you whenever they are in your dreams?  Remember these symbols don’t have to be objects, but could be a person, a place, a time of day even!  The main point here is to figure out symbols that have a strong enough impact in some way that it will make it easier for you to identify their special meaning for you.

Step 2.

Define a few specific meanings those symbols have for you.

These meanings could be from the past, or the present.  A specific symbol may have meant something specific for you in your childhood, but in the present day, has a totally different meaning or importance to you.  Think about all of the different meanings you can for each of the symbols you previously identified.

Step 3.

Find the connection to those symbols and their meanings to your life right now.

Find the latest incidence of one of your chosen symbols showing up in your dream.  Looking at all the possible meanings for that symbol, can you relate any of them to what is going on in your life right now?

Once you can see the connection to one specific symbol, you will begin to get a feel for how this language works.  As you start to make connections to specific symbols, you can then start to decipher the bigger picture in your dreams and their overall content.

Start small. Try figuring out one or two symbols for now and keep progressing.  Over time you will be able to interpret more and more of your unique dream language!

Working with clients as a Dream Interpretation Therapist I get to really see the difference that dream analysis can make in a person and their life.

Dream Interpretation Therapy allows my clients to really see themselves in a new and dynamic way.  Letting yourself open up to acknowledging your own unconscious motives, repressed feelings and hidden desires takes a lot of courage, but allows you to gain a lot of freedom, and ultimately a lot of self confidence as well.

If you want to see how much progress you’ve made or how much dream interpretation has helped you, take a closer look at a few specific symbols or situations that tend to occur often in your dreams.  Look closely at how those symbols or situations may have changed over time or how your reactions to them may have changed.

For example, if a common theme in your dream life in the past has been where you are naked and feeling scared and vulnerable, compare your reactions to those types of dreams that you have been experiencing in your more recent dreams.  Has anything changed in your current dreams of being naked and vulnerable?  Perhaps you aren’t feeling as scared or nervous when it happens lately?  This is because as you have worked though your dreams by interpreting them, you become aware of how you are really feeling (fear, vulnerability etc) and in the acknowledging of those feelings, lesson their power over you.

The way we perceive the world and our place in it comes from the combination of nature and nurture that helps define and develop our psyche and our sense of self.  This is the place and space within us that is totally unique. 

This space inside us tells us what is good or bad or right or wrong and can be called our emotional guidance system.  Our emotions are how we navigate through the world, figuring out what makes us feel good and what makes us feel bad.  We build this emotionally guiding compass from a mix of many things, both inherent and external, such as our genetic makeup, or our culture’s beliefs and morals.  We also then have our own personal real life experiences that are then thrown into the mix.  In this way, we are so unique that no two people can be exactly the same, even twins.  They may have the same genes, the same cultural background, but their own personal life experiences will differ and shape and mold them into very different individuals. 

In this same way, no two people’s dreams can ever be the same or more importantly, be interpreted as equal.  Since we know that dreams are usually more often focused on traumatic emotional experiences, rather than emotionally neutral ones, and we also know that each individual’s emotional guidance system is unique to them, we can begin to understand how important this is to remember.

It is therefore also easier to understand just how important and useful dream interpretation is.  We navigate our world using our emotional guidance system, and this system is being activated in dreams.  It is when we sleep and dream that our emotions are being sifted through and reorganized so that we can start each new day with a clearer mind and heart.  Our emotional guidance system is working at 100% strength when we are dreaming.   It is clear then that dreams play a very important role in our lives

Dreams help us regulate emotional experiences; connecting those in our past with those in our present, and allowing us to deal with the onslaught of powerful emotions we take in everyday.  This enables us to consistently reorganize our minds so that we can function and cope within our daily waking lives.

More importantly, dreams help us with the negative emotions; the ones that have the potential to create the most disturbance in our lives.

Over the course of the night, through a sequence of dreams, we will run through the more traumatic events and experiences, sifting through all that we have in our memories and all that lies in our unconscious mind.  Dreams are helping us analyze all of this so we can arrive at a place that is somewhere more comfortable or nearer to a place of peace or understanding.  This is how we deal with life.  Our dreams are a nightly treatment in our lifelong journey and search for peace.  And if dreams are our medicine at night and we continue to strive for that peace when we are awake through introspection, including the interpretation of dreams, then we are really truly off to a good start on our journey to being happy.

When people start realizing that their dreams are as essential to their health and well being as sunshine and air, maybe they will stop treating it sleep like it’s a secondary thing.  If the body and mind are deprived of a good night’s sleep (which includes both sleeping AND dreaming) there are negative consequences that can have dramatic and often times devastating effects.

I have long believed that dreaming acts as a therapeutic method for us to work through all that we are dealing with on a conscious level throughout the day.  Without the opportunity to connect our present experiences to events from our past, we cannot properly arrive at a solid future, where we feel emotionally sound and at ease within our lives, and within ourselves.

The mind is such an amazing machine!  Just think, while we sleep and appear to not being doing anything, our brains are connecting tiny fragments of memories and events from years ago in our past to random happenings in the present and putting everything together to form new ways of being, doing and thinking. Amazing!

I was watching Oprah’s (LOVE her!) Life Class today and she was talking about being ‘in the moment’ and striving to be ‘conscious’ in our lives in the midst of all that we are constantly bombarded with (technology, work, family, errands etc. etc.) and it really connected with what I’ve been talking with my clients about lately.  In Oprah’s show they talked about some of the ‘dire consequences’ that not being present in the moment brings, but there is also the flip side to that….the positive that is actually gained from it (not just the avoidance of the bad things).

I talk a lot to my clients about learning to interpret the world around us while we are awake, as we do for our dreams while we sleep.  If you take the same principles and apply it to your day to day life, you will begin to see everything in a new light.  Take the day to day circumstances of your life and interpret them the same way you would a dream you have.

Take for example if you have a green light in your dream and you interpret that as ‘Go ahead!’ in relation to a question your dream presented you with….in real life a green light can mean the same thing! Today as I walked home I was thinking about a few different directions I could take some things in my life and as I got to the main street I had to cross, the light changed to green at exactly the right second to allow me to just keep on walking instead of having to slow down or wait even one minute for the light to change and cross the street!   I looked at that as a sign or symbol for me to ‘Go ahead!’ with what I wanted to do and also, more importantly that if I choose that direction, it would all work out very well for me and go smoothly!

Some people call it synchronicity….or intuition.  Whatever you choose to call it, either way, if you pay attention to the world around you and listen carefully you will see that there are signs and messages for you everywhere….you just have to pay attention.  In the same way, it’s important to pay attention to your dreams every night for they too are telling you something and have messages to pass on about yourself and your life.

Listen to the world around you….while you are awake AND while you are sleep!

It doesn’t matter what name you give them, the result is the same. Having violent, traumatic and often horrific images and dreams at night leaves us disturbed; often with a lingering sense of worry in our minds.

Sometimes when our dreams become filled with horror and violence it can leave us worried and feeling plagued by the visions that seemed so real.

Just as when we have good dreams or normal dreams, these nightmares and their specific and often violent dream symbols need to be deciphered and interpreted. Often times you can connect and recall the symbols to events in your life just as you normally would. Perhaps you have been watching the news more lately or reading the paper more than usual and have been bombarded by the negative events in the world. This can come through in our dreams as our minds try to digest all of it.

There are other times when we are indeed feeling a sense of chaos in our lives and within ourselves. It is during these stressful times that our minds play out the tense and unsettled feelings we may have. The result; vivid and disturbing dreams.

Remember that as with most dreams, once we look closely and decode the symbols and the events in our dreams, we can clearly relate them to occurrences and feelings in our waking lives. Once we take a more objective look at those disturbing dream visions, we can get rid of the worry and nagging sense of fear they create.

It’s the unknown that creates fear – Why did I have that dream? What does it mean? Information (interpretation and deconstruction of the dream and its symbols) creates peace of mind by allowing us to see that nightmares and bad dreams are a reflection of what we are seeing in the world and the sometimes chaotic feelings and emotions that control us. Thus the fear is taken away as it is replaced by understanding and insight.

There is no book that exists that can divine the future.  As much as we sometimes wish that others could tell us what we should or shouldn’t do or what the ‘right answer’ is, life is a series of experiences that we must go through for which there is no handbook.

The same is true for dream interpretation.

There is no one answer that any given therapist can tell their patients to make them feel better or to help them learn something faster.  There is no one book that can tell you the meaning of a dream.  There is no one size fits all interpretation of individual symbols or dream scenarios.  No crystal ball for dreams.

Dreams are about each individual person, and every single person in this world is unique.  In order to understand what your own personal dreams are telling you, the same techniques apply as they do for most anything in life.  You use a combination of things that others have taught you along with things you have learned yourself.

So while looking to a typical dream dictionary for answers might give you something to start with in terms of common dream meanings, it cannot possibly direct you to the deeper and more intricate interpretation of your own dream symbols.

Take the example of using a flower as a dream symbol.  A typical more old-fashioned dream dictionary may tell you that flowers signify pleasure and gain or that they are an ‘auspicious omens of great personal happiness’.  But how does that relate to every dream that ever was or ever will be?  What about other factors such as the colour or type of flower, where the flower was, what you were doing with the flower, how many flowers there were or even if the flowers were out of place, such as blooming during the wrong season?  What if the flower in the dream was a fake flower?  Could the flower be a metaphor for ‘flour’?

As well, we need to know what is happening in the dreamer’s life, for example, did they receive flowers the day before? Do they own a flower shop themselves?  Are these dream flowers a variety they love or ones they don’t really care for?  Do the flowers have special meaning somehow in the dreamer’s life?

Those are all very valid questions among many others, that we need to look at when working to interpret any given dream symbol.  The great thing is that when we are working on our own or closely with a dream therapist, it is a lot easier to be in the know for most or all of the answers.  That is why, when people are expecting a complete stranger to be able to interpret their dreams or specific symbols, it’s like asking them to be ‘psychic’.

Our dreams are reflective of where we are at present in our lives, and although we are a product of our experiences, we are not stagnant creatures.  Therefore you would not give the same answer to a question asked of you today that was asked of you 10 years ago. What you interpreted a dream symbol as in the past, does not necessarily apply for that same symbol today.

The more you get to know yourself, the easier it is to find your way in life.  The more you know yourself, the easier it is to interpret your dreams.

The planet Neptune, discovered in 1846, is considered the planet of dreams. The planet is named after the Roman god of the Sea because it is covered in a slushy fluid mix of water, ammonia and methane ices under its atmosphere and because its cloud cover has an especially blue tint to it.
Neptune is said to be the planet of dreams, because like water, dreams distort and cloud images and meaning. Additionally, water represents the depths of the unconscious as well as our emotions.

Neptune – the planet of dreams

Now while I whole heartedly agree that water in dreams does often represent our emotions and our emotional depth in our dreams, I tend to disagree about the first part. I feel very strongly that dreams actually bring our issues and problems to us very clearly and in fact do not distort anything. Our dreams tell us how it is; the truth. Dreams do not distort the truth or give convoluted messages; instead they show us that which our ego driven conscious minds do try to hide.

Most people are generally unsure of what dreams are, let alone what they are about, however it is really quite simple.  Dreams show us how we really feel, what we really desire and what the real truth is, about ourselves in relation to our world around us.

Dreams and their interpretations can actually help us to clear up issues and uncover hidden truths, allowing us to live a more authentic life.

Water tends to show up in dreams quite often and as a general rule you can consider it symbolic of your emotions and unconscious mind.  The specific meaning however, depends upon that specific dream and dreamer.  As a general rule, you can consider that a shallow body of water might represent a shallow emotion, whereas something vast like an ocean might represent deep seated emotions.

Our brain is sorting and organizing the huge amount of information we have been inputting for the last few days and trying to make sense of it all while we rest.  Without dreaming we would be less able to function as rational, logical, emotionally balanced people…eventually we would just get overloaded and cease to function properly!

Dream interpretation is about keeping up the best maintenance possible, on your inner self, and taking responsibility for your happiness and wellbeing, in order for you to ‘run smoothly’…just like a computer needs daily maintenance too!