Processing Dreams
Gaining Insight Into Your Dreams
Tony Crisp
Below are described simple techniques which make it possible to quickly gain information from dreams. They have been put as a series of questions.
What is the background to the dream?
The most important aspects of your everyday life may have influenced the dream or feature in it. Briefly consider any aspects of your life which connects with what appears in the dream.
Example: "I have a plane to catch. I get to the plane but the suitcase is never big enough for my clothing which I have left behind. I am always anxious about stuff left behind. I wake still with the feeling of anxiety." Jane. LBC.
When asked, Jane said plane flights had been a big feature of her life. She had moved home often, travelling to different parts of the world, leaving friends and loved one's behind. This background therefore suggests Jane still feels anxious about all she has left behind in her moving.
If you find obvious connections such as that in your dream consider what your dream is showing you. For instance Jane's dream shows her feeling anxious about what has been left behind. So she needs to acknowledge that and seek ways of understanding why she feels that way, and how she can literally leave it behind. Below methods will be given to do this.
What is the main action in the dream?
There is often an overall activity such as walking, looking, worrying, building something, or trying to escape. Define what it is and give it a name, such as those listed or something like 'waiting' - 'searching' - 'following'.
To understand what your definition means, activities such as walking or building a house, need to be seen as generalisations. Walking can simply represent taking a direction in life or going somewhere, and building can be seen as creating something new or developing what already exists in your life. When you have defined the action, look for further information in the entries in the onsite Dream Dictionary, such as SWIMMING or SITTING. Having considered the general meaning of whatever your dream action is, consider if it is expressive of something you are doing in waking life, and what the dream plot and characters comment on this.
What is your role in the dream?
Are you a friend, lover, soldier, dictator, watcher or participant in the dream? Consider this in relationship with your everyday life, especially in connection with how the dream presents it. Where possible, look for the entry on the role in Dream Dictionary.
Are you active or passive in the dream?
By passive is meant not taking the leading role, being only an observer, being directed by other people and events. It can also mean you are abused, bullied, or constantly end in unsatisfactory or unfulfilled situations in your dreams.
If you recognise these situations in your dreams consider if you live similar attitudes in your life. In other words are you passively accepting what happens to you and how people relate to you?
Enormous change can be made in your life if you recognise an overall tendency in your dreams such as being passive. The change can come about by using the technique described below, of carrying the dream forward - in the section Am I meeting what I fear or dislike in my dream?.
What do you feel in the dream?
Define what is felt emotionally and physically. In the physical sense are you tired, cold, relaxed or hungry? In the emotional sense did you feel sad, angry, lost, tender or frightened anywhere in the dream? This helps clarify what feelings your dream is dealing with. It is important also to define whether the feelings in the dream were satisfyingly expressed or whether held back. If held back they need fuller expression. See: Emotions and Mood in Dreams. Consider where the feelings of the dream appear in your everyday life, and what comment the dream is making about them.
What is the drama in the dream?
Each dream is a little piece of life drama. Try to define what your dream is saying by looking at it as if it were a scene you had witnessed on television or in a film.
Example: I was in the basement of what seemed like a house I used to live in. I was perhaps washing up or clearing up. I looked to my right where there was a door leading to old coal cellars. Through it walked the ghost of a cat, shining with a white light. Seeing the cat terrified me. I was so frightened that when someone walked down the stairs to my left, I was sure it was a dark shape coming to do me harm.
In the example it is deep fear that is dramatised. But the setting suggests the dreamer is in a known and easy place - his old home. The cat, despite being frightening to the dreamer, doesn't harm him, and in fact is shining. So what is dramatised is a mixture of fear about something haunting his old home, and something with possibly beautiful qualities. In other words he is being 'haunted' by old feelings in his otherwide well organised everyday life. The dream shows the feelings originating from events experienced in his old house.
When you define what the drama is suggesting, see if you can link this with feelings or situations you face at the moment. If so what is your dream suggesting about those things?
Is there a 'because' factor in the dream?
In many dreams something happens, fails to happen, or appears, because! For instance, trapped in a room you find a door to escape through. All is dark beyond and you do not go through the door 'because' you are frightened of the dark. In this case the because factor is fear. The dream also suggests you are trapped in an unsatisfying life situation through fear of opportunity or the unknown. Understanding the because factor can help you become aware of what is holding you back, or aiding your progress in waking life.
What is the because factor in your dream?
Looking at the 'I'
If you have written the dream down, look to see where you have used the word 'I'. For instance a man dreaming about running toward tunnels said "I had to decide which tunnel to enter." If this is simplified we can see that the person is saying they were making a decision. Take note of whatever is said after the word 'I' - whether I want; I was willing; I considered; I left it behind, etc. - and consider what connection such things have to everyday life. What decisions in waking life was the man making who dreamt of tunnels for example?
Am I meeting the things I fear or dislike in my dream?
Because a dream is an entirely inward thing, we create it completely out of our own internal feelings, images, creativity, habits and insights. So even the monsters of your dream are a part of yourself. If you run from them it is only aspects of yourself you are avoiding. But you can never escape yourself, so you might as well find a way of internal ease. Through defining what feelings occur in the dream you may be able to clarify what it is you are avoiding.
It is also helpful to replay the dream several times while awake and relaxed, and imagine facing or meeting the things you fear or are running away from. It is of enormous help also to rephrase, or rescript the underlying messages attached to your fears.
For instance you may have had very reasonable fears as a baby/child that your mother would abandon you - perhaps because you went into hospital and felt abandoned. So the original message might have been, "The person I love and utterly depend upon can leave me and I am powerless to make her love me in a way to bind her to me." The new message might be, "I am not a baby any longer, and can actually survive alone, though I love having a partner to share love with. So I don't need to feel complete panic when there is any sign of them withdrawing or getting emotionally distant."
This needs to be done over and over again to develop a new habit of relaxed relationship or response to a life situation. Sometimes it is a shift of attitude you need. The following dream illustrates this.
