An Exploration of Dream Interpretation for Therapy and Personal Growth

“Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language.” – Gail Godwin

Whilst living in Bali, I chatted to an ex-pat (who later became a friend), keen to unpack some of the issues troubling him. He was moving through the better half of a break-up but was also keen to decipher some emotionally significant dreams from recent past. Tim was a bubbly, open-minded yoga fanatic who trained regularly. Our relationship developed by way of deep and meaningful discussions.

Tim and I met after class one morning. He told me he feared mirrors - fearing not his reflection as such, akin to someone suffering from poor self-esteem - but a supernatural fear, as though something “demonic” might be staring back at him. This wasn’t overly alarming for me. According to pop-culture, reflections appear to be the home of anything supernatural; demons and ghosts to name but a few. What’s more, I could relate. Throughout adolescence and into my early twenties, anything supernatural, reflections included, was absolutely out of the question! Shortly after his coffee reached drinking temperature, he took a sip and told me about one of his dreams. In his words:

“I was holding a bird. The bird was ‘broken and bloody’ and needed attending to. I was the bird, but I was also holding the bird, almost like I was two-selves. I just knew the bird was me, although I could pick it up and hold it too, as I was also myself. The bird was so fragile, and it was in a lot of pain. There was nothing I could do but hold it and do my best to care for it.”

Although traumatic experiences are bound by time and place, their emotional weight burdens us for years. We carry the pain and fear like a heavy rucksack. We’re triggered by innocuous, external cues—anything remotely resembling the past—and shame ourselves for reacting in such ways. We relive the past, day after day; an inescapable prison, an internal hell.

Tim knew what the dream meant (sometimes dreams are self-evident). Tim told me about his past (including childhood trauma) and we came to the conclusion that the bird represented an unreconciled aspect of his psyche. The dream was a wakeup call for Tim. He’d neglected his own needs for too long. It was time for change.

Sometimes we forget about self-care: exercise, nutrition, meditation and, equally important, cultivating boundaries, assertiveness and confidence. We look after others, attend to their needs, only to realise it is us who need to be looked after. So, we disregard our self-worth. That can come later! We deem it unimportant and irrelevant. We leave it behind, neglected like a dust-ridden child’s toy stowed-away in an old cupboard. 

Interpreting And Integrating Dreams

Up to 80% of PTSD sufferers experience reoccurring nightmares. The sufferer re-lives the same, haunting experiences that triggered the disorder in the first place. Trauma doesn’t only arise from war, death, sexual abuse and physical suffering. We are ‘traumatised’ all the time, which is to say, we encounter overwhelmingly uncomfortable truths that mould our perception of the world, and ourselves. The media bombards us with ‘terrible truths’ from across the world; starving children, cities bombed, terrorist attacks and—depending on your definition of trauma—wrongfully elected politicians! Similarly, trauma arises when we are forced to change our perception of reality.

One night in Bali, my partner and I went to dinner with two friends to indulge in a vegetarian buffet. Before long, the conversation moved into the realm of the metaphysical . . . as usual. We spoke of ghosts, hauntings, demons, spirits and Mac, a close mate present at the table, told us he could see them. “They’re not like the movies”, he said. Rather, “they’re energy, like sun-rays.” This statement triggered my socks off—there was no denying the acute anxiety spike! However, I went with it. Fear stirred inside my belly and turned my armpits into odorous pools. The conversation lasted a further two hours. I was crippled with fear for its entirety. This time however, I embraced it. Although the fear was present, I continued into the dark forest. What came from the conversation, however, was a very interesting series of dreams:

28^th October 2018,

I am playing a football game in a concrete jungle, running up and down steps and I never seem to make it to the other side or score a goal. But flashbacks show me that if I could just score a goal, the crowd would go wild. I can see the crowd and, oh, how I’d wish to bask in that glory of their gratification. I am dating Lady Gaga who, by the end, wraps me in her legs with this blanket. Then the dream turns sour: The blanket suffocates me and Lady Gaga’s motives become sinister. I am now claustrophobic and am locked in, unable to breathe or move. I wake up, although still half asleep, recognising that the feeling hasn’t yet left me. I have a choice. I can sit with this fear, or I can try to wake up consciously as quickly as possible. I am in a paralysed state, like I was as a child. And yet, I sit with it. Once that decision has been made, I wake up straight away. Although there was no ghost in this one, the experience of being locked in and unable to move takes me right back to my initial, childhood trigger: Sleep paralysis.

From a young age, all I wanted was to be an Australian Rules Footballer. I wanted it because I defined and measured successes by it. This is not to say that AFL players are not successful as they most certainly are. For me, in this modern age however, success is a useless word because it pertains to a destination. In other words, “Life will only, if ever, be great when . . .”

The dream above, oh so cunningly, prevented me from basking “in that glory” and I think there is an important message there; one that needs no explanation. Furthermore, the dream turned sour, and I felt claustrophobic. At the time I had no idea what it meant but I later came to realise it was not attempting to reconcile my experiences with fears of ghosts as a child but, rather, another traumatic event.

6^th November 2018,

This dream showed me what my life may have been like if I’d ended up playing for a team that many of my school friends played for. As it were, I used to play against them. I remember imparting my words of ‘wisdom’ to a room full of my teammates when the coach asked us some sort of philosophical question. I responded with “Beneath every man, lies a soul.” He said, “that was only one way to look at it.” I don’t normally say things like that, but I’ve been reading so much Carl Jung lately: Maybe he’s rubbing off on me?

We were on a footy field. We then had to undertake a drill where the coach made us crawl through the “Devil’s Snare” (vines that are alive and coil around you the more you keep moving and are fearful of them. They come from the world of Harry Potter and are present in the first book). I could feel my panic coming on but managed to crawl my way out before I became truly anxious. This keeps coming up in my dreams—this feeling of having something wrapped around my neck and not being able to breathe. What is it? Two dreams pertained to the same idea: Playing sport and being unable to breathe.

8^th November 2018,

I am playing Soccer. I am playing really well. An old school friend of mine wraps his legs around my shoulders and traps me so that I can’t get him off. His legs begin to tighten, and, after a short while, I am unable to breathe. But I’ve already kicked the ball away! How is this fair? Why is no one coming to stop him? What can I do?

Be it coiled in vines, wrapped in friend’s legs or wrapped up in a blanket—my unconscious fear manifested itself on the sporting field. By the third dream, I knew what the contents were alluding to. It could only have been one thing. In 2014, whilst playing Australian Rules Football, an opponent and I got into a fight. He wrapped me up in a chokehold. I felt intense panic when it occurred and it was only when a teammate of mine kicked him off, that he released his grip. I felt totally powerless because he was behind me, choking me, and I knew no self-defence—I was a football player for God’s sake!

Upon this realisation, I wrote in my diary:

Clearly, it was traumatising. Clearly, it had been suppressed. Clearly, I must sit with it, visualise it, let the fear take over so that my mind will become accustomed to it; recognise it and allow the associated fear to dissipate naturally. Dreams really do tell us things.

Fast-forward eighteen years: I was living in France in the early months of 2019. I was living with my partner Siobhan, an hour outside Angers amidst the French countryside. One afternoon, Siobhan and I decided upon a well-earned siesta; feeding the sheep and horses, cleaning the house, rounding-up the lambs and boiling our own beans for lunch proved an exhausting checklist. We slept for an hour or so and I had a dream I’ll never forget:

I was an old man, well into my eighties. I lay on a hospital bed under the warm covers, smiling up at the people I loved. They were smiling too. No one was crying, nor were they scared. Everything felt right, as did I. I began to close my eyes as I drifted off into eternity. It was indescribable: void of time and place. Because there was no fear, there was also no love; only my awareness. My eyes stayed shut for longer as I drifted further into nothingness—simultaneously, boundlessness. Then, I experienced an overwhelming sense of fear—an exclusively somatic manifestation—and was pulled back at an incredible speed into my body lying beneath the warm covers on the hospital bed.

Shortly after, I awoke to Siobhan nestled calmly on my chest, still dozing, the sun glaring through the window. I’ve never had a more ‘real’ dream. Even upon reflection, I recall no visceral difference between the ‘me’ lying on the hospital bed and the ‘me’ lying beneath the French sun, embracing my loved-one.

If anything, the dream taught me that fear separates us from ourselves, others and the world around us. Fear pulled me back into the human experience; back into individuality and separateness. Fear separated me from eternity; of no time and place, where polarity does not exist. Without fear, we are one. Without fear, judgement and shame die! We judge and shame ourselves (and others) when we fear we are not enough—to ourselves and others.

The Function of Dreams

The constellations and symbols (the people, colours, emotions, places and events) of the dream represent the many aspects of the dreamer. Robert A. Johnson (Jungian analyst) noted in “Inner Work”—his book about active imagination and dream interpretation—that, “Everything in the dream represents an inner state. People in dreams aren’t those people, but rather are aspects of yourself.”¹ Within us lie beliefs, attitudes, values and emotions that conflict with one another; we are not entirely good, nor are we entirely bad. Most of us possess both conservative and progressive political opinions. We have desires that get in the way of each other. There is no ‘black and white’ when it comes to the human psyche, nor life for that matter.

When we dream we are left to the immense power of the unconscious mind. When our ego-defences are down (during sleep), the unconscious attempts to integrate experiences, perspectives and conflicting belief systems into conscious awareness, in an effort to cultivate a more rounded and whole Self. Similar to an artist staring at a black canvas—uncertain as to how her masterpiece will look upon completion—a dream is a visual representation of something significant. A dream is symbolic. A single dream provides no single ‘truth’ or message, for the dream itself is a blueprint, a framework. It is far too abstract. Rather, the meaning of a dream is found only after the interpretation of a series of similar dreams.

Similar symbols—plots, people, places etc. arise upon the dreaming landscape. Reoccurring themes are significant. There is something to them much like the nightmares prevalent among sufferers of PTSD. Lauri Loewenberg, a dream analyst, author and member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) noted that nightmares tend to be rooted in difficult, ignored, or mishandled issues. She explains, “The best way to respond to a nightmare is to correct the issue that it is connected to. Journaling about your dreams, for instance, may help pinpoint the root of a nightmare. And re-writing your nightmare to include a new ending can be an effective way to train your subconscious to respond differently the next time it occurs.”

Dreams function as a way to “forget” experiences which no longer apply to an individual’s life; a kind of re-structuring, re-mapping process. Dreams appear to act as an intermediary, making distinctions between which memories will help navigate the uncertainty of the future and which ones are to be rendered obsolete. If we remembered everything—all stimuli ever encountered since birth—we would blow-up! The brain needs to filter the infinite amount of information it receives from the outside world across time, deciding which of it will be strategically useful for survival purposes.

How does the brain know what to remember? Well, shouldn’t it remember only the really important stuff? Shouldn’t it focus its attention on when we nearly died, for example, so that that never happens again? Emotionally significant experiences take priority. The brain needs to remember emotionally significant experiences so that if they were to happen again, it will know what to do; it will know how to respond.

This is why people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder relive they’re frightening, nightmarish experiences. They cannot get over the emotionally significant experience; they cannot detach the overwhelming emotion from it. The brain is constantly trying to map the experience, which can be—and often is—incredibly volatile, existentially speaking. An aspect of trauma therapy, therefore, is to help the client detach from the experience.

When we are moving through specific and overwhelming emotional experiences we are changing the way the experience is organised in the brain. We want to get to the point where we feel that the experience no longer is us; rather, an event in the past; something that happened to us. Fundamentally, this is why human beings tell stories. We tell stories about ourselves, and we tell stories about the world and how the world shaped us and our perceptions so that we can move on from them.

Psychologists and Neuroscientists, Dr. Matthew Walker and Dr. Els Van Der Helm, have proposed that the brain goes through a kind of overnight emotional therapy during dream (REM) sleep, whereby emotions from particularly overwhelming experiences are detached from the experiences themselves, solidifying long-term memories that provide individuals with a sense of identity. As we sleep, we continue to write and rewrite the stories of our lives, placing (and removing) significances upon events that have shaped our lives; those that have shifted our identity and worldview. The brain is oriented towards the future. It interprets the present and makes assumptions and associations based upon emotionally significant past experiences. It then feeds all that information into an internal processing machine ascertaining what it believes to be educated, accurate, predictable outcomes.

Some Memories Never Die

As a child, I often dreamt about 9/11. That day really did ‘change the world’, and not for the better. My only true memory of it (I was eight and I think my other ‘memories’ are tangled in the recollections of others) was of mum watching the TV in horror as the news reported the events. She was wearing a red, woollen top. Her hand covered her mouth. She was in shock. She was lost for words, as was everyone that day. In her own words, “I had to keep watching the replays just to be sure I was actually watching the news, not some show. How could planes fly into buildings? Why were people burning? Why were they jumping to their deaths? None of it made any sense. I couldn’t make sense of it.”

I’m assuming my dad was still at work and my sister still at school because I ate dinner alone that night. I sat at the kitchen bench watching mum. Mum stood behind the bench watching the news. She wasn’t moving and I was scared, not because I feared the threat of terrorism in Australia—that fear was for adults. I was scared because mum was scared. I didn’t understand what ‘terrorism’, ‘extremism’, ‘hijack’ or ‘Bin Laden’ meant. I only knew I’d never seen mum like that before and I didn’t like it.

Many nights directly after 9/11 I’d wake up in a fright and run into my parent’s room. The reoccurring theme of these nightmares were as follows:

I was in the middle of the city—Melbourne, not New York—as planes flew into buildings and strangers ran around with bombs blowing things up, murdering thousands.

I’ve not forgotten them to this day. Interestingly enough, planes and bombs never frightened me. What did, however, was that I was alone. Mum wasn’t there to protect me.

In one of the dreams, my dad died. He was in a building struck by a hijacked plane. To this day, I can picture dad falling from a high building floor. I now recognise that both 9/11 and my frightened mum were extremely significant external cues. My mind had its work cut-out! It hadn’t ever experienced vulnerability like this before. It had some serious integration work to do! What if mum was too frightened to protect me? What if something like 9/11 happened in Melbourne? My mind needed a plan. My fear and resistance surrounding these cues most likely led to the nightmares; my mind’s stubborn push for integration; an attack on my lowered ego-defences. After some time, I got the message. The nightmares worked because I stopped having them.