Dreams can be a powerful, creative resource for your therapeutic work. They can act as a “wise and trusted supervisor,” reliably pointing you toward emotional truths and the most important aspects of your current life situation. Dreams can bring you information directly from your unconscious mind, unfiltered and unhampered by the internal censor that operates when you are awake. This article will help you understand how to use your dreams to deepen your therapeutic process and help you move forward in your journey.
Why Work With Dreams?
Dreams can help you in many ways. They can be a source of personal growth and insight. They can help you access material that is difficult to reach in your waking hours. Dreams can:
- Bring a new and broader perspective on situations that feel stuck.
- Point to your most salient emotional concerns.
- Bypass your internal editing processes and normal defenses, providing honest representations of your life.
- Provide diagnostic information and be indicators of clinical progress.
- Help regulate your emotions, and working with the feelings engendered by dreams may strengthen this positive effect.
- Be a safe pathway to working with trauma.
- Introduce deeply personal topics that you may be reluctant to bring up directly.
- Indicate progress in therapy.
- Facilitate and integrate transformation.
- Engage you more fully in the therapy process.
Engaging with your dreams can deepen your therapeutic process and accelerate personal growth.
Understanding How Dreams Communicate
Dreams communicate in ways that may not be obvious at first glance. They often use a “dream language” different from how you communicate when awake. Some key features of this dream language include:
- Dreams are as clear and straightforward as possible, given the constraints of dream consciousness.
- Dreams don’t deliberately distort their messages.
- Dreams communicate through metaphor, a fundamental way we understand and communicate.
- Dreams often present as vivid images and detailed scenarios that feel real.
- Dreams are embodied.
- Dreams may present bizarre and ethereal qualities.
- Dreams can express repressed material that you may not have conscious access to.
By mastering these aspects of dream communication, you can confidently interpret your dreams’ messages, empowering yourself in your therapeutic journey.
How to Start Working with Your Dreams
Here are some practical steps to begin incorporating dreamwork into your therapeutic process:
- Record Your Dreams:
- Keep a dream journal by your bed.
- As soon as you wake up, try to recall your dream and write it down.
- Don’t worry about the details; even small fragments of images can be significant.
- Pay attention to the feeling in the dream, and try to capture that in your recording.
- Record the dream in the present tense and in the first person.
- If you don’t recall your dreams, you can tell yourself you will remember them, and they may start coming.
- Be patient; dream recall often improves with practice.
- Share Your Dreams in Therapy:
- Bring your dream journal to your therapy sessions.
- Tell your therapist about the dreams that stand out the most or pique your curiosity.
- Re-enter the dream experience while telling the story, using as many senses as possible.
- Pay attention to the setting and emotional landscape of the dream.
- Share any associations you have with the dream elements.
- Be curious, and don’t be afraid to share seemingly insignificant details.
- Explore the Dream: Experientially explore dream elements.
- Look for the helpful places in the dream that feel resourcing, safe, or good.
- Explore metaphorical connections between your dream and your waking life.
- Consider the dream on its own terms without automatically trying to connect it to your waking life.
- Notice the emotions and allow them to be felt, but don’t be overwhelmed.
- Consider what you might want to have happen in the dream or how you might change the ending.
- Notice if there are any elements in the dream you dislike or are repelled by, and consider how those aspects might live inside you.
- Allow the dream to continue rather than trying to make sense of it or analyze it.
- Note any insights that arise, and consider what new growth steps might be indicated.
- Notice any shifts in your body, and pay attention to places that feel good.
- Consider depicting the dream visually by sketching or painting it.
- Optional Avenues:
- Consider the symbolic and mythological aspects of the dream.
- Consider the dream’s plot structure and what that might reveal.
- Consider if the dream invites an action step, a life change, or a new direction.
- Explore the possibility of lucid dreaming, where you are aware that you are dreaming while you are still in the dream.
- Note any group projections if you can share the dream in a group setting. Group projections refer to the shared interpretations or reactions to a dream by a group of individuals. This can be valuable in understanding the collective unconscious and how dreams can have shared meanings or themes.
By actively engaging with your dreams in these ways, you can enhance your therapy, unlock the potential for profound personal growth, and gain deeper insights into yourself, inspiring hope and excitement for your journey.
The Role of Your Therapist
Your therapist can act as a guide and companion in exploring your dreams. They can help you:
- Re-enter the dream and experience it more fully.
- Explore the setting and emotional landscape of the dream.
- Identify connections between the dream and your waking life.
- Recognize metaphors and symbols within your dream.
- Find resources and helpful elements in your dream.
- Understand how dreams can help regulate emotions.
- Stay close to the dream and your own responses to it.
- Connect the dream and your waking life in ways that excite or energize you.
- Identify any new insights or growth steps that emerge through the dream work.
- Navigate the dream in ways that are congruent with your values and preferences.
- Help you to find the meaning of your dream within yourself.
Remember that you are the true expert on your dreams; your therapist is there to help you explore and understand them.
Dreams and Emotional Processing
Dreams can play an important role in emotional processing. They can:
- Help you manage and integrate intense feelings associated with events they portray.
- Reduce the emotional charge of memories that have current relevance,
- Update your memory to include current experience, which better prepares you for what’s next.
- Dreams provide a safe space to work with traumatic memories, ensuring your emotional well-being and comfort. Facilitate emotional memory reconsolidation, which is updating your emotional memories.
- Help you access implicit belief systems that may be contributing to your distress.
- Allow for new experiences that change habitual ways of experiencing the world.
- Provide a space for emotional assimilation by breaking memories into fragments and recombining the salient elements into new experiences.
- Help you to process associative memories that are highly charged with emotion.
Working with your dreams can enhance your emotional well-being and create lasting change.
Specific Types of Dreams
- Nightmares: Nightmares can be significant dreams. They can be viewed as the body’s attempt to bring up and dissipate fear. Working with nightmares may involve finding help in the dream or changing the dream’s ending.
- Big Dreams: “Big” dreams can have a transformative effect. They may have a spiritual dimension and call you to action. These dreams may be revisited many times throughout your life.
- Recurring Dreams: Recurring dreams can indicate an ongoing theme in your life. The cessation of a recurrent dream is often associated with increased well-being.
A Collaborative Process
Dreamwork is a collaborative process. It is not about figuring out the dream or interpreting it definitively. Instead, it is about:
- Experiencing the dream as fully as possible.
- Being curious about the dream and your reactions to it.
- Following the dream’s own guidance.
- Allowing the dream to lead you to new insights.
Embracing this collaborative approach can create a more enriching and effective therapeutic experience.
Conclusion
Dreams are a valuable resource for your therapeutic journey. They can provide insight, promote emotional processing, and facilitate transformation. By recording your dreams, sharing them with your therapist, and exploring them with curiosity and respect, you can deepen your therapeutic process and move towards a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
