What Dreams May Come

BY BILL REINERT, For The Columbian on Sunday, September 30, 2007

“I do not know how dreams arise, (but) I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly – if we take it about with us and turn it over and over – something almost always comes of it.”

- Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist

What if you had a personal guru to whom you could turn each night to learn about the things in your life that you missed during the day because you were too preoccupied, too fearful or just too cocky.

Dream on, right?

Exactly.

By following a few steps and learning the seemingly bizarre, symbolic language of dreams, you can unleash your inner guru, integrate what’s in your heart and your head and recognize and resolve conflicts in your life, many researchers believe.

Gabriele Smith, a registered Vancouver mental health counselor who specializes in helping clients interpret dreams, said our nightly journeys into the universe of dreams are a window into the deep subconscious, where our genuine emotions and perceptions dwell.

“My belief is that everyone is an expert on themselves,” said Smith, who along with counseling offers a dream analysis class. Dreams are “a natural modality to get at people’s core beliefs, how they see the world.”

Dreams can also be an effective tool in therapy, if used carefully, said Dr. Elizabeth Soliday, a Washington State University Vancouver professor who is also a practicing clinical psychologist.

Untrained or inadequately trained practitioners who simply dictate to clients the meaning of their dreams can be inaccurate, she said. But psychoanalytically trained therapists can use the process to help clients identify their true feelings.

“That really is where working with dreams really can be useful,”  said Soliday, who uses the process to help child cancer patients get in touch with their feelings about their illness that they might otherwise not comprehend.

But what if you don’t think you dream?

Think again.

Whether or not we recall the specifics, we all dream. Nearly everyone, for example, has experienced a nightmare. They can wake us in a proverbial cold sweat, breathing heavily, heart racing. Such so-called “bad dreams” are the product of unaddressed, unresolved conflicts and anxiety in our lives, Smith said.

“Lots of times people don’t pay attention to (their dreams) until they have a nightmare,”  Smith said, indicating that some aspect of their life has reached a crisis point, and demands their attention.

Smith helps her clients learn dream “incubation” techniques, which focus on a particular issue in your life before you go to sleep, with the intention of beckoning and remembering the dream or dreams in detail.

“I try to have them problem solve by asking simple one-part questions,” she said. For example,  ‘How can I succeed at work?’

“I tell them to hold that thought when they go to sleep for a few nights in a row,”  in an effort to invite dreams around that topic. By reflecting on such dreams, Smith said, clients can gain insight into relationships and issues, and increase self awareness.

Smith begins her sessions by having her clients recount a significant dream, in as much detail as possible. Because we all perceive the world through the filter of our own experiences and memories, Smith explains, what the pictorial language of dreams represents depends on the individual.

“That’s why you can have common imagery” among individuals, Smith said.

But, the images can mean entirely different things to different people. The presence of water, flight, mountains, a cat or a teacup, in other words, may carry completely different meanings to different people, as they associate them with different emotions or memories.

To ferret out those meanings, Smith has her clients define – as in a game of word association – key words they used in their account of a dream. For example, she asks: What is furniture? What is water? What is heaven or hell? Then she asks them to describe a character in a dream, or the relationship with him or her, in a few words.

Her clients’ spontaneous responses to such questions about the language they use to describe their dreams are the key to determining what the images represent to them on a subconscious level. Such signposts often point the way toward emotional turmoil, acknowledged or otherwise, in their lives.

For example, to a serious student who is working full time, a dream of falling off a ladder may herald lingering concerns about mixing work and school. The dreamer may recall having recently used or encountered a ladder. Its appearance in the dream is something researchers term an “environmental trigger,” which the dreamer associates symbolically with elevation, success or broader vision.

Along with that, of course, comes a consequent danger of falling, injury, and reversal of fortune. Ultimately, the dreamer may experience an “Aha!”  revelation that her job is interfering with her studies and, by extension, damaging her prospects for academic and professional success.

Such a recognition may lead the student to reassess his or her limitations and priorities and take some steps to get back in control of her life.

Inexact as it is, researchers agree that a dream is interpreted “correctly” only when it makes sense to the dreamer in terms of his or her present circumstances, Smith said.

“Dreams are constructed from things happening in people’s lives.”

DREAM ON

Recalling and recording your dreams are the first steps in learning to interpret and make use of the information in them. Here are steps to take to gain insights from your dreams:

1. Focus on remembering your dream and a topic you want to dream about before you go to sleep.
2. Have a pen and paper or a tape recorder by your bed.
3. Date the paper or tape: anniversaries can be significant elements in dreams.
4. Lie still and relax for a moment after waking to let the details of the dream settle in your memory before you start to record it.
5. Write or dictate the dream in the present tense. This will make it more real and help you recall the details.
6. Make a note of your mood upon waking from the dream.
7. Try to trace dream feelings of anxiety or fear or happiness to an event that might have made you feel that way without being aware of it.
8. If the dream doesn’t make sense literally, it should be seen as a metaphorical or figurative statement of your feelings when you had the dream.

Source: Gabriele Smith, Licensed Professional Counselor; “Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill”  by Jeremy Taylor.

For more information about Gabriele Smith, visit www.gabrielemsmith.com