Understanding Dreams

Did you ever have a dream that was so upsetting, that you couldn’t think of anything else for awhile; a dream that might even qualify as a nightmare??!!!  I like the definition below to give nightmares some validity, since when I myself have them I usually want to disavow whatever they are about, shake my head, run away from my feelings about it, find a way over, under, away from, anywhere but through it to understanding and insight. I think it’s because intense dreams involve intense emotions; they can be scary!

The below quotation from Eternalised, regarding nightmares in particular, says it well:

.Apr 27, 2023 ”The Psychology of Nightmares” – Eternalised

“Nightmares are the shock therapy nature uses on us when we are too unaware of some psychological danger. They shock us out of deep unconscious sleepiness about some dangerous situation. As if the unconscious says, “Look here, this problem is urgent!” The psyche tells us to “wake up” and face what we have neglected. The majority of nightmares represent opportunities for personal healing through much-needed emotional release. Nightmares are the most substantial and vitally important dreams, and are of therapeutic value. They wake us up with a cry, as if all our repressed content forms a bubble which expands until it bursts one night, and we experience a nightmare. This built-up of tension in the unconscious can potentially be expressed in prior dreams, there is something that wants to be brought into consciousness.”

Like Joni Mitchell’s song Both Sides Now, seemingly about Clouds, (the song is very cryptic), dreams and nightmares sometimes change us, and lead us, sometimes, for better or worse, to wake up and examine the way we are living, and the nightmare might be warning us about a situation we do not want to actually face, or deal with or acknowledge. We might be into magical thinking, denial, short term expediency, ANYTHING but the TRUTH. The nightmare sometimes heralds in the need for us to face reality, face the truth, and change, which can lead to loss, which can be sad, and upsetting, especially, if it involves other people. Here are some lyrics to Both Sides Now, and if you substitute the word dreams for clouds it might make more sense. Both Sides Now is also a melancholy song, and a song millions of people love, because it captures the essence of how life happens to us unawares all the time, in a bittersweet and nonetheless, beautiful way.

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all”

And on the way clouds (or dreams) can change things, here is another quote from Both Sides Now:

“Oh, but now old friends they’re acting strange
And they shake their heads and they tell me that I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day”

But if you have trouble interpreting your dream or nightmares, don’t despair. Even Carl Jung, the worlds expert dream whisperer, found deciphering his own dreams difficult:

“I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one’s own dreams.”

Carl Jung, C.W. Vol 18: The Symbolic Life

But that said, Jung continued to try to understand his dreams, and the dreams of his patients, for the rest of his life. Just because it’s difficult does not mean it cannot be done. Dreams are a royal road to understanding ourselves in a way that words can never do by themselves. They show us ‘the big picture.’ They tell us about feelings we would prefer to ignore or avoid, and they do it for a reason. They are on the side of truth, truths that we might not want to face, that we would prefer to avoid. Truths that at the moment might overwhelm us, or seem at least to overwhelm us, until we begin, one tiny step at a time, to sort our hidden obtuse pesky unnerving feelings and thoughts, into some kind of meaningful pattern.  In the long run, like a friend we can count on, dreams don’t lie to us, they ultimately help us to be the best and most honest versions of ourselves. But WE have to do the work, too, because the dream, like our friends, can help but cannot do the entire job for us!

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