I’ve been fascinated by the subject of dreams since I was a little girl.  Whenever I’ve worked with people in a therapeutic setting the subject of dreams always comes up.  But what are they?

About Dreams

There’s lots of way to define dreams.  We might talk about them as the story inside our minds that we experience whilst asleep, or the aspirations we have for the future.  Throughout the last century, researchers have endeavoured to know why we have them and understand what they mean.  And, whilst scientists work hard to get to the bottom of them, there’s still a lot we don’t know.  

What we do know is that we’ve been talking about them way before scientists invented ways to track them.  Although we now know a person is usually dreaming when their eyes start moving side to side – called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) – cultures around the world have been documenting their dream adventures and passing down legends and symbols for thousands of years.

Exploring Dreams

Whenever I’ve talked with people about their dreams what’s always become clear quite quickly is that by asking the “right” questions you can unpack them fairly quickly.  This is why I don’t refer to myself as a dream interpreter or dream analyst any more, because I don’t need to analyse what someone’s dreams mean, they can do it themselves – once they know how.  This is one of the reasons I wrote my book Answers in the Dark.  As well as helping to give people the tools to explore their own dreams, it offers thoughts about why we’re awake at night and what might help.

The key thing to remember is that everyone is different; what one symbol means to one person, may be different to another.  But once you know how, you can begin to unlock the wisdom that your dreams may be offering.