In My Dreams

 "The subconscious is always more ready to present the truth than our conscious mind is"-Layne Dalfen

After listening to an interview with Layne Dalfen about decoding dreams, I decided to further research the subject.  I listened to her book.  As I listened, I started analyzing a dream I recently had and delved deep into the way I've been feeling lately.  In her interview and book she talks about how the feeling in the dream somehow relates to our feeling in real life.   She says "take that feeling and run with it".  I like to sum it up by saying Follow the Feeling!  She describes how dreams are our subconscious trying to get our attention!  She talks about how a dream is a type of interview between the conscious and subconscious and how both work simultaneously to make connections and solve problems!  I like that!  Through dreaming our subconscious is trying to piece together a puzzle for us to help us solve a problem.

Our subconscious picks pictures for us to illustrate our feelings in real life.  Here are a few examples from Layne Dalfen:

A woman dreamed of playing with a puppy.  She was having so much fun and appeared to be happy.  She put the puppy on the table and the puppy started to use the bathroom all over, including all over her.  She described it as being a huge mess......dog doo doo all over her and the table.  Layne asks her, "what in your life started out good, but then turned to something bad?"  The woman thought and then said she knew what it was.  She had just got a new job that she loved and was excited about until she got a new boss.  This boss was abusive and horrible.  Layne asks her, "in the dream, what would you do next?"  The woman answered, "Well I would take the puppy off the table and clean him up then I'd clean myself up."  Layne then says, "what does 'take it off the table' mean to you in real life?" The woman said it meant she was fed up and done.  She proceeded to walk out of Layne's office and quit her job.  Knowing how the dream related to her in real-life and how her subconscious was trying to help her, it pushed her to action to change something.

A man had a dream in which his wife was cheating on him.  Earlier that day a big client he did business with terminated their contract.  His feeling in the dream was one of betrayal.  The dream was not actually about his wife cheating, but the feeling of being betrayed.  He felt uneasy and bothered by the client leaving, so his subconscious used the picture of ultimate betrayal to tell him the truth about what he was really feeling.  This drove him to call the client the next day and ask why he left.

In real life a young woman had a great love for cats, but was terribly allergic.  While dating a particular man she started dreaming of cats repeatedly.  She thought she really loved this man, but deep down knew it wasn't a good match.  The cat to her, represented a warning sign.....she loved (cats and this man), but knew that maybe she shouldn't get too close.  Getting too close would cause harm.

Dream analysis is about your own personal associations and feelings.  You can't simply interpret someone's dream and tell them what it means without asking them what their experience and feelings are. Associations with cats is probably different for everyone.  Association with scary is different for everyone.  If I see spiders in my dream, that to me, is scary, but to someone else a spider could represent wisdom, or curiosity.  Dreams are very personal, after all, they are the sum of our associations, experiences, feelings.   Dreams deal with our personal struggles and triumphs.  A dream is almost like a blueprint of our subconscious and conscious together.

The recent dream that I've been thinking a lot about lately was just a couple of weeks ago.  It was a dream that felt so real that when I awoke I was disoriented.  I remember waking up 3 or 4 times and then every time I went back to sleep there it was again, the same dream continuing on.  In this dream my cousin had died of cancer and my husband was also dying.  For some reason my cousin's kids were with me in my house in the dream.  I think they were even living with us.  Their mom was absent from this dream for some reason.  I was so sad that I was crying hard the whole dream.  Not sure I've ever been that sad before.  In my dream I had feelings of great loss, sadness, and anger!  I was overwhelmed by the idea of becoming a single parent.  I kept saying "I can't do this on my own, you can't leave me."  I was feeling like my life was out of control and I couldn't get anything together.  My cousin's kids were trying to help me and comfort me.  My own kids were in and out of the dream, also sad.  Mostly, it was me just crying at my husband's bed side for hours, inconsolable.  It was one of those dreams where you wake up and literally rethink your life.  Suddenly, I'm grateful for everything and everyone.  I had to go check to see if my husband was still alive.  It was like Scrooge getting up on Christmas morning checking his room with excitement and being so giddy upon realizing that he, indeed was still living!

  Okay, so I'm going to try and analyze this a bit and see what I can decode!  On the surface I can say that I am always overwhelmed.  I'm stretched thin between working full time, homeschooling my kids and keeping up on my house and pets and everything else in life.  It's true I don't really have a lot of support in the form of close family that can help me with my kids.  It's also true that my husband and I have difficulty with consistency, routines, and communicating.  No, I'm not looking for marriage or parenting advice........I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime!  We have recently had some disagreements over how we handle certain situations with our kids.  We will just say it becomes easy to blame each other when the other is not there to witness what happens.  Marriage is hard and parenting is hard, we are always working on it!  It is true that my worst fear is losing someone I love.  Is this dream about my issues with balancing everything difficult in my life, and/or my biggest fear? Maybe a little.  On the surface it would be easy to excuse the dream as just being about my greatest fear and all the other out of place things in the dream as just, "okay, wow, that's weird!" If I follow the feeling though, it tells a different story.

Prior to this dream was the new year and I was thinking a great deal about the past year of 2023.  I was thinking of everything that made me sad.  There was a week last summer where many things happened, things I couldn't control, things that were very bad.  I'll quickly break it down......one of my daughters friends, a neighbor of ours was molested by a 13 year old in the neighborhood, some newly made friends of my kids accused my 6 year old son of saying something extremely inappropriate to the younger kids.  This caused the parents to never let them play with us again because it was just not possible that their kids were lying.  Turned out they were lying and the father apologized to us, later.  Then, something happened in my extended family that was very hurtful.  I felt a great loss with this event.  I had always had hope that someday relationships could develop or be different.  I kept telling myself I didn't care because they don't know me and I don't know them.  Let's just say, I was made to feel as if I was merely a problem to be dealt with.  I didn't even do anything, they contacted me with judgement and a hurtful message.  I could not be trusted as an adult to make my own decision about this event, instead they made it for me.  This made me feel a lot of things, but I won't go into that.  It was a loss of opportunity, loss of love, loss of understanding, loss of family.  Something was taken from me that day.

A few months later, my daughter was being bullied at her karate class and I had to deal with that train wreck.  Then my cat died in the street.  So, this all while struggling with the trials of being a working mom and a home school mom, etc.  Okay, I know this sounds like a rant. I promise I'm not throwing a pity party.  These were just the things that were on my mind, still bothering me from the past year.  Stick with me I promise this has a happy ending!

The sadness appears to make sense.  My subconscious painted the picture of one of the saddest things I could imagine to help me face the sadness and overwhelming.  In real life I was thinking a lot about my family and the situations that took place in July, it was bothering me a great deal. I was feeling the sadness all over.  My cousin who died in the dream.......why him?  What is his significance?  What does he represent to me in real life?  Well, in real life he has been in a battle with cancer.  I believe the presence of his kids was significant to me by representing my desire for family closeness and family support.  So, what is my relationship with the cousin with cancer? He is and has been one of my favorite cousins.  Despite being quite a bit older than me and not seeing him often, I remember he was always kind to me when I did see him......he still is always very nice.  He is one cousin who has made some effort with me.  There are many reasons relationships with my cousins has been a struggle, but I won't get into it now.  I am however one of the youngest of my cousins, so I've always felt it a challenge to be connected with them.  In my adult life I haven't had much opportunity to connect with them, but have always had hope.  

Awhile ago, in real life, I ran into this cousin with cancer at our kids' dance studio.  He sat down next to me and told me of his recent surgery.  He explained how it felt and that he'd been given 5-6 years to live.  I said, "so what do we do now? Pray a lot?"  He said "we could, but if it's not God's will then it won't save me."  I agreed.  He went on, "God could take this from me at any time, He could heal me.  If this trial can teach me to be better, to appreciate things, to learn what God needs me to learn, then I'll go through it."  He later said, "I've learned to enjoy everything, especially every feeling.  If I get angry, sad, happy, upset, joyful, I just enjoy it.  I appreciate feeling everything."  To me, this person represents hope through hard things.  His message represents an appreciation for feeling.....let yourself feel it, whatever it is.  Trust in God that His plan for you is on track, let Him change you and help you be better.  Pause......at this point of analysis, I realized how I've been bottling up my feelings at times, ignoring them, putting them away and not allowing myself to feel.

In my dream, my cousin's death brought much sadness, in real life, his life brings much joy.  Perhaps my mind connected him to the sadness in my dream because of our conversation in real life.  The subconscious is telling me to look to his example?  The subconscious, through the sadness, gave me a figure of example and hope.  Further thinking of this dream lead me back to the real life conversation we had and has caused me to think differently about the sadness in my life.

Another interesting thing about this dream was the waking up in the middle of it 3 times.  I swear I woke up 3 times and every time I went back to sleep this dream persisted.  It wouldn't go away, it wouldn't leave me alone.  I think that meant that I can't keep ignoring these feelings.  I have to face it!  I don't know if I actually woke up in real life 3 times or if I was dreaming that I woke up 3 times.......that's a little trippy!  Either way, the message was to face it.  All these past events have reentered my mind many times in recent weeks.   I ponder on it, it's reel runs through my mind again and again, I might cry, I might feel, but then I shelve it, because I have to.  I think these feelings will always be there, I don't think they will go away any time soon.  "Time heals all wounds", is how the saying goes.  I'm not sure if this is always true, but time certainly helps.  In real life my cousin was given 5-6 years to live, I wonder if that specifically is significant, in my dream?  I don't remember the 5-6 years being mentioned in my dream, nor do I know where his death fell on that time line in my dream.  The dream itself made me think of the 5-6 years  he was given.  In my dream, my husband's state of dying seemed to be sudden and unexpected.  Maybe I feel, deep down somewhere, that time is limited for these feelings, forgiveness and to be loved.  Sometimes, when doctors give you a living time frame, they are wrong.  So, maybe it represents a time limit that can be changed still, aka HOPE!  I  still have time to feel, forgive, be forgiven and be loved for who I am.  

I can understand how all of this might seem like a major over analysis, or maybe I'm reading into things that aren't really there.  The subconscious mind is always working and is a vault of memories, feelings, and thoughts that lay below the surface that the conscious mind may not be aware of.  Remember, the subconscious mind is trying to make you aware of the vaulted things it holds.  It can come through dreams, epiphany, or even deja vu.  Its job is to help you regulate not only involuntary bodily function, but also thoughts and feelings, and to recall memories and information that have been filed away.  When all is said and done, maybe the message I pulled from this dream was not that amazing or seems like something I already know, but it still shows how the subconscious is working to tell me something.

I don't believe any of this was coincidence.  A new year brought the passing of a very hard year.  The thoughts, feelings and memories plagued me once more.  Then, I have a dream, which at first seemed like not much more than a run of the mill nightmare......Two weeks later I listen to this interview about dream decoding.  At first I thought it was interesting, but then I decided maybe there was more to my nightmare than what seemed obvious.  This has been a bit of a healing process.....much more than just interesting.  It has helped me see things differently and sort through some things.  It has helped me realize what I must face.  Instead of a fearful nightmare, it has become a beacon of hope!

I will definitely be paying closer attention to my dreams.  As soon as you wake up from a strange dream, write it down before you forget.  Then, think of the feeling in the dream.  What are you feeling in the dream?  How does this feeling relate to your real life feelings.  What associations can you make from your dream.  What do things, people, phrases, or events in your dream represent to you in real life.  Only you can pull out the associations and symbolism.  I still think that sometimes our dreams can be pretty meaningless, rather it's the subconscious sorting information, thoughts, and memories, but maybe there is more to them than we think.  Try analyzing a dream and see if it helps you somehow and Have a Great Dream! Sweet Dreams!