How to Interpret Your Own Dreams: questions to ask, points to consider

It's hard to deny the complete phenomenon that is dreaming. Your body and brain are in an utterly unique state when you dream.  

Once you hit REM sleep, your brain paralyzes all your muscles except the muscles in your eyes. (what?!)

Your frontal cortex (the linear, logical part of your brain) is essentially switched off.

Meanwhile, here's what Dr. Alan Hobson, a Professor of Psychiatry in the Sleep Division of Harvard Medical School, says gets switched on when you dream:

Your visual cortex: the part of your brain that matches visual images with meaning.

Your hippocampus: the memory storage center of your brain.

Your amygdala: the part of your brain that connects emotions to your memories, secretes hormones, and interprets whether you should be afraid of something.

In fact, your brain is just as active during your dreams as it is during your waking life.

Yet, despite years and years of research, no one really knows why we dream.

There are two basic camps on why we dream.

The first camp is that dreams carry hidden messages from our unconscious – clues, warnings, guideposts. Rarely straightforward, these messages are disguised through symbols so as not to overwhelm us with truths and insights we may not be ready to fully acknowledge.  

The second camp is that dreams are just daily mental residue being flushed out of our consciousness.   

Whether you believe dreams carry messages from your unconscious or not, paying attention to your dreams is a powerful practice.

Just like horoscopes, dreams can serve as ambiguous stimuli that gain meaning subjectively. What you graft onto the dream is what gives it meaning, whether that meaning was latent in the dream or not.

Have you ever heard the expression, "You know the truth by the way it feels." Your dreams provide rich terrain for assessing what you believe to be true or not true about the experiences of your waking life.  

When you (or anyone else) offer an interpretation of your dreams that doesn’t seem accurate, the reason you can deem it inaccurate is because on some level, you know what is accurate. That tip-of-the-tongue knowing is more powerful than you think; even though you can’t quite name what it is that you know, tip-of-the-tongue knowing helps you recognize what’s its not.

We may not give ourselves the space to acknowledge it in our waking life, but on some level we know what we want, what we’re afraid of, and what we hope happens next.

One method of dream interpretation that bodes well for independently exploring your dreams is to assume that every single thing in the dream represents a part of you.  

For example, let’s say you dream that you're riding a Ferris wheel and it stops unexpectedly at the top of the ride. As you're swinging back and forth, you look down and see that you're barefoot. You suddenly hear the horn of a ship, then you wake up.

Here's how you might begin to independently explore that dream:

A Ferris wheel goes around and around in a circle and is intended to be ridden for fun, typically by children.  Is a part of me craving more fun? Is a part of me acting childish about something? Is a part of me going around in circles about something?

The Ferris wheel stopped at the top of the ride.  Does a part of me want to stop doing something? Does a part of me wish I could stay at the peak of an experience forever? Which experience do I not want to descend from?  

You noticed you weren't wearing shoes in a situation where one typically does wear shoes. Does a part of me feel unprepared to walk down a new path? Does a part of me think that I'm missing something fundamental? Is there a basic need of mine that’s not being met? Do I feel that I don’t have something that everyone else has? What might that missing piece be?  

You suddenly hear the horn of a ship.  Is a part of me calling myself to get on board with something? Is a part of me feeling left behind while a person or opportunity 'sails off'? Is a part of me ready to ‘sail away’ from something?

The more you ask yourself exploratory questions, the more clarity you'll encounter about what you're feeling and why.

To decode symbols in a dream, look for incongruent pieces.

For example:

Is there an odd sequence of events?

Does a feeling you’re experiencing not match the context you’re in?

Is something disproportionately sized in the dream?

Whatever seems ‘off’ about the dream, start there.  

Write down what you remember immediately upon waking. After a few days or weeks, scan your notes. Do you see a consistent theme?

For example:

Are you regularly late to something?

Is it always sunny out?

Are you always on some kind of mode of transportation?

Is something always breaking in the dream?

Is there a person/animal/item/melody that keeps showing up?

Some general questions to ask yourself about your dreams:

If this dream were trying to offer me a clue, what would that clue be?

Imagine your dream as a patient teacher; what is the dream trying to teach you? Get you to learn? Get you to see?

Is the feeling you’re experiencing in your dream a familiar feeling for you in your waking life?

Is there a part of you that’s acting out in your waking life in the same way that you acted out in your dream?

Identify the primary feeling in the dream; are you avoiding that feeling in your waking life?

Identify the primary action-theme of the dream (resisting, choking, running, being frozen/passivity, flying/being unmoored, etc.); can you relate to that theme playing out in your waking life?

A dream can unlock a secret; does your dream reveal a secret desire or secret fear of yours that you may not be ready to acknowledge in your waking life?

Dreams can be powerful invitations to parts of yourself that you may be dimming in your waking life. What would happen if you turned the lights up?

Katherine Morgan Schafler is an NYC-based psychotherapist, author, and speaker. For more of her work: get her book, follow her on Instagram, subscribe to her newsletter, or visit her site.