The Most Honest Feedback You Will Ever Get - Dream Messages

It has taken me a while to pay attention to my dreams – 46 years to be precise. I’ve always felt there must be something useful in there, some point to them, but as they are generally symbolic rather than literal I hadn’t really taken much time to try and figure it out.

Given the momentary lingering of our dreams, mixed with the often harried start to the day and the lack of understanding of the symbolism, I just haven’t focused much on it until now. It seems to me, though, that dreams are a valid form of communication; a way for us to unpack (and make sense of) the experiences we’re having, if only we would pay attention.

Dreams are an unadulterated expression of how we are feeling and devoid of judgment, which makes them a particularly useful form of feedback.

Years back I remember buying a book on dreams in a vague attempt to understand them, but it felt wishy-washy and didn’t really capture the sorts of dreams I was having. At the time I was working in a career I found stressful, so it is no surprise that I used to have recurring dreams that were like various versions of The Hunger Games playing in my mind.

These were dreams of a death chase, with some form or forms of heinous creatures pursuing me in a relentless way. It is sad to say that was not unlike the wakened version of my life at the time, with corporate politics and egos at play. Of course, in my awakened state I’d tell myself all sorts of rubbish to play down the constant frustrations and feel better about my situation, but the dreams didn’t hide from the truth.

These days, thankfully, dreams like that are rare. Though with two young children to contend with, not all dreams are devoid of symbolic incarnations of something stressful!

Wide awake, in the throes of ‘life’, it is too easy to quash down how I am really feeling and just plough on from task to task. I have discovered this is no way to live though and wrote about it, most recently, in What Are Our Thought Patterns Really Doing for Us.

Ignoring how I feel about things comes at a cost, my health. From early warning signs like headaches, aches and pains, colds and chesty coughs, to full blown wake up calls like accidents and serious illness, it appears to me the way we feel about things in our life will keep percolating until we pay attention.

That’s what makes dreams useful; they give us another angle of awareness. With so many explanations for pretty much any and every kind of dream at our fingertips these days, I find there is great satisfaction in being able to quickly scan the results of a Google search to see what comes up and find something that feels right to me; message received.

There is another recurring dream I have had since childhood, though not so much these days, where I’m trying to dial a phone number and keep misdialing. An instant search on “misdialing dreams” and, voila, I have some sensible answers. It could mean I’m feeling:

• frustrated in communicating something
• isolated or cut off from others
• the need to reach out for help
• a fear of needing help and not being able to get it.

As someone who has often seemed to think a little differently to others, the top two definitely resonate with me. Though, while these dreams have stayed with me – emblazoned in my memory by the accompanying feelings of anxiety – the situations that elicited these dreams are long since forgotten.

Had I of being paying attention a bit more at the time, no doubt the self awareness would have helped to resolve issues a bit quicker.

Not all dreams are bad of course, the nicer ones are just as insightful and, even better, the good feelings they evoke stay with me long after waking up.

Last week, for example, I was dreaming that I was in my house (though it wasn’t my actual house I live in, just one I thought of as my house in the dream) and then I discovered a whole new room I’d never known was there before.

Symbolically house dreams relate to the place in which your spirit dwells (i.e. you) and new rooms indicate areas of ourselves we hadn’t noticed before; in short it’s about self-exploration and personal growth. This was interesting because – in the dream – the new room I happened upon was large and fairly empty, a drawing room that led down into a huge palatial dining room.

I recall fleetingly feeling overwhelmed as I looked into the dining room, since no end could be seen to it, so by the time I stepped into the drawing room to go and have a closer look, the entrance to the dining area was encased in glass as if to say “let’s deal with one thing at a time”.

There were many other things going on in that same dream, before stepping into the new room, I was aware the kids were running amok and – simultaneously – this huge crocodile-like creature was also on the loose. I was afraid it was going to eat my youngest child but then realised it had flat rather than sharp teeth so would probably be more interested in the house plants.

Without even looking it up, it felt like a message to me to ease up on my fears (my youngest is very impulsive and I often notice the angst I feel in relation to that).

In the past I also used to have dreams about forgotten rooms – in fact there was a recurring dream about an entire wing of the house that I kept rediscovering, which was all locked up. There was a feeling of dread that the door, once unlocked, would unleash all sorts of unwanted terror in my life.

When I had the more welcome and much nicer version of the undiscovered rooms last week, I realised I must now have cleared any fear about who I am or what could be lurking in my depths, and have cleared the space to grow.

Sometimes dreams can be multi-faceted, and may require several lines of interpretation woven together. Just take each symbol, and the prevalent feelings that stick with you, and check what each means in a way that makes sense for you.

There is no right and wrong answers when it comes to dream interpretation, each of us places different meanings on different symbols, so while a Google search will bring a variety of answers, it’s important to go with an answer that feels right to you.

The important thing is to start noticing our dreams as one of the most valid and honest forms of feedback we have at our disposal.

Over time I have come to believe that dreams are my best litmus test for what is truly going on in my life. While I have a goal to find more happiness in a day than frustration, in a waking state I am often too distracted to pay much heed to what I’m thinking or feeling. But my dreams don’t lie; they often tell me that I’m still sweating the small stuff.  

It’s a bit like if I were on a diet, and I kept snacking on things I shouldn’t and telling myself it didn’t matter it was “only a few chips”, or a “bite of chocolate”; at the end of the day, the scales wouldn’t lie. Neither will my dreams. If I am frequently doing and thinking things that are not making me happy, my dreams reflect this whether I am consciously aware of my overall emotional state or not.

So it makes good sense to me to use my dreams as a way to check in on my goals and progress towards them. They are quick to tell me when I’m heading the wrong way, and when I’m on track.

If you are like me and on quest for growth, a truth seeker (your own truths), you might just find the answers are right under your eyes – literally - when you are sound asleep. Your dreams are waiting to guide you to your best life.

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