How to interpret your dreams for yourself

Dreams are a vital part of the human experience. Without them, our minds are unable to process certain aspects of what is happening in our daily lives.

If you are having a recurring nightmare or a particular image that appears again and again in your REM cycle, your sleeping mind is probably trying to convey an important message to your conscious mind. Paying attention to this and discovering what that symbol means to you can be incredibly helpful.

If you are waking with a regular sense of dread, but do not recall your dreams - never fear! there are ways to help with dream recall, too! Believe it or not, just reading this lens can help you, because it will get you thinking about dream recall - which makes actually remembering what you dream all the more possible.

Many people recall fragments of their dreams but do not retain the whole picture. While the fragments may be the most important part to remember, you can also benefit from a larger recollection. One of the best ways to begin doing this is to keep a dream journal.

I know, you are thinking about a jewel-encrusted book with fancy paper and astrological symbols. it doesn't have to be like that (though it can be if you like!) All you need is a simple small notebook and a pencil (or you can type it up on your laptop, etc).

Don't know what to write? Begin with the basics! Whatever images or feelings you have from the dream, and anything you feel really stuck out. You can just jot down the basic ideas as a memory booster and type up the whole thing in detail later, too. The more you think about recalling your dreams, and the more you focus on trying to remember them, the more you will recall. you can totally train yourself to remember even the tiniest details!

No time for a journal? Many of us are too busy to stop and write these things down. I have kids and I can't always stop to record the images from my sleep. No problem! There are other ways to remember your dreams! One thing to try is telling someone else about your dream - your spouse, your kids (if the dream is okay for kids to hear), your best friend, your mom. You get the idea. Just saying it out loud is a great way to remember the dream. Even telling your dog or parakeet or pet rock!

Another good boost in dream recollection is to actually think to yourself before you fall asleep that you would like to remember your dream.

Most dream dictionaries will tell you that dreaming about a pig is a sign of good luck. Certainly there are many cultures that would view it as such, and there are many people for whom dreaming of a pig may be a sign of good luck. But no dream symbol or item can have a universal meaning. We all have different experiences and beliefs, and therefore, different definitions for dream items.

For example: If I dream about a pig, it is not a symbol of good luck. I have a phobia of pigs! I am also allergic to pork. Dreaming of a pig, for me, is a symbol of fear and worry - usually pertaining to health and safety. If a pig farmer dreams of a pig, it might have only marginal significance - thinking about daily activities or something he or she sees every day. Everything is relative.

So the first thing you need to do when you have a dream is, instead of reaching for that dream dictionary to find out why you were holding salad tongs and singing "Danny Boy" in last night's dream adventure, stop and think about what those things mean to you. Perhaps you are lamenting the fact that your doctor suggested you go on a diet. Perhaps you are thinking of an elderly relative whom you usually only see at family reunions. Perhaps you are belatedly realizing that you missed the special on Irish tenors because you were watching a cooking show.

This is why finding your own personal definitions for things is so important. Some things might seem like a very important symbol to some people, while they could just be organizing thoughts about the day for others. You will often find things in dreams that are of monir significance - but if you keep at it, you can also find important meaning.

How do you go about defining what something means to you? Well, picture the image in your head and consider how it makes you feel. Does it make you happy? Frightened? Uncomfortable? Compare that feeling to the context in your dream. Were you chasing a thing that made you happy, or running from something that made you feel afraid? Did you have to endure sitting next to something that made you uncomfortable? Noe consider how this applies to your life.

You could find that dreaming you were in a large crowded room full of falling books and magazines while you were desperately trying to reach a garbage bin is a sign that your current situation is too disorganized and cluttered, and you need to reorganize your schedule.

Or maybe you were in an enormous library filled with volumes of books and periodicals and there was a garbage bin going around eating them up, and you were terrified that it would take you, too. That might symbolize that you are not making enough time for yourself to enjoy the things you like and you need to escape from the constant structuring.

If you were in a musty library sitting next to a trash can with the knowledge that you had to throw something away, but not knowing what? You want to change something, most likely, but you don't know where to begin.

So much of this has to do with the situation and feeling. That is why sometimes you will see a person logging about a dream they have had that has frightened them, and other people will be saying "Wow! that sounds like a GOOD dream to me!"

Many people report dreams that happen again and again, or recur occasionally throughout their life. These dreams offer an important window into the complex workings of our inner selves. There is something there that we need to know, but we are just not getting the message.

The first thing to begin with here is, again, how it makes you feel. It seems that the majority of recurring dreams are anxiety based. In an anxiety dream, something awful is happening to you that you can't control. The classic examples are showing up for a class and realizing you haven't done your homework, or standing up to speak in public and realizing you are not wearing clothes. (at least these seem to be the most commonly reported ones)

Well, most people would feel that there is an element of their life for which they feel unprepared (and uneducated) in the first scenario, and exposed in the second...but this might not be so for everyone. Obviously, a nudist isn't going to be as concerned about nuds public speaking as many of the rest of us!

So discover what you think about these meanings and ideas. See if there is a particular place or item that sticks out, and try and think of whether you can place that item somewhere in your life (Oh! It's that red lava lamp that auntie Mabel has in her sitting room!, etc)

What do the people and places and things (nouns!) associated with that image mean to you? if you have recurring dreams of school, is there a particular teacher that you dream of? What did that teacher mean to you?

Personally, when I have school homework anxiety dreams, I am attending a math class taught by my high school media teacher, Mrs. Schaumburg. I usually realize that it is time for finals and that I have somehow managed to never attend a single class. Now, Mrs. Schaumburg was my favorite teacher. She was one of the only members of my school's faculty that treated me like a human being and believed I could go places (most of the others just noticed my proto-goth teen self and came up with their own negative assumptions). What do these dreams mean to me? That I am worried about disappointing someone who believes in me, but am afraid that I do not have the necessary capabilities to please them (hence, math class!)

Understanding what these things mean to you and how they apply will help you to be less afraid of your dreams and be able to use them to your best advantage. Once you pinpoint the problem, it is easy to discover what part of your life is making you feel that way and devising a plan to move through the challenges facing you.

One of the most amazing things you can do once you learn to understand your dreams and your personal symbols within dreams is to become dream-aware. This is also known as lucid dreaming. In this marvelous kind of dream, you realize within the dream that you are having a dream. You are able to consciously direct what you are doing in a dream.

A big monster chasing you? Well, if you become lucid, you can turn around and yell at the monster "This is my dream! go away!" It is a very empowering thing to do! In fact, honing your lucid dream skills can help to improve self-esteem and confidence, because you will feel that you have more power over your life.

But no worries, if you do not achieve lucidity in dreaming, you can still achieve great things just by learning to better understand where you are coming from within your own dream spectrum.

Want to have a better chance at becoming lucid? Try thinking about the desire to do so before you fall asleep. While you are falling asleep, focus on what you would like to dream about.

Many people find that having something like a dream catcher hanging above their bed helps with lucid dreaming. the idea f a dream catcher is that it keep bad things from entering your dreamspace (some people believe evil spirits, some believe negative energy, some believe that having a thing to focus you wish to have pleasant dreams on makes it possible).

Whatever you are dreaming, I wish you the best.