Don't Touch That Dial: Recording Your Dreams
Are You changing the meaning of a dream without knowing it?
Wow! You just remembered a dream. You write it down and now you're going to send it to your dream analyst (me!)
But you really want it to be perfect first. You think to yourself, “Let me go reread it.” If that re-read is for grammar and typos, I thank you. But it's for any other reason than...
Red light! Hold your horses!
If you find yourself going back through your written dream and making word changes then stop!
“But I've never used that word in real life," you say.
Ah. But you did use it when you wrote your dream. And as I'm always saying. Everything in your dream matters.
Take for instance this example. The client writes: "My work colleagues and I went out to a party."
Compare this to a rewrite which says, "My friends from work and I went to a party."
It's a subtle difference but it's there - my friends from work, and my work colleagues, convey two very different things to a skilled dream analyst.
A Rose by Any Other Name Might Be Something Else
True story alert. When I was a teenager, my mother used to embarrass me when we were in the check out line at the department store.
She would start talking to everybody (face smack), and I would tuck my head and try to hide behind the shopping cart. "She's not MY mom.”
In an effort to make my embarrassing-me mom less likely to be linked to me, I started finding ways to refer to my mother without saying the word “mother”. She's my dad's wife, I would say. Or she's my aunt's sister.
But when that wasn't distant enough (for this woman who was making my teen years a total eye roll) I started getting more creative. She is the first cousin of my second cousin's parent. Or, she is my great-grandmother's, son's, daughter.
My sister and I used to compete in finding the most distant relations we could use. "She's the aunt of my second cousin." Or, even better (for those really embarrassing moments) "She's my second cousin's (once removed) grandather's, brother's, son's wife.”
The hope was that this list of generations to weed through would leave the people in the checkout line distracted long enough for me to make my escape before they figured out she was actually my mom.
I'll say it again. It all matters. Don't go back and rewrite the dream in different words.
That's Very Punny
Okay, so now you're holding your horses on making changes to the words in your dreams. Good. But did you know that some of those words could be very punny?
Even in dreams we can use puns and wordplay. Dreams use these to convey deeper meaning.
Wordplay is one way that our subconscious helps us to deal with deep emotions, or to highlight emotional dynamics of relationships that are not immediately apparent in waking life.
I Falafel
In one of my dreams I was standing in a long line at a fast food counter. The only thing still available when I got to the head of the queue was falafel sandwiches.
And then the falafel maker went up in flames. Here's the pun: My dream was telling me that if I continued to eat sandwiches I was going to continue to feel awful, and it was going to lead to inflammation.
In one of my other restaurant dreams, I kept using the word insinuate. It's not a word I often use in real life, but I included it in my dream. My dream was telling me that I subconsciously considered what I was eating to be sinful. In sin you ate.
Eating a donut and ice cream in a dream could mean Do Not eat ice cream.
Eating romaine lettuce with your boyfriend could mean let us remain together.
If there's a fly on the handle, perhaps you fly off the handle.
A woman tending to a potted plant of orchids could be her subconscious saying 'or kids' - time to get planting.
Don't Dew It
Not all dreams use puns. I never liked lollipops, but I'm a sucker for finding them.
So, if you find yourself wanting to change the words of your dreams once you've written them down - Stop! Donut pass Go! Don't Dew it! Don't pull the trigger! Hit the brakes.
And send your dreams exactly as they are.