What Is Dream Therapy?

A GATEWAY INTO YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS

We’ve all had those dreams that stay with us, whether they were beautiful, comforting, hopeful, terrifying or seemingly abstract. We often dismiss them as random and meaningless, yet dreams give us so much more.

What is Dream Therapy?

It’s a safe, gentle, trauma informed approach that acts as a gateway to the subconscious, with the aim of facilitating emotional insight and healing. The process guides you through an exploration of your dreams reflecting deeper emotions, beliefs, desires and unresolved wounds from your inner psyche.

Why are dreams so powerful?

Our automatic behaviours and reactions are held in implicit memory, which is a type of memory that influences our responses without us consciously realising it or having language to explain it. Dreams are almost never literal, they speak in the language of symbol and metaphor, bypassing conscious thinking and spoken language, giving us access to explore hidden imprints. This also, importantly, gives us the chance to update them through memory reconsolidation, which is where dream therapy differentiates itself from dream analysis alone.

How can this help with healing?

Dreams can bring repressed feelings to light, reveal hidden insights, help us process grief and trauma, reflect our inner conflicts or true desires and offer guidance and clarity. The process is a bottom-up approach to healing whereas talk therapy is top-down, therefore offering a whole integration which can have transformational effects.

What if you don’t dream or never remember them?

This is a common concern, but extensive studies have shown that everybody dreams, although there are many reasons why we don’t remember them. Factors include, poor sleep routines, broken sleep, waking up during key stages, substance use, stress, depression or a lack of interest or importance in dream meanings.

How to improve dream recall

The good news is we do have some control over our dream recall. Tips include starting a healthy sleep routine, limiting screen time before bed, reducing alcohol or other substances and working out when to set your alarm so it doesn’t interrupt REM cycles unnaturally. We can also improve recall by keeping a dream journal or pausing for a few moments after waking to intentionally try to remember key elements.

Symbolism in dreams

Contrary to popular belief, dream meanings are not literal or universal, they are unique to each one of us. Dreaming of spiders for example, could broadly mean fear to many of us, even if our exact fears will not be the same, or they may not represent fear at all. But more importantly, how we feel about the spiders, where they are located, what else is in the scene, the size, colour, who else is there and how we interacted with the spiders will paint a much more significant picture.

Links to other modalities

As an IFS (Internal Family Systems) informed counsellor, I work with the inner psyche to map out ‘parts’ of us which represent certain beliefs or behaviours. It is often the case that ‘parts’ show up in dreams, showing us information or visual representations of our inner world. Dream therapy and IFS blend beautifully together in this way, adding depth and understanding to healing and self-awareness.

Can Dream Therapy help with Nightmares?

Yes, in fact it can very quickly stop nightmares entirely in most cases. Dream therapists can assist with supporting you to safely re-enter the dream whilst awake and guide you through specialised trauma-informed techniques to complete the story, called dream forwarding. It’s proven to be highly effective for recurring dreams, nightmares and dream flashbacks caused by PTSD.

Is Dream Therapy just for trauma?

No, it’s not just for trauma or scary dreams, learning to interpret and understand your dreams is a valuable skill to learn for your own personal development and interest. I find people who are highly visual, or enjoy symbolism, metaphoric language and many neurodivergent people really enjoy learning about dream therapy and the important messages they bring from our subconscious.

Interested in exploring your own dreams? Bookings are available below