The labyrinthine world of dreams weave together the dreamer and the dream in ways that can be both subjective and universal. New versions of a child or young person’s daily experience can seep into their consciousness, laying out full-blown scenarios or tiny fragments in dream recall, offering messages. But many of these messages are swept into the basement of their minds because they do not fit into tidy compartments, and go into the reject pile of unprocessed data.

Dreams can be seen as a repository, animating the dreamer’s unprocessed emotional and mental contents into scenarios which don’t make a lot of sense unless the dream frames follow a literal storyline. And even then, we need to understand the context and how the contents relate to what’s happening for the individual. The dream is a messenger with access to the unconscious and subconscious areas of the mind. And if we think in terms of quantum reality – energy, frequency and vibration – dreams can also travel beyond time and space and deliver scenarios through the psyche that land in our consciousness when we catch them. I’m not sure if dream catchers actually work but dreams are often worth catching.

When the brain is overloaded, unprocessed emotions stored up in the body also occur when a child or young person is not given the much needed inner space in order to replenish their nervous system. There is so much pressure in the education system to achieve high grades, with little space to process, to breathe and allow the body-mind to find its way. And in order for one’s mental and emotional wellbeing to come into balance, this inner spaciousness is crucial.

Unfortunately, mainstream education doesn’t value being but is focused on the doing. Yet the increase in mental health issues often appear to be directly related to this oversight. And the societal messages which are fed through viral networks are fear-based, they still follow the outmoded Darwinian survival of the fittest theory. This is the stuff that seeps into the collective unconscious that Jung spoke about. Doing to the point of overload has become normalised. Paradoxically, by allowing down-time, the body-brain-mind can breathe a sigh of relief and do its job.

This institutionalised system predominated by Western thinking which has adopted a reductionist approach and outmoded theories gives little or no space for ‘otherness.’ From this perspective dreams don’t make sense if you try to interpret them through the filters of logic and rational thinking. If dream interpretations follow this reductionist mindset then the meaning is as lost as a scientist dissecting an animal and expecting to find its essence.

Dreams are intricately aligned with the individual’s inner life and the mirrored reflections which are revealed through the fabric of the dream, such as the atmosphere, tone and what is or isn’t being said. A character’s silence is showing something to the dreamer. Sometimes those characters may be different aspects of the dreamer coming to light – unfamiliar parts, some parts which might have been frozen in a time that was unsafe for the younger self to cope with.

In the therapy space the fabric of dreams clothed in characters, landscapes, objects and whatever arises requires exploration, connection and context. In Native American culture, they refer to Medicine Dreams, which loosely means that the dream itself is healing.

Dreams are wild. They do unexpected things.

Allowing the natural language of a dream and recognising that it is intrinsically linked to the dreamer, the symbolic wrappings and metaphors suddenly become meaningful. And more so when the client is involved with the exploration.

Dream recall

In my therapy sessions when I ask my child or adolescent client if they have a dream they would like to share, sometimes they’ll recall it in detail. And other times their response will be that they’ve had a dream (or lots of them) but they don’t remember. It may be that they have a sense of it and an intangible feeling lingers. And sometimes the memory of a dream can be recaptured. Just one tiny fragment of recall can open up the channels where flow happens. And that flow occurs in the relaxed atmosphere, a sense of safety where there is no pressure. Other times, the dream is lost. But dreams will return when the dreamer is ready to receive it on a conscious level.

How can working with dreams support the therapeutic process?

By looking at the unique way in which the individual experiences their life, taking in their background history and everything which they have brought to the therapy space, their dream becomes an extension of what they bring. Most importantly, the context associated with the client’s inner worlds become more apparent. For example, through a spontaneous, creative and intuitive exploration, the contents unfurl into a revelatory link to the dreamer’s everyday life. And this not only pinpoints the essence of what the dream is communicating but the significance as to what the client has not been able to articulate in the session.

By becoming aware of their dreams, it can help them to bypass hurtful experiences by distancing incidences such as being humiliated and feeling shame. Any kind of crushing comments or behaviours that demean a child or young person – when they are vulnerable and lacking a sense of agency – the feelings can become buried because it’s too painful to tolerate. Such hurtful experiences may play out as characters in their dream worlds, seemingly random. The child becomes stifled and a dream can be a way of liberating them.

Jung pointed out, we are, [as therapists] treating the whole person rather than the symptom alone.

Dreams can give birth to inspiration, inventions, messages from ‘other-worlds’ in a transpersonal (or spiritual) sense and more. They can also reveal mental and emotional issues. Similar to tapping into the Creative Source, like abstract, surrealistic art and dance and everything which gives space for inspiration and expression.