😳🪞The monster in your dream… is you

Hi There, Dreamer,

I want to share one of the most important rules of dream interpretation.

It is also one of the most uncomfortable ones.

When you are trying to understand a dream, a good rule of thumb is this:

Every character in the dream is a part of you.

Yes… even the annoying one.

Yes… even the scary one.

And unfortunately, yes… even the one behaving like a complete idiot.

I know. Not the most flattering idea.

But this principle is one of the foundations of Jungian dream analysis and modern depth psychology. Your mind is not creating random actors on a stage. Your mind is showing you different parts of your own psyche interacting with each other.

Once you start viewing dreams this way, the whole meaning of the dream begins to change.

And sometimes that can be a little confronting.

Your subconscious mind thinks in symbols and stories.

During the day you experience thoughts, emotions, memories, and impulses that do not always agree with each other. Some of those feelings are welcomed. Others get pushed aside because they feel embarrassing, scary, or unacceptable.

Your mind still has to process them somewhere.

Dreams are where that happens.

So instead of saying,

“You have a part of you that is angry”

Your mind may create a character who is angry.

Instead of saying,

“You feel unsafe and small in certain situations”

Your dream might show a frightened child.

Instead of saying,

“You do not trust someone in your waking life”

Your mind might create a suspicious stranger following you.

Your dream is not showing you strangers.

It is showing you parts of yourself having a conversation.

Here is where people usually get nervous.

If every character in the dream represents a part of you, that means the darker characters are also coming from inside you.

The liar in the dream.

The person chasing you.

The violent character.

The jealous friend.

These figures often represent what Carl Jung called the shadow.

The shadow is simply the part of the personality that has been pushed away or rejected. Sometimes these are traits you learned were unacceptable growing up. Sometimes they are emotions that were never allowed to be expressed.

Anger. Self protection. Jealousy. Fear. Even confidence in some cases.

If you grew up in an environment where certain emotions were punished, your mind learned to hide them.

But hidden parts of the mind do not disappear. They just wait for a moment to be heard.

Dreams are one of the safest ways your psyche can finally give those parts a voice.

And before you panic and start wondering if you secretly have a villain living inside you, let me reassure you of something.

The shadow is not evil.

It is simply the part of you that has been ignored.

Let me give you an example that shows up in dreams all the time.

Someone writes to me and says:

“I had a dream that a scary man was chasing me through a parking garage.”

The first instinct is to assume the man represents danger in the outside world.

Sometimes that is true. Your mind can absolutely process real life threats in dreams.

But more often than people expect, that chasing figure represents a part of the dreamer that has been avoided.

Maybe anger they were never allowed to express.

Maybe confidence they were told was selfish.

Maybe a painful truth they do not want to face yet.

The mind creates a pursuer because something inside the psyche wants attention.

When people stop running from these parts of themselves in waking life, the dreams often change.

The pursuer slows down.

Sometimes they stop chasing entirely.

Your mind was never trying to terrorize you.

It was trying to get you to turn around and listen.

Many of you reading this newsletter have been through painful experiences.

Trauma has a strange way of dividing the mind into pieces.

One part learns to survive.

Another part holds the emotions.

Another part stays on high alert.

Dreams often bring these pieces together so they can be understood.

That is why nightmares are so common for people who have lived through difficult things. Your mind is working through feelings that never had a safe place to exist during the day.

When you look at your dreams through this lens, something important happens.

Instead of asking:

“Why would my mind show me something so horrible?”

You begin asking:

“What part of me is trying to be heard?”

That question changes everything.

Because your mind is not against you.

It is trying to help you reconnect with parts of yourself that deserve attention and care.

Even the parts that feel uncomfortable.

If you have been having disturbing dreams lately, please hear this clearly.

It does not mean you are broken.

It does not mean something is wrong with you.

It often means your mind is doing the difficult work of healing.

Dreams are one of the few places where your psyche can speak honestly without interruption from the outside world. They can be confusing, emotional, and sometimes a little ridiculous.

Trust me. I have had dreams that made me wake up and question my entire personality before my first cup of coffee.

But if you learn how to listen to them, your dreams can become one of the most honest conversations you will ever have with yourself.

One of my favorite things we do at Lyon Mental Health is

The Dream Show.

This is where someone from the community joins me for a recorded dream interpretation session. We spend about an hour exploring the meaning of a dream and the psychological patterns behind it so other people can learn from the process too.

These conversations can be incredibly powerful because when one person shares their dream, a lot of other people realize they are not alone in what they are experiencing.

If you have a dream that keeps coming back or one that left you waking up thinking,

“What on earth was that about?”

I would love to talk with you about it.

You can apply to be on the Dream Show here:

https://lyonmentalhealth.taplink.ws/

Your mind may be trying to tell you something important.

And sometimes the first step is simply being willing to listen.

Talk Soon, Dreamer

P.S. All my links! Tap HERE: https://lyonmentalhealth.taplink.ws/