Dream therapy or in other words understanding your dreams' meaning to the fullest, is a wonderful way to get in touch with your innermost self and become your own best friend.

How many times have you woken up and found yourself asking, "Where did that come from?" Why on earth have I dreamt about rabid dogs, leaves growing out of my arms, a blue pig, cleaning toilets, being pricked by a needle, snakes, pigeons etc etc etc..... ? Well, dream symbols may be weird, confusing, shocking and sometimes frightening but they do appear for a purpose. In my view, that purpose is for our own personal growth, development and self awareness.

The first thing to realise - and you intuitively know this, is that the symbols that appear in your dreams are NOT RANDOM. Each and every one has been selected by your mind (or soul, higher self) to give you information about something pertinent to you - to give you an opportunity for healing and self discovery. Once you understand what the symbol means you will see the logic of why it appeared in the first place and you will gain an insight into the bizarre, but oddly comprehensible world of dream language.

So let's start demystifying the whole subject of dream interpretation and start understanding those strange symbols that have been appearing in your dreams!

Dreaming is an amazing fact of human existence. Where else can we experience such rich emotions, such a variety of experience and such incredible journeys?

You do not need to be psychic to understand dreams. You just need practical and useable steps that you can immediately incorporate into your life. I'm hoping you will find this guide easy to follow, down to earth and informative, and after reading it you may wonder why dream interpretation was such a mystery before!

There are four main elements to interpreting dream symbols and I've called this (rather uniquely!) the 4 step technique. This system will enable you to quickly and easily understand, connect to, and interpret, any symbol that appears in your dreams. I developed this technique by systematically breaking down the process I was intuitively using to interpret my own and my clients dream symbols. I felt people needed a simplified and reliable way to gain access to the depth of meaning and significance that their dream symbols were trying to relate and the 4 step technique was the end result.

I will show you how to use these four elements, and as we go through the process, I have included an example of a real dream symbol to aid your understanding. The first time you do this it may take you 5 or 10 minutes but the more frequently you do it, the less time it will take you, and after a short while it will become almost automatic.

So get your pen and paper ready and let's get started!

Step one - Identify the symbol

The first thing to do is identify the symbol and write it down. Don’t have a discussion with yourself about why this symbol has appeared, just accept it!

A dream I interpreted recently featured a big, black bull. The client couldn't understand why the bull was there, so I asked the question - Why a bull, not a mouse, giraffe or duck billed platipus?

The reason is because the dream was about the clients' relationship to his personal power and no other symbol would have been right.

The symbol you want to understand will also be “just right” for your dream's message to you.

Step two - What words/adjectives come to mind when you think of the symbol?

If we stay with the symbol of a bull as an example. Words that may come to mind could range from strong, powerful and masculine to bullish, over confident and forceful.

The client used the word, "powerful" to describe what the bull symbolised for him.

Now write down a one or two words that come to mind when you think of your dream symbol.

Step three - What emotion/s do you feel when you think of this symbol?

The emotion will tell you a great deal about what the symbol means for you. Using the example of a bull again, you could feel reverence, admiration, submissive, indifferent, angry, awe, disgust.....the list is almost endless.

The client felt extremely scared of the bull.

Now for your symbol. Write down the main emotions you feel toward the symbol.

This is what the man who had the dream with the symbol of a bull would have written down.

Big, black bull + powerful + scared = the bull represents my fear of being powerful.

The dream in it's entirety was about the client developing his own personal power, coming to terms with it and using it for his benefit in his life.

The reason feeling powerful was so fearful for the client was because he had grown up with a very powerful, scary and abusive father and had vowed to never be like him. Therefore, he had completely denied that he had a part of himself that was powerful.

Denying this part of himself had resulted in on-going feelings of impotence, despair and depression. So while the dream was unpleasant, his mind was using this symbol to let him know that he was causing himself harm and give him an opportunity to remedy this.

Now do the same “sum” for your dream symbol and find out what it means for you!

The main things to remember are that you can relate every adjective that you would use to descibe the symbol, to yourself, a part of yourself or a facet of your belief system. The feeling describes your emotion so accept it and own it.

By breaking down the symbol into it's component parts it becomes easy to understand the personal meaning it has for you.

I'm sure you will find this is a far more beneficial and accurate method of interpreting your dream symbols as compared to relying on a dream dictionary where the symbols have generalised, rather than personalised, meanings and the symbol descriptions are totally out of the context of dream story. Just an open mind and heart and a few easily learnt tools will enable you to interpret any of your dreams or nightmares accurately.

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