Are dreams guides for our waking life?

Story by Jenna Millikan

Somewhere, a bird is chirping. From my rowboat, I can only see the bright green trees that line the shore. Between the sun on my face and the gentle hum of the river, I could almost fall asleep.

Suddenly, the bird’s song is replaced with thundering storm clouds. Ahead, the river opens to a whirlpool. Panic fills me as I fight against the current. Right when the water is about to swallow me, I wake up.

Growing up, I had this dream every few months. Every time, it left me wondering: what did it mean?

The Age-Old Question

From academic papers to breakfast table conversations, people have always tried to decipher the meaning behind our dreams. We can’t look into someone’s mind while they sleep, so there’s no way to know for sure. That doesn’t stop people from trying.

“The classic Freudian approach is the most well-known, and when people think of dream analysis, it's what they think of,” Alex Czopp, a psychology professor at Western Washington University, said, while adding, “It's also the least scientific.”

The Freudian approach proposes that dreams represent unconscious desires. Czopp explains that they are symbolic and allow us to act out fears, desires and emotions we can’t express in our waking lives.

“They stem from all sorts of rather unusual origins, in Freud's opinion,” Czopp said. “Early childhood experiences that get uncomfortably and inappropriately sexual oftentimes.”

Despite being widely known, Freud’s ideas aren’t endorsed by most psychologists, Czopp said. Freud's desire-based approach is just one of many dream theories. You might be familiar with another well-known theory: dreams are our brains processing real-life events.

While dreams can appear random, there may be a deeper reason behind their symbols and occurrences. It’s common to see a familiar face in our sleep. According to a study in the Journal of Sleep Research, 48% of characters in dreams are reported to be known by the dreamer.

“One of the better approaches, it's called a problem-solving or a problem-focused theory of dreams,” Czopp said. “Your brain and your mind take what you've been thinking about during your waking times and offer dreams as other opportunities to think about that a little bit more.”

If you’re spending your days cramming for an upcoming exam, for example, your brain may conjure up a nightmare about forgetting your pencil on exam day. Dreams can act as a way to rehearse real-life events we’re thinking about, Czopp said.

Not all dreams are as straightforward as the exam anxiety example, but any event or idea that resurfaces during a dream may have a deeper reason for sticking in your mind.

Emotional Charades: Getting My Dream Professionally Analyzed

I am staring at my Zoom profile picture while the loading symbol for Dream Hub's virtual waiting room spins. I twist my ring clockwise, then counterclockwise and back again. I can’t help but think, “Why am I nervous?”

Despite chronically sharing my dreams with anyone who would listen, I am a bit of a cynic. I don’t believe in ghosts, fate or the secrets of the universe getting revealed in a forgot-to-wear-your-pants-on-the-first-day dream. Having my dreams professionally analyzed was not on my bucket list.

However, if you had the same dream every few months since you were six, you might wonder if your brain is trying to tell you something.

In contrast to my jittery nerves, dream therapist Melissa Johnson is incredibly serene when the Zoom begins. She sits in a bright yellow armchair framed by the hanging tendril of a house plant and a wooden moon.

“So I read your dream,” she begins. “And I have some follow-up questions.”

I’ve had no negative boat- or water-related experiences, so I always assumed my whirlpool nightmare was a stress dream — my subconscious’s way of acting out leftover anxieties.

“People are very focused on nightmares being bad, and they’re not at all,” Johnson said. “Nightmares are the ones that have the most guidance; they are there to help you with your deepest issues.”

The dream starts the same every time. My friends and family wave to me from the shore as I begin the boat ride. Eventually, I'm alone, and, despite knowing what is going to happen, it's a pleasant trip until the end.

Johnson's follow-up questions range from the expected, like what events were happening in my personal life before the dream, to ones that caught me off guard. What shade of green was the grass? What did the bird sound like?

Her approach to dream analysis is to look for a deeper meaning and offer some practical advice based on what our dreams might be telling us.

“It’s our subconscious trying to communicate to us like a game of charades,” Johnson says. “It’s like being yelled at in a foreign language.”

That begs the question: what is my dream trying to tell me? I’ll give you a hint: two words, seven syllables.

Emotional turbulence.

Water, Johnson said, often represents emotions in our dreams. The river may represent an emotional journey, ebbing and flowing.

“The peaceful beginning reflects calmness and stability in life, a sense of harmony before challenges arise,” Johnson wrote in her post-session email summary. “The boat represents your resilience and emotional balance, showing you’re not engulfed by your emotions but navigating through them.”

The green covering the shoreline represents harmony, growth and emotional balance, Johnson said. The bird, with its song straight out of the cartoons I loved as a child, represents a guiding presence or inner voice.

“Embracing positive distractions like calming music or nostalgic shows could be beneficial,” Johnson wrote in her email.

Acts of generosity, leaning on support systems and small acts of self-care, like listening to an uplifting playlist or wearing a sparkly lip gloss, can help during emotionally tense periods.

Getting my dreams analyzed was more like a therapy session than the mystical tarot reading I imagined. As a lover of a good dream-sharing session, having someone pick apart my dream with me was very satisfying. If you have a particularly troubling or interesting dream, there is merit to getting a second set of eyes on it, whether that is a friend, therapist or dream interpreter.

While I won’t be getting all my dreams analyzed, I did buy some sparkly lip gloss for those particularly rough days.

Western’s Weirdest Dreams

With new responsibilities and wild nights out, college students are no strangers to weird, stressful dreams. When asked to submit their strangest dreams in a Google Form, Western students did not disappoint.

“I had a dream where it was night, and I was running through my neighborhood with a group of people, but it was the same block over and over. The streets were made of hardwood floors. This repeated like eight times. Not a clue in the world what this means.” — Sage

“I was having a regular dream, which was pretty typical and mundane, and then I woke up. I turn to my side and I see a giant floating head of my grandma that basically jumpscares me FNAF [Five Nights At Freddy’s] style. I was never close with my grandma, and I always found her house scary as a kid. I wonder if that had something to do with it.” — Alexander

“I get grabbed and lifted by this red teddy bear, and it tells me in this deep, evil voice to make my dad a sandwich. There was definitely a level of instability in my household when I was little, and I didn’t really understand why or how it affected me for sure. So, I think my unconscious mind would just use that period of time to express those feelings.” — Jill

What does it all mean?

Dreams can feel like a random sequence of events. While they may not always offer life-shattering revelations, their content must come from somewhere.

Items from our waking life, like the stuffed animal on your bed that appears in your dreams, can represent anxieties or events we are still processing. But events and symbols are just one piece of the puzzle. It’s important to look at how our dreams make us feel.

“I like to look at the whole storyline and then find the emotions,” Johnson said. "When you’re feeling emotions in the dream, where does that then relate in your life so that you can get a grasp on what it really is about first before you really go into the symbols.”

At the end of the day, our dreams are as deep as we let them be. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the same can be said for our nighttime adventures.

So, what do our dreams mean? Well… there is no one right answer. If you feel like your dreams are trying to tell you something, it’s worth spending some time analyzing them. If you had a crazy nightmare about an alien invasion after a night out with friends, it might be just a funny story to tell at the breakfast table.