Your Dreams: A Life Therapy Perspective: Part 1 of 3

Dreaming Dog

If dreams fascinate you, this three-part series is for you. It gives you a new perspective on dreams.

This three-part series is about dreams from the perspective of Life Therapy. Life Therapy views things from a human perspective. It focuses more on describing phenomena than on analyzing and interpreting them. It has a unique view of what dreams are, their different types, and how to interpret them.

First, consider what dreams are. In Life Therapy, your dreams have at least five characteristics, maybe more.

Your dreams are natural phenomena.Humans and other animals dream from the earliest to the latest years of their lives. Perhaps plants and other living things dream too. They’re fascinating mysteries of your life, well worth wondering about. 

Your dreams are yours.You dream them, no one else. They come from within you, your own spirit. You know them in your own mind. They’re not something separate from you. Even if someone makes you dream dreams, you dream them. They’re yours.

Your dreams are stories: Your life is a story, so are your dreams. They’re narratives intimately associated with your life-story, not static symbols with set meanings apart from the context of your life-story. 

Sometimes they’re complete stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end. More often they’re snippets of stories already in progress when you join them.

Your dreams are unique: Your life and each day of it is unique, so are your dreams. No one else dreams your dreams. They are unique to you.

The dreams you dream each night, except for the occasional recurring dreams, are also unique. You haven’t dreamed them before nor are you likely to again. 

Your dreams are informative: Your dreams are both informed by and inform your unique life-story. The meaning of your dreams is in your life-story itself. It’s in you, not a dream dictionary or professional who analyzes and interprets your dreams for you.

Part 2 of series describes seven different types of dreams you have.