Dream Dictionary For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Your dreams are trying to tell you something. By interpreting them, they offer you greater self-awareness, knowledge, healing, and success. Don’t overlook the details in your dreams — important messages are lurking there! Keep a dream diary to uncover themes and insight in your dreams and see how your inner process develops over time. Study the meanings of common dreams because they represent situations most people experience at some point in life. Also, pay attention to symbolic dreamlike experiences that occur while you’re awake because they can be similarly interpreted to reveal what’s going on in your inner reality.  

This cheat sheet can help you find a sense of what a dream is about by looking for key elements that define an overview. You can go deeper by looking for triggering insights that arise as answers to specific questions developed just for this purpose. You can also create and work with a dream diary in a dedicated way to discover what you’re doing at night in the nonphysical realms of consciousness.

Things to look for in dreams

As you begin to examine a dream, look at it in a general way first to find the key components. This gives you an overview and sense of structure, which act as doorways into the deeper experience of the dream. Some of the key components are

• The characters and how they’re relating: Is there a power dynamic? Are they connecting or disconnecting? If you’re in the dream, how do you see yourself?
• The emotional tone: Is there fear, love, humor, boredom, judgment, trust?
• Symbols: What objects, kinds of environment, clothing, or images are present?
• The change points: When and why does the action shift? What might the unconscious choice be that causes the new scene?
• New information: What has been revealed to you by the dream characters or the action?

How to trigger insights into your dreams

Ask questions to take things to a deep, detailed level. It’s easy to gloss over details, but they all reveal meaning, so be conscious of everything. Recording details in your dream dictionary can help the overall purpose and insights of the dream become more evident. Pay attention to the following things:

What are the key elements?

• How would you describe the dream structure?
• What were the main scenes and settings in the dream?
• Was there a sense of time or direction?
• How was the dream lit?
• What was your viewpoint?
• What characters were present?
• What were the primary images, objects, symbols, or patterns?
• Did numbers occur in the dream?

What are the motivations?

• What actions were taken and by whom?
• What choices or decisions were made and by whom?
• What outcomes were reached?
• At what speed was the action occurring?
• What statements were made?
• What was left incomplete?
• What impressions did you have about the dream while dreaming?

What are the feelings?

• What feelings did you or other characters have?
• What senses were you using to perceive?

How is each part about you?

• What do you have in common with each symbol and character?
• How do the emotions, decisions, and actions parallel something in your own life?

Keeping a dream diary

A dream journal or diary helps you monitor your dreams, discover themes you’re focusing on in your inner realms, and, when you read back through past dreams, even realize how true or insightful they were. The more you record your dreams, even if it’s just a dream fragment, the more you’ll remember your dreams. Make the most of your dreams with these dream diary tips: