Venturing Into Unexplored Terrain

This column is intended as entertainment. But psychologists who work with clients’ dreams say that dreams can hold a tremendous amount of significance; a particularly disturbing or repetitive dream may indicate the need to see a therapist.

Dear Nancy: I am a 40-year-old homemaker with a good marriage. Now that my daughter is grown, I am interested in finding a job but I am anxious because I have been home for so long. I have also been depressed for a long time and feel a job will help me with that. I’ve had this dream off and on for two years. - Vicky

I am at the top of a basement stairway looking down. I see antique clothes in a dark and dingy room. Although I am anxious and scared, I go down. I look through the rooms to find a closet door. When I open it, I see it leads to a long narrow hall or tunnel. I crawl through it. I find a very neat and clean room that belonged to a teenage boy. I then discover another room that is dusty and dirty and full of antiques. I go through all of the old stuff and find pictures of the boy’s room. When he was about 17 years old, he shot himself in the eye and died. I see a picture of it and there’s no blood, just a close-up of the eye and it looks like shattered glass.

Dear Vicky: Many dreams ask us to look at parts of ourselves we may not be consciously aware of or comfortable addressing. Dreams of basements generally fall into this realm in that they can represent the unconscious, or deepest level of your mind.

In this dream you are willing, although anxious and afraid, to explore these areas of yourself.

Dark and dingy rooms tell us that these are areas that need attention and cleaning up.

Antiques may symbolize old patterns or belief systems that in the past have served their purpose but now need to be released. The antiques are mostly clothing suggesting that they have to do with the roles and attitudes you have had. It is now time to clean up and discard them.

By going through the tunnel, you are traveling even deeper into yourself. Tunnels are symbols of passageways into new insights, connections from one phase of life to another. Here you find out about the young man who killed himself. Did you make choices at a young age that hurt or killed your spirit? This dream character is a young man so I would assume that this killing pertains to masculine traits, i.e. intellectual, assertive, worldly, adventurous. Perhaps it is this killing of the spirit that has caused you to be unsure of yourself and despondent about your life. A good counselor could help you explore this.

Lost parts of ourselves and our lives often show up in our dreams. By retrieving and resurrecting them we grow into our full potential and become happier, more effective human beings. Let me know how it goes, Vicky.

Looking ahead

A workshop on “Unleashing the Creative Power of Dreams” will be presented in Spokane by Jeremy Taylor, Sept. 29 through Oct. 1. Taylor is deeply committed to working with dreams as a means of personal empowerment. I want to encourage you to attend and I am hoping to meet some of you there! For more information, contact the Samaritan Center in Spokane, (509) 747-8214.

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