Dreams and the Unconscious
When the Unconscious Starts Speaking Louder
Learn more about a depth psychological perspective on dreams.
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Listen to Chapter 8 of my Soul book
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If most of how we're living is influenced by unconscious forces, how do we become more conscious? Dreams are a direct route to your unconscious because your ego is not standing guard while you sleep, but the mind is stubborn. Upon waking, you'll find that despite wanting to recall your dream, it can slip away quickly. Why is this? Because dreams are trying to communicate something you're not aware of, and the mind fears what it doesn't already know.
The mind has spent decades reinforcing what has worked. The mind will also keep you in a toxic or dysfunctional situation because the safety of the familiar outweighs the fear of uncertainty even if it leads to liberation. Until... enough suppressed energy has gathered around those pieces of you – a discarded passion, a deep hidden truth – that they cannot be contained. You might end up having an affair, quitting your job without having a new one, fall into depression, or find yourself suffering from a strange illness.
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Luckily, your unconscious, which is tasked with encouraging you to expand awareness of who you are at your core, is also stubborn and creative. During this time, your dreams might become more vivid, repetitive, unsettling, or strangely instructive. Images will linger, and emotions will follow you into the day. Soon, what once felt random begins to feel intentional.
This isn’t coincidence. It’s communication.
The unconscious speaks in images long before
the mind is ready for conclusions.
Why Dreams Matter in Midlife and Relationship Transitions
During midlife, we can panic when some of our relationships begin to break down. We might realize we don't feel the same way about our partner anymore, but instead of exploring the deeper truth, we hide from it. The problem is, what we don't acknowledge in ourselves gets projected outside of us. If our deep truth is that our relationship has run its course, but we refuse to deal with that truth, we might unintentionally find ways to make our partner or someone else we care about the bad guy.
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We do this out of fear, but fear of what? It's never obvious. ​I have found that it's not fear of the truth as much as it is fear of having to suffer through the consequences of our truth, the decisions that will have to be made that will hurt others or will be judged by others. We might also fear the very freedom we are seeking. It's complicated.
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This where dreams come in, especially recurring dreams. During the ten years leading up to my midlife unraveling, I had a recurring dream of being chased by armed mercenaries through my childhood home. Not until I explored that dream with a partner and journaled about it for months, could I allow myself to face my deep truth that I didn't want to be married anymore.
Learn more about how dreams lead to insights about relationships.
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Read: A dream about ferrets and post-divorce relationships
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What we do not face by day often visits us by night.
Dreams as Relationship, Not Interpretation
Dream images arise from the deepest layers of the psyche. They are not separate from you. They are expressions of you. Even frightening dream figures exist in service of your development, not to harm you.
Dreams aim to increase self-awareness and prepare the body for change. Insight alone is rarely enough. Responding to a familiar situation in a new, more empowered way requires the nervous system to feel safe where it once felt threatened. Dreams help create that internal safety.
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To work with dreams in depth psychology, it helps to set aside dream dictionaries and the search for a “correct” interpretation. Meaning is not something you extract. It is something that emerges through relationship. Rather than asking what a dream means, ask what it wants to reconcile, restore, or bring into balance.
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Some dreams offer reassurance that you will survive what lies ahead. Others invite humor, play, or a loosening of rigid self-concepts. Still others give permission to feel anger, grief, or desire that may have been disallowed earlier in life. Dreams speak in images because images reach places logic cannot.
Active Imagination and Dialogue With Dream Images
One of the most powerful ways to engage dreams is through what C.G. Jung called active imagination. This involves entering a state of quiet attention and dialoguing with dream images as if they were living presences.
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In active imagination, you do not analyze the image. You relate to it.
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When I explored a recurring dream of being chased by armed mercenaries, I re-entered the dream slowly with a partner, observing from a distance. As I approached what I believed was the terrifying pursuer, the figure shifted shape. The fear vanished. I still did not consciously understand what I was avoiding, but my body learned something essential: I was not afraid to know.
The dream never returned. Two years later, the meaning revealed itself. The threatening figure represented a truth I had been avoiding. I did not want to remain married. The dream did not force the insight. It prepared me to survive it.
Dream work is not about decoding symbols.
It is about building a relationship with what is trying to become conscious.
Recurring Dreams, Emotional Tone, and Symbolic Patterns
While dreams are deeply personal, they also draw from universal and archetypal themes. Your life experience is unique, but it is not isolated. Often, personal dreams echo larger mythic patterns, revealing how your individual story participates in something timeless.
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Dream interpretation in depth psychology is more art than formula. Still, certain orienting principles help guide the process. One of the most reliable is the associations method, which explores what dream images mean to you, rather than relying on fixed symbolic definitions.
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Recurring Dreams
Dreams tend to repeat when something essential has not yet been realized. During periods of major transition, especially midlife unraveling, recurring dreams often intensify. The psyche increases the volume when subtle messages go unheard.
For example, as my marriage began to unravel, I had a recurring dream that my teeth were falling out. The dream felt so real I would wake up with my fingers in my mouth, checking to see if they were still there. The meaning seemed obvious. It wasn’t.
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Remembering Robert Johnson’s guidance (author of Inner Work) that dreams communicate what we do not already know, I journaled, “I already know my life is falling apart.” Then I laughed. The dream wasn’t describing collapse. It was inviting surrender. When I allowed myself to fall apart, my body relaxed. The dream never returned.
Learn about different ways of exploring dreams. ​
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Listen to Chapter 16 of my Soul book: Associations method
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Listen to Chapter 18 of my Soul book: Tending Dreams
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Listen to Chapter 6 of my Soul book: How the Unconscious Speaks: Symbols
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Emotions Are Key
Emotional shifts within a dream often matter more than the images themselves. Tracking how you feel as a dream unfolds can point directly to what is seeking integration.
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For instance, when former partners appear in dreams, lingering resentment or discomfort may reflect disowned traits within yourself or qualities that want conscious development. The dream is rarely about the other person.
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After my divorce, both my former husband and Johnny Depp appeared in the same dream. At the time, I held strong negative associations toward my ex. Exploring the contrast between the two revealed an internal transition. My former husband represented a constrained, overly responsible identity I needed to release. Johnny Depp symbolized a disowned capacity for play, risk, and looseness.
When meaning arrives too quickly, it’s often a defense. Depth work slows the mind so deeper truth can surface.
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Embodied Dreams
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Some dreams register directly in the body. These embodied dreams leave behind a felt sense that lingers after waking and works beneath conscious understanding.
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One such dream gave me a profound experience of safety and support I had never known. I drew the image rather than trying to explain it, capturing what words could not. For months, I intentionally returned to the bodily feeling the dream evoked. Years later, I understood it had been preparing me for a psychologically challenging and transformative relationship. If not for that dream, I sense that my mind would have dissuaded me from allowing myself to be swept up in the romantic encounter it perceived to be psychologically too risky.
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Symbols, Themes, and Dynamics
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Sometimes meaning emerges not from a single image, but from patterns that develop across many dreams. Symbols, themes, and relational dynamics evolve as consciousness expands.
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Water frequently appears in midlife dreams, often symbolizing the unconscious. Early in my process, water showed up as sprinklers and slowly rising floods. Later, it became a looming tidal wave behind glass walls, signaling both danger and protection. Still later, water gently filled a white marble bathroom, reflecting psychological purification. The symbol matured as I did.
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Themes such as learning to advocate for yourself may unfold gradually, appearing in varied scenarios that mark incremental progress. Common dream dynamics include movement between worlds, shifting identities, or fluid transitions. The psyche selects images with remarkable precision, offering only what you are ready to receive.
The feeling in the dream is the key.
Negative emotions often ask you to embrace a part of you that's been repressed.
Working With Dreams in Depth Psychology
Depth psychology approaches dreams as living communications from the unconscious, not symbols to decode or problems to solve. Rather than rushing toward interpretation, depth work listens first. It attends to the images, emotions, bodily sensations, and relational field the dream creates.
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Dreams unfold over time, not in a single insight. A dream may return in different forms, shift its imagery, or soften once it has been met with attention. What matters is not extracting meaning, but entering into relationship with the dream and allowing it to shape consciousness gradually.​
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Understanding is less important than response. When a dream is taken seriously, the psyche often responds with new images, increased clarity, or a change in emotional tone. This ongoing dialogue is how unconscious material integrates into waking life.
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The psyche reveals itself in layers. Some dreams speak to personal history and unresolved complexes, while others carry archetypal or collective themes. Depth-oriented dream work respects this layering and resists premature conclusions, trusting that meaning emerges as the ego’s capacity to listen deepens.​​
Learn more about a depth psychological perspective on dreams.
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Listen to Chapter 22 from my Soul book: The Archetype Behind Your Complex
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Depth work listens first, then relates.
Dreams unfold over time, not in a single night.
The psyche reveals intself in layers.
How I Work With Dreams
I approach dreams as allies rather than problems to solve. In our work together, dreams are treated as living communications from the unconscious that arrive with intelligence, timing, and care. We listen to them the way you would listen to a guide who speaks in images rather than instructions.
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Dreams are not predictive. They don’t tell you what to do or what will happen next. They orient you to what is shifting within you, especially when familiar identities, relationships, or life structures are dissolving. They reveal where energy is withdrawing from old patterns and where something new is quietly forming.
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During midlife unraveling, dreams often become more vivid, emotional, or disruptive. As the psyche reorganizes itself, dreams help regulate the nervous system and prepare you to meet truths that cannot yet be lived consciously. Rather than pushing for clarity, dream work allows meaning to emerge at a pace your body can tolerate.
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Dreams are also essential guides in relational and sexual confusion. They reveal hidden projections, unmet longings, and unconscious expectations that shape how you attach, desire, and withdraw. When relationships feel charged, confusing, or destabilizing, dreams often show what the other person is carrying for you psychologically, and what is asking to be reclaimed within yourself.
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In sessions, we slow the process down. We explore dream images, emotions, and bodily responses without forcing conclusions. Sometimes we engage in active imagination or dialogue with dream figures. Other times, we simply track how dreams evolve as your relationship to yourself becomes more honest and less defended.
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Dream work is not about fixing your life or decoding symbols correctly. It’s about restoring relationship with the deeper intelligence that is guiding you through change, especially when the next version of your life is not yet fully visible.
When conscious direction fails,
dreams quietly take over the work of orientation.
Related Resources
If you’d like to continue exploring your dreams in your own time, these resources offer different entry points into depth-oriented dream work.
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Dream-Focused Videos
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Video: How I Explored and Found Meaning in Four Pivotal Dreams During Midlife Unraveling.​
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Video: Exploring My Preouccpation with My Former Home.
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Video: Finding Meaning in a Recurring Dream Before Midlife Unraveling: Mercenaries Chasing Me.
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Video: A Dream About a Mattress, Dead Things & My Father: What it Revealed.
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Video: Why "Random" Dream Images are Never Random.
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Podcast Episodes on Dreams & the Unconscious
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Episode: Chat w/a Client and How a Depth Psychology Approach to Dreams Changed Her Life.
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Episode: Chat w/Patrick Laine, Founder of Dreamigos app.
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Memoir Excerpts
Coming March 7, 2026​
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An Exploratory Conversation
If your dreams feel persistent, confusing, or emotionally charged, you’re welcome to schedule a free exploratory conversation to see whether working together feels like a fit.
Go here to schedule an exploratory conversation
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