How to Interpret Your Dreams —Uncovering Dream Meanings

Do you ever interpret your dreams? Do you believe your dreams have meaning? Interpreting your dreams can help you understand what’s going on in your subconscious mind and in your outer life. It’s also a wonderful way to get in touch with your intuition – your inner knowing.

Should you go to the library to borrow a book about dream meanings then? Yes and no. Based on my own experience, some knowledge of dream symbols can be helpful when you’re uncovering the meaning behind your dreams. However, even more important is to tune into your intuition and understand what the dreams mean to you personally.

How I started

I began to interpret my dreams on a regular basis after my colectomy surgery in 2016. After the operation, I no longer had a colon but instead needed to learn to live with an ileostomy. One change in my life was that I woke up every night to go to the toilet to empty my ostomy bag. Interestingly, that is also when I started to remember a lot of my night time dreams. Nowadays, as I have a J-pouch, I still wake up at nights to use the toilet – and usually remember at least bits of what I’ve been dreaming about during the night.

Interpreting my dreams have given me a lot of new insights about my subconscious mind. It has also helped me to practise listening to my intuition and to understand how my dreams are related to the events in my life. Thus, I’m excited to share a few tips for dream interpretation with you! First, I’m going to share an example dream (or rather a nightmare) I had earlier this autumn. Analyzing it was very eye-opening for me and I still think about the lessons I learned from it. After that, I’ll share a few easy ways that can help you understand your dreams better.

The wolf dream

I was standing on the shore with my children. We were wearing thick winter clothes but somewhat carelessly, I took them for a swim in the ocean. While we were swimming, a big grey wolf suddenly appeared. It caught my teenage daughter and dragged her away. All I could do was to stand still and watch the wolf disappear – that’s how stunned I was.

Before we had fully realised what had just happened, more wolves appeared. They were all big and scary, almost human-like. My children and I started running away from the wolves in the ocean. My little son was slower than me but because I was so scared of the wolves, I left him behind me. The wolf caught my son and killed him. I was also holding a baby in my arms, but she was becoming too heavy to carry so I left her for the wolves.

I got out of the water and kept running through a village. All this time, the wolves were behind me, and I was in horror. They killed every person in the village while I just ran and ran. On my left side, I saw a small church. For a while, I considered whether to go there to look for a shelter. I decided not to as I didn’t trust the priest of that church. A bit further away, I saw another, bigger church. That’s where I headed.

When I arrived at the church, I knocked on the door vigorously. A priest opened the door, and I rushed into the building, closing the door right behind me. I noticed I had left the priest on the other side of the door but was too scared to let him in anymore. Nevertheless, the wolves had already arrived.

I held onto the door while the wolves were scratching it on the other side. A big black nail was poking through a hole in the door. When I heard the wolves had left, I looked to the yard through a window. What I saw was a group of those scary wolves and two priests standing among them. The priests were wearing long dark cloaks and had an evil look on their face.

I understood I wasn’t safe and climbed up to a little hiding place close to the ceiling. After a while, a priest appeared below me and began to talk to me. He assured me everything was alright and that it was safe for me to come down. Intuitively, I knew he wasn’t trustworthy. However, I was so tired of being constantly afraid and escaping the wolves, that I just really wanted to believe what he was saying.

That’s when the dream ended.

An example interpretation

This wolf nightmare had so many significant symbols and messages that I’m not going to explain all of them – the ocean, the churches and the priests, the village etc. Instead, I’m going to pick up a couple of interesting aspects of this dream.

Even though I don’t have children, I had recently been dealing with a fear related to my possible future family. I had been thinking whether me listening to my intuition and “going with the flow” would make me an irresponsible parent. What if I would just abandon my kids out of an impulse? This showed up in the dream as well – taking my children to the ocean, leaving them to the wolves, fighting my intuition in the church.

I also understood that the wolves represented my own fears that I didn’t want to face. I was afraid to feel my feelings and face my fears so I just kept running away from them. Finally, I was completely exhausted. I was even ready to trust the priest, even though my intuition was telling me otherwise.

This made me think about the time I had just been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2015. I was trying all sorts of restricting diets and medications out of fear. Desperately looking for a cure for the illness, I was rushing into making decisions, not being able to ground myself first.

After having this nightmare, I’ve been in many situations when I’ve noticed I’ve been “running away from the wolves” again. The memory of this dream has reminded me to pause and feel my feelings in challenging situations.

Next, I’m going to share a few simple tips that can help you get started with dream interpretation!

Tips for interpreting your dreams

1. Take time to remember and understand the dream you had

I find it’s best to do this straight after waking up – whether that’s in the morning or at night. If I decide to think about my dream later and first, go back to sleep or have breakfast, I may forget the dream altogether. Whereas, if I stay in bed for a while tuning into my dream and its meaning, I can remember a lot of it. I might also receive more insights about it throughout the day. Sometimes, I write my dreams down. Some people enjoy keeping a dream journal so that’s also something you can try.

2. Pay attention to the symbols, settings, people etc. in your dream

What kind of symbols did your dream include? What was the environment like? Were there people or animals in your dream?

Basic knowledge of dream symbolism can be helpful. For example, whether we’re talking about dreams, astrology or tarot, water is usually given meanings like feminine quality, emotions and the subconscious. (Think about the ocean in my wolf dream.) When I was beginning to learn dream interpretation, I did quite a lot of research on (dream) symbolism.

3. What did you feel and intuitively know during your dream?

Now, let’s say you’re searching for symbolic meanings for “sunlight”. The results you get are something like “happiness” and “good fortune”. But when you think about the dream you had, you remember being in a sunny field feeling anxious and fearful. How confusing!

While I find knowing something about dream symbolism is helpful, tuning into the feelings and intuition in your dream is essential. Whether you were feeling anxious in a dark and scary place or in a sunny field among happy people, creates a different contrast. Or maybe the people in your dream seemed happy, but intuitively you just knew they were faking it?

4. Think about the dream in relation to your life situation

This is when you really need to listen to your intuition. Is the dream you had offering you a message about something that’s going on in your life? Are you avoiding facing and feeling something in your relationships? Have you felt burdened by work recently? Do you have secret hopes and wishes?

In longer term, you may notice certain dreams occurring during specific times in your life. For example, I used to have a lot of nightmares of men trying to rape me. I realised that those nightmares happened when I was feeling afraid of men, authority and “male power” in my outer life and relationships. Nowadays, I very rarely have that kind of nightmares.

Bonus tip: Ask for help

If you are having a lot of nightmares or dreams that make you feel anxious, consider reaching out to someone for help. I usually share all my horrifying nightmares with a close friend as that soothes my mind. A couple of years ago, I was also seeing a psychologist (for other reasons). At one of our sessions, I opened about my fears related to men, power and sexuality. That was very helpful for me back then and probably one reason I started to have less nightmares of rapists.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article! Interpreting my dreams have become such an insightful and fun part of my life, that I love to encourage others to try it too. Do you interpret your dreams? Please share in the comments section below or on my Instagram and Facebook pages!

Sending you love, light and beautiful dreams,

Iiris Linnea