Natalia Snider is a certified dream practitioner living in Carbondale. She works with people’s dreams and imaginations to facilitate self-healing. Every month, she analyzes someone’s dream in The Sopris Sun. Anyone can submit a dream for personal analysis or inclusion in this column by visiting: www.dreamhealings.com
Nikki’s dream
I had a dream that I shrunk down to an inch tall. I was in my room and everything was big. Then my mom came in and she couldn’t see me. I started trying to speak to her and she couldn’t hear me and she almost stepped on me. It made me feel really nervous that I couldn’t tell her where I was. Then I had the dream again another night but this time I was in a doctor’s office and the doctor freaked out because I shrunk and she kicked me away. She was barefoot. Both times when I woke up I felt nervous or like I had just had anxiety all night.
Interpretation
This is a dream of the challenges of changing your form. In your dream you shrink to a size where you are not seen or heard. Who you are changes from what was your “normal” to this new and different you. A “new you” is emerging, and you are testing her in the safety of your dream realm and how she will interact with the world when she appears. The anxiety you feel is the uncertainty of how you feel about this new possible you, and how she will be perceived.
Your mother is the first to see you in your new form, but she can’t see nor hear you. Your dream is telling you that you do not feel seen or heard by those closest to you, or that you are afraid you will not be seen or heard when you take on this new form. As well, it is showing you how small you feel when this happens. But remember that in the safety of your dream realm, you get the opportunity to experience what you do not want, so that you know without a doubt what you do want.
In the second dream you shrink in a doctor’s office. This is symbolic of you wanting to see how a professional would respond to your new form. The dream is telling you that you are searching for validation as to why you are not being seen nor heard. You are looking for a reason for this change of form.
The doctor is scared by this new you and kicks you away in fear. What’s incredibly important here is that you mention the doctor is barefoot. This symbolizes that she is vulnerable. Her partial nakedness in a place of business is telling of her reaction not being one of hate or judgment but one coming from a more vulnerable childlike place of fear of the unknown. In this way your dream is asking you not to be angry with her naivety.
It’s not fun to have dreams that are overbearing and riddled with anxiety, yet dreams such as these are capsules of information coming to us in the safest place for us to learn them. In our dream realms we can learn, relearn, act, play and reorganize our lives to see what fits best. We can discover what our fears truly are and how to overcome them. This dream, even though it may not feel like it, is a gift of insight. It is an opportunity to play out these scenarios in this new form — this new you — that your subconscious is bringing to light. It is also a place to take back your voice and to be seen in this new form, or even to change your form again entirely.
In a meditative state I suggest calling the dream forward, remembering all the details you can in this active imagination exercise. Then, this part is the most important, release the limitations of your imagination. Redream each scene with the highest version of yourself rewriting the dream, imprinting new feelings in each new scene.
Try joy — see what it feels like to explore a giant world in a micro body. Try empowerment with a booming voice, glowing body, morphing shapes. Try different perspectives — see through your mother’s or the doctor’s eyes, learning what they may have to teach you. Try kindness and fill your dream realm with love. This is your place of creation and play. Try freedom — release your beliefs and definitions of your world, test which path feels divinely perfect and set that in motion.
Remember, bring back only that which serves you from this meditation leaving everything else in the safe capsule of your dream realm.
