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 will analyze 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
Kay’s Dream
Dreamed I had to go back to high school to meet with a counselor to graduate. This was quite the stretch back in time, being I just had my 20-year class reunion. There was this feeling I had of concern I was missing something I needed in order to graduate.
As I passed by student classrooms I could sense the dread of being caught up in the competition and toxicity, it was palpable. I was happy to not give power to the looks I received when entering.
The school had classrooms around the perimeter of a square building and in the middle was this idyllic nature setting. It could only be accessed from above for animals. There were these landscaped small rolling hills in the middle with trees.
After hearing I was in the clear from my counselor, I stood on top of one of these rolling hills as I was leaving and threw pieces of silver coin confetti in the air. In the dream, I kept encouraging myself to throw them up and celebrate being done and letting go.
Kinda funny dream to have just as school is starting back up. I think it had something to do with me feeling I was okay with letting go of my job if it comes to it and accepting the high school nature.
Interpretation
School dreams come in many forms yet generally from the same emotion: stress. School, for most of us, is the first place we learn what it feels like to be stressed. This creates a core memory attachment in our bodies between stress and school. “School” then gets engraved in our personal dream metaphor dictionary under stressful situations.
Our subconscious dream dictionary is created and engraved by emotions, not places or people. When we encounter a situation that brings the same emotion forward in us is when the metaphor that is attached to that emotional trigger comes forward into our dream time. Work, just as you mention, can trigger many of the same emotional call tags for the school dream, especially if you work within a group of coworkers. The coworkers become the students who triggered the feelings of “competition and toxicity.”
In your dream you are meeting with a counselor who is the gatekeeper to graduation and your finishing of this stressful place. It is interesting to note here that a counselor is not involved generally in the stress that the students or teachers may bring to school but is an outside neutral figure. Look into the situation that you feel this dream may be about and find that neutral helper, because in your dream they are able to “clear” you to graduate. This is someone who you believe holds the necessary keys to help you see something more clearly and help you move onward. Your subconscious is asking you to find this person.
The space is important in this dream because the school is in the shape of a square positioned around “idyllic nature” that only animals can access. What this is saying is that your stress trigger (school/work) is surrounding something pure. Something that no one in that school can touch. Something that cannot be accessed. Yet something that is guarded on all sides. Give time to think deeply about what this may be that is being shown as this Garden of Eden-type place and also why it is encased for you by a stressful place.
The dream has a beautiful ending with you accessing this place. Perhaps not fully into the garden, but you stand atop one of the rolling hills and shower silver coin confetti. Your graduation from this environment has given you access to the beginning of the gardens. Do not take this message lightly, this is a beautiful gift, where you shower this place and yourself with money.
Money often shows up in dreams as tangibly fake like your confetti in this dream and that’s because to our subconscious paper money is indeed fake. No emotion is attached to the paper itself but only in having or not having it. So, often the metaphor for money in dreams comes out as a plaything. The key here is that you used the words “silver coin” to describe the confetti. Our subconscious often speaks through us without our knowledge, sneaking information to anyone willing to decipher. Next time you write down a dream try rereading it, highlighting any words that stand out and see what information your subconscious is leaking to you.