In my life and work as a Dream Decoder Coach, I experience periods where people come to me asking about a particular symbol that is showing up in their dreams. One of the most common is the appearance of a snake in a dream; I had a high frequency of “snake dreams” people were asking me about within a short period of time.

Recently, I’ve been having a similar experience, but with a different subject matter. This time, dreamers are asking about the people that show up in their dreams. As a matter of fact, it was the entire topic of a an internet radio show I appeared on.

One of my favorite recent inquiries was from a dreamer who had a dream in which she was looking through a window and saw her sister being beaten up. “I’m curious to know what this might mean,” she wondered.

My response was with a question: “What are you beating yourself up about in your life right now?”

“I’m sorry?” she responded, not understanding my question.

I explained further: “You looking out the window in the dream represents your outlook. Rule number one of dream interpretation is that everything in the dream is the dreamer; therefore, you are your sister in the dream. You need to see how you are beating yourself up in life, because you are also the people in the dream beating your sister up. In what way are you like your sister in that regard? What does she beat herself up about, because you might be doing a similar thing to yourself? Your subconscious mind is using your sister because you would not get the message if it were you in her place.”

When I said that, she understood.

The people who populate your dreams can be representative of a few things:

• People you know can be aspects of yourself that you are familiar with.
• People you do not know are aspects of yourself that you are not familiar with, and are being introduced to you for a reason.
• Pay attention to the context of your relationship to the person in the dream. Is the person someone in your family? Someone you work with? Someone you grew up with? Someone who has passed on? This is important to note, as the relationship could be a part of the subject matter of the dream. For instance, a family member will be about family issues and influences; a co-worker about the workplace; someone you grew up with would be a childhood influence; and someone who has passed on could be about the past (a pun for “passed”), which would be your history.
• Male dream characters can be a reference to your relationship with your father.
• Female dream characters can be a reference to your relationship with your mother.

When you are trying to figure out the “role” of another character in a dream, try this exercise that I recently recommended to a caller on that internet radio show I mentioned earlier. Tell the dream again as the dream character you are perplexed about, and tell it from that character’s perspective.

Using the above example, the dreamer could possibly have stated her dream like this:

I am being beaten up by other people. I see my sister looking through a window, watching as these people hurt me.

What kind of insight could that have given her?

Here it is again, from the perspective of one of her sister’s attackers:

I am beating a woman up with some other people. As we beat her up, another woman watches from her window. She is not doing anything to stop us, so we keep beating the woman up.

Wow. Those shifts in perspective can offer these insights:

• The role of the dreamer (as herself) is as an observer. How in life does she show up as a spectator and not a participant?
• In what ways does she allow other people to beat her up, to attack her, to gang up on her (in the role of her sister)? Does she refuse the help of others, choosing to fight her battles on her own?
• In what ways does she seem to go along with the crowd (in her role as one of the attackers)? What is she beating herself up about? Why is she inflicting pain on herself repeatedly in this manner?

As you can see from this dream, there are many questions to be answered. And all that comes from taking the time to do a little role-playing.

In closing, I want to leave you with this reminder: You are all the performers in the stage productions of your dreams. What roles are you playing, and more importantly, why?

Your partner in character study and shifts in perspective,

 

 

 

 

For more information about how I can help you understand the people (and the other things) that show up in your dreams, you can check out my Dream Decoder Coaching page.