Once in a while, you will experience a dream that feels like a riddle. It may involve snippets and pieces of events in your life, usually close in time to when the dream is experienced. These snippets may be from news accounts, or they may come from some memory in your unconscious mind. These pieces are woven into the dream theme but are out of character with the actual events.

Symbolic dreams may come in sequences or segments. They may be experienced over several different nights or weeks. The dreams can relate to you or to events that are taking place in the world. Dream themes can deal with events that have happened or with events that have yet to happen.

Symbolic dreams are easily dismissed as nonsense dreams. These are dreams that are often attributed to too much rich food or experiences you might have lived through earlier in the day. Even when a dream seems to make no sense, make a note of it in your dream journal, and you may find a pattern developing in your symbolic dreams.

Make Attempts at Interpretation

To help you identify a dream that has symbolic content, note the apparent theme of the dream. Is it repeated in the dream? Do you have the same dream or a series of different dreams with the same recurring theme? Are there people, animals, or other beings in your symbolic dreams?

Do you have houses or rooms of a house in your dreams? How do the dreams make you feel? Can you hear voices or other sounds? Do the actions in the dreams make any sense to you at first review? What else can you note from your dreams that may be considered symbolic?