Facing Your Fears | Dream Dictionary

Facing your fears with dream analysis

Analyzing your dreams is a great place to start when you need to figure out what’s actually causing the root of your anxieties and fears.

As simply as grasping the entire theme (blueprint) of your dream you will have enough evidence to start this inner investigation. Once you have gathered all your symbols, emotions expressed, general mood and your own personal take on the dream, you will then be ready to start attacking your fears.

What exactly is fear?

Fear is an emotion or feeling that we feel based on the belief that we are in danger. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions. It has a very strong effect on your mind and body. In dreams our fears usually tend to remain hidden and unfortunately likes to rare its ugly head by manifesting into various symbols such as wolfs, snakes, being attacked or being chased.

Anytime these nightmare type themes appear your unconscious is basically communicating with you in hopes you face what you are essentially avoiding in life. In most cases what manifest as horrible dreams are the most obvious fears we tend to repress. Remember that if you are unable to tackle this issue in your life the dream will be likely to reoccurs and become more vivid.

Article: How To Stop Recurring Dreams

Top 7 Most Common Fears

a fear of death or other people dying
social interactions
fear of getting a disease
fears of failure
break ups
being lonely and rejection
looking foolish in front of others

Benefits of facing your fears

By overcoming fears that hold us back in life means that great otherwise unforeseen opportunities might come your way. Understanding the so called perceived threat in our dream forces us to learn and embrace risk-taking also helps you to overcome a fear of failure. Your unconsciousness encourages you to strip away all of your insecurities and flaws in order to make you a stronger more complete individual.

happier lifestyle
you become a more positive person
opens doors to new jobs and relationships
you will learn how to stand up for yourself
develop courage and wisdom
opens a door to your inner world

Step 1: Understanding Your Emotions First!

Dreams have the ability to tap into the emotional processes so much so it allows the person to gain access to the closed parts of their inner world. Whatever emotion that arises in your dream such as anger, fear, disgusts, sadness or guilt will mirror the exact emotion in your outer world.

Ask yourself in what areas, situations, relationships or people in your life that provoke the feeling you felt in your dream. Maybe this was some sort of emotional trauma such as a bad break up — in dreams this is often a knife or gun shot to the heart or chest of the dreamer.

Step 2: Write down what scares you

Everything starts with awareness. Keeping track of your daily fears & anxieties in a diary or thought record. Many people know what they are afraid of, but won’t admit it, especially to themselves. This resistance fuels your fear.

In the moment, while you’re busy being scared, just keep a mental tab what made you nervous. This exercise helps you draw your fears out into consciousness.

Let’s say for example, if someone told you that you need to do a presentation in one week, but you dread the thought of doing it. Something as simple as a fear of public speaking tends to manifest in our dreams as some sort of hooded cloaked figure that attacks us.

Just by paying attention to what is happening around us and how it affects us helps solve the meaning of the dream. Once you have established what this so called perceive threat might be in your life then your dream will reward you by changing it’s theme — depending your progress the theme will automatically change once you make it aware.

Step 3: Know yourself

Practice mindfulness meditation. You cannot and will not be able to discover yourself until you 10 minutes a day to quiet your mind.
Realize who you truly are, not who you want to be.
Find what you are good at (and not good at).
Find what you are passionate about.
Ask for feedback from the ones that love you.
Seek professional assistance.
Decide what you want your future to be like.

Step 4: Locations

Locations are also major clues that help point where this trauma is arising. While most of the time these dreams occur in our house that directs the dreamer to their psyche/mind or inner architecture.

Buildings in our dream are symbolic in the sense they appear to be related to things we metaphorically build in our lives; a sub construct (mind/psyche) relating to principles, relationships, beliefs. Interestingly enough many people dream of their old childhood home suggesting that there is a damaged inner child or memory that is trapped there.

Other places such as bodies of water bring us to our unconscious emotions, while unknown dark places such as the forest connect us to the unexplored unconscious feelings.

Step 4: Did something trigger your nightmare?

Nightmares can be triggered by many factors, including: Stress or anxiety. If you are someone who randomly had a vivid dream it would be worth investigating if you may have been more stressed than usual. Perhaps you have changed your medication, ate lots of food before sleep, or watched a horror movie the following week.

Not all dreams have meaning and sometimes it may be just your brain processing what you may have seen on the news, a major change, such as a move or the death of a loved one, can have the same effect.

Step 5: Spotting your shadow that hides in the dark corners

According to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who founded analytical psychology said that humans have a dark side to their personality called the “shadow” that tends to appear in our dreams at night.

Basically the shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, behaviours, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings. In order to make these inner fears or feelings conscious would be to recognize the shadow in dreams.

Maybe the what is scaring you in your dreams this whole time was you but you are unable to identify it. The inability to see the face of an attacker in our dreams usually belongs to our own personal shadow. The unconscious mind becomes a wise teacher that can point out these flaws in your dreams.

Step 6: Turning the tables on your shadow

The classic elements of your shadow self include anger, ego, rage, laziness, sadness, cruelty, envy, greed, selfishness, blind desire, and hunger for power. By spotting your shadow one would need to keep a close eye on your behaviours, motives and thoughts throughout the day.

You might come across to other people like a nice person but your unconscious knows the real truth and wants to expose it. Do you have a tendency to judge? Maybe you like to play victim? Maybe you fail to set boundaries by being too agreeable. Does this sound like you or should I go on?

Nobody like to admit their weakness but it has more benefits that you think.