Analysis of Dream Interpretation

My family and I were going to camp on an island together. I had an older brother named Matt in this dream. My mom and I had to pass our drivers test there. No one seemed to notice me or listen to me when I was speaking. My mom forgot to take her test and remembered it a week after she was supposed to take it. No one congratulated me when I passed mine. At camp, I made friends with three girls named Kathleen, Kylee, and Holly. One night I fell into the ocean when I was walking on the beach with my parents, but they did not seem to care. I tried to dial my brother’s cell phone number for help, but he did not seem to care either. Suddenly, it felt like I was being sucked into a whirlpool. Then I swam through an underwater tunnel that went under the island and over an underwater mountain. When I came up to the surface, I was in an ocean that had never been seen before. I decided to swim across the ocean and made it because I believed I could. On the other side of the ocean was a secret island. I took pictures of some things I saw there such as the moon, a tree, people dancing, and people dancing around a fire. Then I swam back to the camp to tell my friends about it. After I had told them, we noticed a circle of stones had appeared around us. We decided to go there the next night and spend the rest of our lives on the secret island. When I said goodbye to my family, they did not seem to hear me. As we left, everyone from the camp waved farewell to us and we took a running dive into the ocean water. There is a great bonfire waiting to welcome us when we finally arrived at the secret island.

What Is the Significance of Your Dream?

I think that the message of this dream is that I need to understand some characteristics of myself or my present situation in life, and then use that understanding to love and believe in myself and move forward on a new path. In the dream, I had an older brother even though I do not have one in real life. His persona might symbolize characteristics I need to acknowledge within myself. The reason he might have been ignoring me might have been to show me that I am ignoring an important part of myself. All of the pictures I took on the island represent that I need to get in touch with something within. Additionally, the picture I took of the tree could mean that I am trying to concentrate on my own self-development and trying to grow in some way. The path to the secret island is through a secret ocean passage. Oceans in dreams symbolize a feeling of empowerment, courage, and freedom. This relates to the symbolic meaning of the pictures I took on the island. It suggests that the only way for me to move forward in my life is to embrace some part of myself that I am presently ignoring. Furthermore, swimming in dreams usually means that you are exploring aspects of your subconscious mind and emotions. The circle that appears around me and my friends as we decide to go live on the island could suggest that I have been stuck going around in circles and that my decision to live on the island will finally set me free from the repetition. The bonfire at the end of the dream symbolizes setting forward on a new path, which is what I have chosen to do by staying on the island.

Do You Believe In Dream Interpretation?

I believe in dream interpretation to some extent. As Rathus (2013) says, I think that dreams have an important role in organizing our thoughts and feelings from each day. Whenever I have an important test or interview, I always dream about failing, forgetting something important, or oversleeping. This suggests that dreams can sometimes reflect extreme emotional states such as with anxiety disorders and depression. However, as I was researching all of the symbols from my dream, I noticed that many of them had very broad similar meanings. I think it is impossible for dream guides to be a valid way to interpret dreams, simply because symbols can have very different meanings depending on context and cultural significance. I also think dreams can be heavily influenced by what someone is thinking about before they fall asleep. For instance, if I fall asleep while I am watching a movie, the characters from the movie tend to appear in my dreams.

Reference

Rathus, S. A. (2013). Consciousness. PSYCH (3rd ed., Student ed., pp. 91-93). Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth.