It Is Never ‘Just A Dream’

People often say, “It was just a dream, it does not mean anything.” But in my experience our dreams always mean something, and sometimes it is profound.

Dreams serve important mental, emotional, and spiritual functions in our life journey. Our dreams help us to process and learn from our daily experiences, store memories and important information, master new skills, and manage our emotions. Dreams are also key to our inner guidance, spiritual expansion, karmic evolution, and soul growth. And some dreams are the key to healing trauma.

The first nine years of my life my family lived in a small town, until we moved to a much bigger and more bustling city. Soon after we settled in our new location, I began having the same dream repeatedly.

The content of the dream never wavered. I was back in our hometown, and I was standing frighteningly close to the edge of a large, deep lake. Then suddenly I was running away from a threatening bear chasing me. The intensity of this nightmare never changed, and I consistently woke up terrified.

Around the time I turned 14, it suddenly stopped, and I never experienced the dream again.

Years later, I researched the dream’s possible meaning. I then learned that water often represents emotion, while frequently dreaming about being chased is a sign of feeling stressed, anxious, worried, or fearful. In my dream, I was running away from the negative emotion, or trying to avoid it.

Once I identified the potential dream symbolism, it opened a door to eventually  grasp the full meaning. Suffice it to say that in time I started to remember that as a young child I had experienced abuse at the hands of an adult family member. In early childhood our world is very small and centered around whoever happens to be our caretakers at that time.

Dream interpretation allows us to decode the messages of our dreams, so we’re able to integrate those lessons into our waking lives ~ Sarah Regan

The memories of early childhood trauma is often suppressed in the consciousness of a young mind, until we reach adulthood and are better equipped to process it. As a little girl, I did not have the mental capacity to fully understand exactly what was happening to me, and I was not equipped to process the emotions it triggered. That dream was my higher self repeatedly guiding me towards awareness and healing.

If you have ever had, or perhaps still have a recurring dream that is constant in its content, never let anyone tell you it is ‘just a dream’ that does not necessarily mean anything, because this is very rarely the case.