I have a strong journaling practice.
A lifelong early riser, my schedule works well with my preschooler’s current bedtime routine – she goes to sleep at 8, I go to sleep soon after and wake at 4.
Every morning, without fail, before my husband and daughter wake up, at 4am before I start my work day and the mom routine of the morning, I go to my home office, turn on my Deva Premal chanting music, and journal about the dreams I had in the night.
It used to annoy me that every night felt like going to the movies – I dream vividly, often, and in multiple vignettes per night and can almost always recall them (a muscle I’ve developed after years of dream journaling, probably).
Dream Analysis As A Psychotherapy Tool
But now, and especially after I learned about Gestalt dream analysis back in the years when I lived at Esalen (veritable ground zero of Gestalt psychology), I’ve used it as a complementary tool in my own psychotherapy and both dream recall and dream analysis have become not only a staple of my morning routine, but also a powerful complementary tool in my own relational trauma recovery work.
I have stacks and stacks of journals from the last 15 years, all filled with dreams and it’s incredible to read back through them and watch how the themes have evolved, changed, and softened the more I’ve done my personal work and the more empowered I’ve become.
I deeply believe that dream analysis – particularly Gestalt dream analysis – the modality I was trained in – can be a powerful tool and complement to any relational trauma recovery work that we do.
Indeed, I often talk to my therapy clients about their dreams and in our sessions together lead them through the Gestalt analysis framework to see what their nighttime messages might be trying to tell us.
It never fails to amaze me (and them!) how spot on and helpful their dreams can be.
Today I wanted to share a background on Gestalt Dream analysis, walk you through how it works, and provide examples of what it looks like. I’ll then provide you with some prompts to analyze your own dreams.
If you’ve ever been curious about dream analysis, particularly using it as a complement to your own relational trauma recovery work, keep reading.
Gestalt Dream Analysis: A Complementary Tool In Relational Trauma Recovery Work
Dreams have, since time immemorial, been a source of fascination for humans.
For instance, as evidenced by paintings on cave walls from the Neanderthal period and clay tablet journals dating back to 3000 B.C., dreams have been recognized as an important aspect of human experience since the beginning of time.
