Dreams are strange, wild messengers from the depths of your psyche. In Process-Oriented Psychology (Process Work), dreams are not just random images—they are signals from your "secondary process," the parts of yourself you don’t normally identify with in daily life. Remembering dreams allows you to work with these signals and get in touch with hidden aspects of your experience.
What's the Point of Remembering Dreams Anyway?
In Process Work, dreams are messages from your secondary process—parts of yourself that lie outside your current identity. These could be emotions you repress, talents you haven't developed, or conflicts you're avoiding.
Dreams show what you don’t yet integrate into your waking life.
For example, you might dream of finding an old, overgrown garden behind your house, one you've never noticed before. In waking life, you may be stuck in routines or roles that leave little room for creativity or introspection. The dream could be hinting at an unexplored inner landscape—perhaps a neglected talent, interest, or emotional truth—that’s waiting to be rediscovered and integrated into your conscious life.
By remembering your dreams, you begin to understand these unintegrated parts and how they are influencing your everyday experiences.
Common Misconceptions About Dreams
"I don't see dreams."
Everyone dreams every night—typically multiple times—during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. The belief that you don't dream usually means you're simply not recalling them. Dream recall is a skill that can be strengthened with intention and practice.
"I never remember details from my dreams."
You don't need to. Dreams are not remembered like movies with a clear plot. What matters most is the emotional tone, a striking image, or a simple action that happened. Even small fragments can carry deep meaning. Learning to notice and write down even tiny elements builds the muscle of recall.
"Dreams are straightforward prophecies of my future."
Dreams are symbolic, not literal. In Process Work, dreams reflect your inner state, not external predictions. A dream about a breakup doesn't mean one will happen—it might be exploring a fear, a need for independence, or unresolved feelings.
"Dreams are just based on the content from the previous day."
While it's true that daily events can appear in dreams, they are often used as raw material to express something deeper. That mundane meeting you had might turn up in a dream, but in a distorted or amplified way, pointing toward an emotional truth or inner conflict.
Understanding and working with these misconceptions helps free you from rigid interpretations and opens the door to a more nuanced, personal relationship with your dream life.
Why Your Waking Mind Can't Handle Your Dream
There are many reasons why we don’t remember our dreams, but one of the most important is this: dreams do not belong to our ordinary reality. They arise from a different realm—one that doesn't follow the logic, structure, or linear time of our waking life. Because of this, when we begin to wake up, our everyday mind kicks in and tries to "normalize" the dream experience. It attempts to translate something wild and foreign into something familiar and sensible.
In doing so, the mind often discards or reshapes parts of the dream that "don’t make sense." What remains isn’t the dream itself, but a domesticated version of it.
Imagine your dream is like a surreal, living painting in a strange language—and your waking mind rushes in with crayons to redraw it as a cartoon it can understand. The result might be more digestible, but the mystery, power, and message of the original are often lost in translation.
Take this example: someone dreams they're swimming through a room filled with thick honey, while distant music plays backwards. Upon waking, their mind might say, "Oh, I guess I was dreaming about being stuck at work again," and file it away. But the actual dream experience—its odd texture, the slowed motion, the eerie sound—might speak to a deeper sense of emotional overwhelm or inner resistance that doesn't yet have words in waking life. By accepting the dream as it is, instead of trying to make it make sense, you stay closer to its original message.
What It Really Means to Remember a Dream
As we’ve seen, your waking mind tends to domesticate the wildness of dreams. So when we talk about remembering a dream, we’re not talking about writing a neat story with beginning, middle, and end. True dream recall means preserving the raw, often illogical, strange experience—before the mind rushes in to normalize it.
If what you remember feels flat or overly logical, that’s often a sign that the essence was lost in the transition from dream to waking thought. The strangeness is important—because your dream does not come from your everyday identity. It comes from your secondary process, the part of you that’s unfamiliar and still unfolding.
A well-remembered dream is usually quite short. What matters most:
- What was actually present or happening (not what someone supposedly thought or felt)
- The overall atmosphere or emotional tone
- Specific sensations, images, or phrases that stood out
- What you remembered should still carry some of that weird, unnatural dream flavor. If everything you write down seems perfectly logical or mundane, you’ve likely recorded your mind’s explanation—not the dream itself.
Examples of Remembered Dreams
Here are a few examples of dreams that show how even short or strange fragments can carry rich meaning:
"I was walking through a city made of glass." This dream fragment carries a surreal, delicate feeling. The dreamer may be navigating a situation in waking life that feels transparent, exposed, or fragile. Rather than trying to make logical sense of it, we might explore where in their life they're being overly cautious or feeling easily shattered.
"A bear was sitting calmly at my dinner table." This image combines something wild with something familiar. It might reflect the presence of power, instinct, or aggression that has become more accessible or acceptable. What aspects of the dreamer’s life or self are finally allowed to "have a seat at the table"?
"I was underwater, but I could breathe fine, and everything was glowing blue." The sensation of being submerged yet comfortable may point to emotional depth or intuition. The dreamer could be entering a more fluid, feeling-oriented phase in life, where clarity (glow) is found in unlikely places.
"I lost my shoes in a crowded train station." This small, almost mundane event in a dream can hold deeper layers. Shoes often symbolize direction or readiness. Perhaps the dreamer feels unprepared or disoriented in some area of waking life.
"A child kept handing me locked boxes, but I had no keys." A potent image of mystery and withheld meaning. This could reflect an emerging inner process—the child—as offering something valuable but not yet accessible. The dream might suggest patience, curiosity, or inner work to unlock those parts.
These examples show that a remembered dream doesn’t have to be long or dramatic. What matters is that it stays alive—strange, symbolic, and emotionally resonant. That’s the space where meaningful interpretation begins.
How to Capture a Dream Before It Disappears: Practical Tips
- Voice recorder: Sometimes it’s easier to speak your dream aloud right after waking. This helps preserve tone, emotion, and spontaneity that can fade if you wait to write. Plus, it allows you to capture fragments quickly before the rational mind takes over.
- Keep pencil and paper nearby: Keep a journal within arm’s reach of your bed so you can write before moving too much. Movement and light can pull you further into waking consciousness and make dream details slip away. Writing immediately helps you catch the raw texture of the dream.
- Try to wake up during or right after a dream: You can use gentle alarms that don’t jolt you or drink a bit of water before bed so your body naturally wakes up in the night. Waking during REM sleep increases the chance of dream recall. Notice how you feel when you wake up—emotions often linger even if images don’t.
- Make it a practice: Dream recall is a skill that grows stronger with attention. The more you try and value what you remember, the more your psyche offers in return. Over time, even small fragments will grow into clearer, more memorable dreams.
So, You Wrote Down Your Dream—Now What?
The next step is analysis. In Process Work, dream interpretation is not about decoding a fixed set of symbols, but about unfolding the unique, personal experience within your dream. The meaning of a symbol in your dream isn’t found in a dictionary—it’s found in the way it connects to your life.
You can use "AI dream interpreter" app as a creative, supportive tool to brainstorm and play with your dream symbols. It can help you explore different interpretations, expand the dream landscape, and lay the groundwork for deeper insight.
For more in-depth analysis, we might need to look at other aspects of your life—your emotional state, current challenges, or recurring patterns. When we place the dream in the context of your waking experience, it can become a powerful map, helping you recognize the roots of inner conflicts and hint at emerging solutions.
We go deeper into dream exploration and integration in a separate article.
Conclusion
You dream every night—not remembering is not a lack of dreaming, but a lack of recall. And you don’t need to capture every detail; even one strange image or fleeting emotion can open a window into the parts of yourself that remain hidden in daily life. Dreams aren't here to confirm your reality; they're here to expand it. By practicing how to remember them, you're not just building a habit—you’re forming a relationship with your deeper psyche, one moment of strange beauty at a time.
References
Process Work Institute – Dreambody Work
The Dreaming Process – Amy & Arnold Mindell
Silvia Camastral – Dream Work and Process-Oriented Psychology
Innerwork – Amy & Arnold Mindell
Dreambody by Arnold Mindell (Book Link)
Dreaming While Awake by Arnold Mindell (Book Link)
Working on Yourself Alone by Arnold Mindell (Book Link