Dream work · Kansas City & Overland Park
Dreams are the processing of our inner experience — both the external impressions and the internal imprints of all that we go through.
There are many kinds of “dream work,” and many opinions about what dreams are — from leftover processing from our days to the place we meet God. Across cultures and centuries, dreams and their interpretations have been important. In all cases, dreams are where our experiences, our people, and perhaps what cannot clearly be seen are called into a second act of our waking lives.
But being asleep is not the only place our inner stories take dance and performance. Fairy tales, myths, and sand tray are other places that, when done under the right conditions, produce the inner world of symbols, roles, and characters — some from the life of our culture, such as in fairy tales, and some from our personal life, such as dreams.
In all forms, the inner life and its lack of a clear linear story — much like a play or piece of art — must first be inquired about to be understood. Why this dream? Why these people? And even more important: why right now in my life? What do the characters in this dream want — not just what do they do.
Dream work in almost all traditions is the movement from the happenings and flat causal realities of ego consciousness into the life of our intuition, hopes, dreams, and other aspects of our unaddressed, unspoken lives. It is the place our wonder can go and grow.
In my practice, dream work and sand tray are the same family of work. Both are expressive images we pull from within — impressions we use to piece together our personal experience.
If dreams are our way of processing the personal expressions of life, sand tray is our ability for the awake, conscious self to enter those impressions. And much like dreams, sand tray works the feelings, sensations, and emotive intuitions that talk both struggles to address and at times hinders.
Unlike dream work, sand tray uses what we already know and what we may be more comfortable with to find the personal expressions needed to meet life’s dilemmas. And unlike in dreams, with sand tray you get conscious choice. This is especially important when material is tender, when trauma has made sleep and dreaming complicated, or when the dilemmas we face need to be taken at a pace that is sustainable.
Sand tray and dream work: same work, different door. Two of the most direct paths for inner work — when done in a trusted relationship with someone who knows the difference between playing around and a therapeutic process.
Dream work isn't decoding a symbol dictionary. I'm not assigning fixed meanings from a manual. It isn't fast — most people benefit from returning to dreams over a period of months. The deeper work, usually, takes time. And it isn't required. Many of my clients work entirely in talk therapy, with somatic and depth-oriented attention. Dream work is one option — a particularly powerful one — among several.
A symbol is an image that carries more than one fact. A house, a child, an animal, a locked door — these mean what they mean in your life, because of your history with them and the feeling they bring. They are not a code someone else can look up for you.
Inner work is the making of a relationship with those images. You return to them. You notice which ones come back. You let them work on you a little, instead of explaining them away. That is how a dream (or a tray) becomes usable in our waking life.
My work is to help you find not only a general meaning of what shows up in a dream, but your meaning — and why you might be dreaming what you are dreaming at this point in your life. Similar to sand tray, this is best aided by someone who knows the difference between a casual reaction and a therapeutic response. I help you find what your process with dreams looks like, so the work can keep going between sessions and stay yours.
Dreams are not magic. They are a naturally occurring process of the depth inside ourselves and in the world. And when supported well, they are one of the deepest avenues for change and growth.
Related: Sand tray for adults · Jungian therapy · Individual / depth work