Examining the emotions you feel — both within the dream and upon waking — is a powerful key for unlocking the dream’s healing message. These dream emotions are related to your waking-life emotions. Working with them helps you to recognize feelings, reactions, and denial that you may be experiencing in waking life.
Emotions lead to feelings, which lead to thoughts, which then lead to actions. It is important to process the emotion before it leads to action. Emotions affect every aspect of your life. Investigating the causes of emotions in dreams will help you begin to understand the causes of your waking-life emotional actions, reactions, and decisions.
Dreamers frequently are surprised by the intensity of emotions in a dream. The action or situation in the dream may not seem to warrant such strong feelings. You will gain deep insight if you pay attention and ask, “When do I feel a similar emotion in my life?” The waking emotion will probably not carry as much intensity because you have learned to camouflage it in order to ignore it.
I believe that our basic and true emotions are those we are born with. They are not what we learn from parents and society, but instead are part of our authentic nature. Imagine a newborn baby. What does a baby feel? All of its actions and reactions can be categorized as GLAD, SAD, MAD, OR AFRAID. It is important to understand that none of the emotions are more or less positive or negative than the others. They all contain both positive and negative energies. The positive or negative charge comes from how the emotion is expressed—appropriately or inappropriately.
See our Vocabulary of Emotions available at dreamsynergy.com/shop
Read more about Dream Studies
