Every morning, I spend an hour or so writing my dreams. I don’t do this to solve them or mine them for data. I do it because when I give attention to the images that appear overnight, my orientation for the day becomes clearer. Dreams rarely tell me exactly what to do, but they offer a bearing, like a compass. They quietly shape the posture with which I meet the day.
Interpretation happens by staying with the image long enough for orientation to emerge, not by deciding what the dream “means.” Interpretation is not conclusion; it is recognition. It is the act of noticing which image stays with you once you are awake. It is not a decision you make in the moment either. It is a process that continues to work on you through the hours, influencing how you move through your day. A dream is not explained away when it is interpreted. Instead, it is recognized for how it alters your internal compass. This often shows up in small, concrete ways — one pauses before responding instead of reacting, recognizes a familiar emotional pattern earlier in the day, or realizes why a situation suddenly feels heavier or lighter than expected.
Belted by the Image: A Vignette
I see this process unfold frequently in the clinical setting, especially during threshold moments — periods when jobs shift, relationships reorganize, or life demands a new version of ourselves. During these times, the inner and outer worlds are in motion. Dreams provide a felt sense of where we actually stand, when thinking alone cannot.
A client navigating a season of intense, competing stressors brought in a dream she was struggling to make sense of. She was up for a major promotion, facing difficult questions in her long-term relationship, and managing growing family expectations. She felt scattered and frantic. In the dream, she was standing in her closet, trying on belt after belt. There were leather belts, silk sashes, and heavy utility straps — all of them uncomfortable. It was too much to stay in the closet.
We amplified the images in the dream as it presented instead of what she had tried—searching for external interpretations of specific elements. Attention shifted away from the question of why she was in the closet toward the pressure of the belts. “I’m being belted,” she concluded. “Stress is coming at me from every direction — even my dishwasher gave out this week. It’s too much.”
Being “belted” gave her the orientation she needed. It moved her from a state of vague anxiety to one of visceral recognition. By acknowledging the pressure she was in the middle of, she began reorganizing how she was carrying it. The dream didn’t change her schedule; it changed how she inhabited her body as she walked into her office, her home, her car.
Living with the Image
Dream images provide a way of orienting toward what is unfolding, rather than standing outside our lives trying to resolve things through effort, heroics, or binary interpretation. In depth-oriented dream work, we let the dream work on us. We stop asking What does this mean? and begin asking How does this feel?
Often, the answer to the second question is exactly the map we need for the day ahead. That map may show up as a clearer boundary, a softened expectation, or the decision to stop forcing clarity.