Edmonton Sun
Dreams Can Be Signals
by Sally Johson
A terrifying dream in which she’s trapped in a freight elevator often invades Layne Dalfen’s sleep when she’s feeling stressed.
“The space is so big, I can’t hold onto the walls and the floor is wobbly,” says the 50-year-old Montrealer who analyses other people’s dreams via her home-based consultancy, the Internet, and radio phone-ins.
“It happens whenever I feel out of control and insecure.
“I had the dream when I gave birth to my first daughter who had Downs Syndrome. And I had it again before the first time I went on a major New York radio show.”
But although many people might try to forget such nightmares, Dalfen says it’s important to not only remember the images but also to understand them.
“When we dream, we are problem-solving,” says Dalfen, who wrote the self-published Dreams Do Come True: Decoding Your Dreams to Discover Your Full Potential. www.dreamsdocometrue.ca.
“We are adept are hiding things from ourselves in our conscious life but our unconscious never lies to us.
“If you are in an abusive relationship and you are not looking at it in the day, I can assure you that your unconscious will give you a nightmare – it’s screaming at you to deal with it.”
Her interest in dream interpretation started during analysis when she used dreams as a way to communicate with her counselor.
Although she couldn’t articulate her feelings, she could remember her dreams.
Dalfen has learned that her freight elevator dream is usually a signal for her to seek help in dealing with a problem she’s been trying to handle alone.
Her book gives step-by-step tips on how to decipher the symbols in your dream in order to clear up a concern or make a tough decision in your waking life.
“If you solve the problem the dream will go away and you will move on,” she says.
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One women told Dalfen that she described a piglet was stuck to her breast.
“She had seen her ex-boyfriend the day before and I said, ‘What’s the first thing that comes to mind about him?’ and she said ‘He’s a little pig,’” recalls Dalfen.
The dreamer also described her ex-lover as “needy” and “very dependent.”
“He had asked her to cater the food for his party and she didn’t want to. But she hadn’t expressed that to him and so the dream was revealing her lack of reaction to something she had to get off her chest.”
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“Try to get as many images, characters, actions and feelings from the dream as possible,” says Dalfen, who is a certified counselor and has studied dreams at the Alfred Adler Institute.
She cautions against looking up dream symbols in one of the many dream dictionaries available in bookstores.
“A dreamer is the only person who knows what a dream is about,” she says.
“One person might say ‘I’m dreaming about a cat because someone in my life is being really independent and it’s annoying me.’
“Someone else will say ‘I dreamed about a cat because I’m having a really bad reaction to someone and I’m allergic to cats.”
