How to Calm Your Wolves
By: Bridget Webber
Tags: Mental Health, Self, Behavior Change, Psychology, Dreams

Long ago, I came to understand my dreams aren’t a simple mishmash of absurdities. They have a purpose. Untapped, however, they remain obscure.

Like me, you have a guidance system, friend, and creative sage at your disposal who delivers data as you sleep. Its offerings arise in a foreign language though. Not one unfamiliar because it’s from another country, but due to the way it communicates artistically with symbols, myths, and emotions.

You can optimize your life if you learn to untangle the stories woven into your dreams since they reveal your innermost joys, fears, and unmet needs.

What are dreams?

Your dreams are truth-tellers, they illustrate what’s going on in your life and in your head.

The kind you call nightmares stem from data in the subconscious, existing below everyday thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes they arise from recurrent self-talk, or challenging circumstances, linked to charged emotions or events your mind wants to understand.

You don’t experience data you can’t handle until you are ready. Nonetheless, if you don’t want to deal with what ails you, uncomfortable hidden material won’t go away. It settles beneath your waking mind to swim before your slumbering eyes.

“But my dreams make little sense,” you might say. “How can I read them?”

Your subconscious speaks in a format that seems strange until understood. Learn the true language of dreams — not the one-fits-all language but the personal one — and the symbols, patterns, and weird mind movies you see will have meaning.

How your dreams can help you

Deal with the problems your dreams uncover and your waking life will improve. Your confidence will rise and you’ll be happier.

Your dreams can show you which path to follow or reveal what you want most but are scared to acknowledge.

The wolves of the forest

Over twenty years ago I had a repetitive dream in which a pack of wolves snapped at my heels as I escaped up a tree in a forest. The dream was so real I could sense hot breath on my ankles and hear teeth gnashing.

Every night the same thing occurred. I hurried through the forest in the half-light as mist swirled and branches cracked underfoot. My heart raced and the hair on the back of my neck lifted as I twisted to glance behind me and saw the wolves.

Then, the chase began. I was lucid yet didn’t seek to control what transpired until I trained as a counselor and thought, “How can I help people if I can’t manage my own challenges?”

I worked through the psychology section of the city library, sent for books about dreams and sleep, and asked everyone I knew to describe their dreams. Soon, I recognized dream patterns, and friends experimented with my ideas on how to connect with and interpret their dreams.

As I analyzed more dreams, I noted characters and circumstances in night-time imaginings were gifts, contributions from the subconscious; hints of what lay beneath awareness.

Dreams were tools to promote knowledge and growth. I observed the mind shows the dreamer what they need to know in ways they can “feel” rather than grasp with logic.

Indeed, feelings are the keys that unlock your dreams.

Calming the wolves

The first step was to communicate with the safe, non-threatening parts of my dream. So, when I went into a sleepy state, I asked the trees in the forest why they were in my night-time imaginings.

“We are where you hide,” they said. I put my hand on the bark of an oak and thanked it for being my friend. “We aren’t your friends any more than the wolves are your enemies,” the tree replied. “We shelter you from fear but sharpen terror if you stay with us too long.”

I remained in bed for ages the next morning figuring out the tree’s message and realized the wolves were my fears and hiding from them made them more prominent. It stood to reason facing them would make them go.

Determined to stop running and meet the wolves that night, I slipped into Dreamland, hastened through the woods, heard the branches crack underfoot and looked behind me.

My plan to greet the wolves had changed the dream. The creatures took longer to appear and approached me cautiously. When I spotted them, however, my resolve melted, and I ran.

The wolves were crazed when they saw me scarper. Spit flew from their jowls. They growled and, for the first time, I dreamed I felt their teeth in my flesh.

That morning my skin was hot and damp, and crushed by failure, I considered what went wrong. I had been positive at first, but losing my nerve gave the wolves fuel. If only I was calm, they might be calm too.

I tried again and sunk into the dream. This time, though, I thought “I will see the wolves as playful puppies”

When they appeared, the wolves looked menacing and wild. “You are just pups,” I told them. With that, they opened their eyes wide as if waiting for me to make a move. Then I did something brave.

I reached out my hand, and resting it on the head of the nearest wolf, watched her close her eyes and fade. Quickly, the other wolves disappeared too. In that exact moment, I felt a huge surge of compassion for them.

After that night I faced a real-life fear and confronted someone who, as an adult when I was just a kid, bullied me. I didn’t get an apology, but I forgave the individual anyway, and my confidence increased. The wolves never returned.

How to communicate with your dreams

Your dreams relate to your memories and knowledge, so can’t be interpreted exactly the same way as mine. Nonetheless, aspects of your life that bring you joy will also make you happy in your dreams.

Those you dislike or worry about will appear as powerful characters or circumstances.

I was lucid when I experienced my dream — I sensed I was asleep. You need not be sleeping before you connect with your dream images though.

Wait until you are drowsy, or induce extreme relaxation — brainwave entrainment or tranquil music should do the trick. When relaxed, recall your dream and let it play like a movie in your mind.

Note the sounds, sights, scents, and anything else about the dream that catches your attention. When you are fully awake, jot your experience in a notebook.

Questions to consider:

· Which aspects of the dream stand out?

· How did you feel in the dream?

· And afterward?

Relax deeply again. Remember the dream as though it’s occurring. Ask the features and characters in the dream what they represent.

When you are alert, record your discoveries and piece everything together. Your emotions give clues as do symbols, characters, and everything that sticks in your mind.

Dream-work can change your waking reality because it alters how you think and behave and influences what you attract. So, when you next awaken after a night’s imaginative adventures, why not unwrap their meaning and make the most of them.