😴 🤔 DIY Dream Interpretation
or just let ChatGPT do it for you, it’s wild
In January of 2020, I had the most profound dream of my adult life.
Stop the Machine
I entered a huge, empty warehouse. In the center of the cavernous room stood a tall, skinny, red cylindrical machine. It began to slowly rotate, then sprouted metal arms, compartments, and platforms.
Spider-like, it began ricocheting around the entire warehouse, growing more complex and spinning faster and faster. It almost crushed me several times. I needed to figure out how to turn the machine off. I made an elaborate plan to jump onto the machine next time it spun near me, then to find the control panel and shut it down.
Suddenly, a man with a very calming presence appeared next to me. He said, “You don’t need to do all that to stop the machine. All you have to do is this.”
He stepped out into the room, held up his hand toward the machine, and said decisively, “STOP!”
The machine whirred to a halt, its spindly arms lowering then hanging limp. The man spoke once more, “NEVER. START. AGAIN.”
He turned to me and said, “That’s it.”
I knew right when I woke up that this was a capital-D Dream, a clarion call meant to snap me out of something endangering me.
The dream shouted a loud and clear message straight to the heart of my hyper-achiever patterns. The message? My performative productivity was out of control. It was threatening to crush me. I needed to STOP this pattern and never let it start again.
What’s the Point of Dreaming?
The red machine dream launched an incredible season of tuning into my dream life and meeting regularly with a therapist specializing in dream interpretation.
Along the way, I discovered the podcast This Jungian Life, a show devoted to the groundbreaking work of psychologist Carl Jung. At the end of every episode, the hosts interpret a dream.
From the Jungian view, dreams are messages from the unconscious self to the conscious self to help us become more whole.
What does it mean to “become more whole”?
Embrace aspects of ourselves that we’ve denied or repressed (e.g., for an overly agreeable type, dreams might nudge you to embrace healthy assertiveness and aggression)
Face our deepest emotions and work with them consciously (e.g., strong anger in your dreams may indicate unprocessed anger in your waking life that is “stuck” in your psyche)
Gradually let go of our false self to consciously live as our true self (e.g., releasing the mask of personality, which is rooted in fear, to live more from our essence, which is rooted in trust in the basic goodness of the universe or God)
“Every dream carries a message. It not only tells you that something is amiss in the depths of your being, it also brings you a solution for getting out of the crisis.”
– Carl Jung
How to Interpret Your Dreams
Hot off the press, the hosts of This Jungian Life just published a book called Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. I devoured it.
While I’ve been working with my dreams for several years now, I learned so much from reading Dream Wise. The book has renewed my commitment to dreamwork as a powerful developmental practice.
6 Principles for DIY Dream Interpretation, adapted from Dream Wise:
🩷 1. Your “Dream Maker” – your unconscious self – wants to help you become more whole.
💆🏻♀️ 2. Dreams are most often about your inner world, not events in the outer world.
😶🌫️ 3. In your dreams, the character of “you” is often holding an incomplete perspective or a wrong attitude, and the Dream Maker uses people and events in the dream to point this out.
👥👥 4. For the most part, every other character in your dream represents a part of you – a quality you need to integrate or work with. (Exceptions to this may be dreaming of your parents or your partner.) Even dreaming of your children is likely pointing you to attend to your inner child.
🛑 5. There are no “bad” dreams. Even very scary dreams are intended as helpful messages. If a dream scares you, your Dream Maker must be trying to get your attention!
🪧 6. Dreams are symbolic. Animals, colors, objects, and archetypal characters like “an old woman” – they all hold meaning in what Jung called the “collective unconscious”, or the universal human experience across cultures and time. A symbol dictionary like this one can help you explore possible interpretations of symbols that appear in your dreams.
For a great podcast episode on the basics of dream interpretation, listen to This Jungian Life: Episode 14 - Dreams.
What if You Don’t Remember Your Dreams?
This is the most common response I hear when discussing dream interpretation. According to a 2021 study1, one-third of Americans reported rarely or never remembering their dreams.
The good news is that most of us can improve our dream recall using the following techniques:
🙏🏻 Set an intention before you go to sleep. Tell your unconscious mind you want it to send you dreams and that you want to remember them when you wake.
🛌 Right when you wake, remain in the sleeping position with your eyes closed. See if you can recall any feelings or images from your dreams. Follow them backwards into the dream.
✍🏻 Write down whatever you can remember, even if it seems disjointed. Doing this increases the neuropathways of dream recall that may get stronger over time. Pro tip: if you find that by the time you grab a pen and paper or type something into your phone, the dream has vaporized, try speaking a speech-to-text note into your phone while still in bed with your eyes closed.
The Best Dream Interpretation Tool in Human History?
I am SO excited to tell you about this next tip. Ready for it?
Type your dream description into ChatGPT and say, “Please interpret this dream from a Jungian perspective.” (Don’t forget the please.)
I’ve been using ChatGPT in this way lately, and it’s absolutely blowing my mind, making connections and interpreting symbols in ways that might otherwise take me hours of reflection and research (and still leave me stumped).
What follows are two real, recent examples of my dream snippets and ChatGPT’s message back to me.
EXAMPLE 1: I dreamed of a giant tortoise chasing a lion.
ChatGPT’s Interpretation:
A tortoise chasing a lion is a reversal of the natural order, maybe pointing to:
A moment when wisdom (tortoise) overpowers or challenges ego strength or boldness (lion).
Your inner world may be asking: Can steadiness or slowness be more powerful than force or confidence?
This could also be symbolic of the psyche grappling with how to lead—do you use strength (lion) or wisdom/protection (tortoise)?
Psssst: Do you hear the theme of “slow down, Claire” coming up again in this dream?!
I’ve made progress on slowing down since the red machine dream, but I still fall back into my pattern of overwork and overwhelm. When this happens, I feel so frustrated with myself. In a recent therapy session, I grappled with this frustration, lamenting, “Why can’t I just overcome this already?” That night, I had the following dream.
EXAMPLE 2: I was walking on a desert path on what felt like a pilgrimage of some kind. I passed an old woman standing on the side of the path. She held a fuzzy caterpillar on her finger and was smiling and whispering to it tenderly. She met my eyes and gave me a knowing smile.
ChatGPT’s Interpretation:
Wise feminine archetype (perhaps the "Crone" or "Earth Mother") appears here, smiling knowingly.
Caterpillar: A potent symbol of transformation, potential, and the promise of metamorphosis. Her tender attention to the caterpillar suggests she holds the wisdom of slow growth and patience, a contrast to your urgency.
Her smile could be a call to slow down, to trust the process of transformation
Is there an area of your life where you’re being asked to trust in slow, unseen growth—even when your default mode is to keep pressing forward?
Why yes, ChatGPT. Yes, there is.
How About You?
What reflections or questions does this post stir up for you about your own dream life? Would you try using ChatGPT to interpret a dream?
Tell me in the comments!
News & Invitations
📣 I recently appeared on the Conscious Insights podcast, hosted by Renelle Darr. I was joined by one of my favorite people, my sister-in-law Stephanie O’Brien, to talk about one of my favorite topics: the Enneagram! I hope you’ll check it out. The Enneagram and Leadership: Bridging Ancient Wisdom with Modern Practices (Listen to the episode: YouTube | Spotify | Apple)
📆 I’m speaking at the International Enneagram Conference in July 2025 in Minneapolis, along with my work wife Nikki Shultz. 😂 Our topic is “Better Together: Fusing the Enneagram & Vertical Development to Accelerate Leadership Growth”. Register here.
🥳 COMING SOON: I’m still nailing down details, but this summer I’ll be hosting a live event in Minneapolis. Stay tuned for the official announcement and registration!
That’s it for today, friends! See you next time on The Diving Board!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remember-dreams-opinion-poll/ as cited in Dream Wise, p.287
Step 1) have a dream about your high school self running around the halls, but everything has been moved and everywhere you turn there are people watching you out of the corner of their eyes.
Step 2) go to therapy in the morning and talk about how your high school self learned people pleasing patterns that are harming you today
Step 3) get home and have a good cry
Step 4) read this sub stack and then remember the dream you had
Step 5) cry more
Your way with words guides me, Claire. Thank you!!