2025 Dream Group: Opening Doors, Opening Hearts

Sunday was the first session of the 2025 Dream Group, and I almost blew the opening.

I’d tested Zoom three times the day before. Checked the link. Confirmed the time zones. Still, five minutes in, my audio cut out mid-sentence and I spent thirty seconds talking to myself like a mime while six people stared at their screens. Someone typed “we can’t hear you” in the chat. Someone else typed a thumbs up emoji, which I’m still not sure was helpful or sarcastic.

I fumbled with my settings, got the mic working again, and said something like, “Well, that’s a great metaphor for being unheard.” Nobody laughed. I made a mental note to retire that joke permanently.

The Room That Isn’t a Room

Once the tech sorted itself out, something shifted. People from different parts of the world, different cultures, different lives; all in one virtual room. And for ninety minutes, none of the usual small talk mattered. Because we all share the same language: we dream. Every one of us. And when you bring dreams into a room, even a Zoom room with someone’s ceiling fan visible in the background, the usual social choreography drops away.

The method we use is Montague Ullman’s “If this were my dream…” approach. It’s deceptively simple. One person shares a dream. The rest of us respond as if the dream were our own. No interpreting someone else’s dream for them. No telling them what it means. Just: if this were my dream, here’s what I’d notice.

It sounds easy. It is not easy. The urge to interpret is almost physical. You hear someone describe a snake in a garden and your brain is already composing a thesis about temptation and forbidden knowledge. The discipline is in catching yourself, pulling back, and speaking only from your own experience. “If this were my dream, the snake would feel like…” instead of “The snake means…”

The Door

The first dreamer shared a recurring dream. The group listened; not just to the details, but to the emotions underneath. There’s always a moment in the Ullman process where the room goes quiet. Not awkward quiet, but the kind of quiet where everyone is sitting with an image, letting it work on them. This silence lasted longer than usual. I almost jumped in to fill it. I’m glad I didn’t.

People started asking questions. They offered their own associations. And gradually, the dreamer started focusing on one image: a door.

At first it seemed ordinary. A door. So what? But as we sat with it, the thing unfolded like one of those paper fortune tellers kids make. A door opens and closes. It protects and exposes. It offers safety or freedom. It lets people in or keeps them out. And what happens when a door stays shut too long? The handle rusts. The hinges freeze. It becomes a wall. And walls, unlike doors, can’t be opened.

“If this were my dream,” I said, “I’d see the door as telling me something about what I’m keeping closed.” And as I said it, I felt the words land in my own chest. Not for the dreamer. For me. I thought about the times I’ve kept my own doors shut; tried to protect people from the storms I carry. Told myself I was being strong when I was really just being sealed.

That’s the part of dream group that still catches me off guard, even after facilitating these for a while. You show up thinking you’re holding the container for someone else’s material, and then some image reaches across the circle and grabs you. The door wasn’t my dream. But it was absolutely my message.

What a Door Taught Six Strangers

That’s what happened in ninety minutes with a group of people who’d mostly never met. A dream about a door became something personal for every person in the room. One person connected it to a relationship they’d been avoiding. Another to a career decision they’d been circling for months. Someone else just said, quietly, “I have a lot of closed doors,” and left it at that. Nobody pushed.

This is the thing about dream group that I can never quite explain in a promotional email or an Instagram caption. It’s not therapy. It’s not a class. It’s closer to what happens when you put a bunch of honest people in a room and give them permission to stop performing. The dreams are the vehicle, but the destination is the recognition: oh, I’m not the only one carrying this.

After the session ended and the Zoom tiles went dark, I sat at my desk for a few minutes. The house was quiet. I thought about the door again; my version of it. The one I keep telling myself I’ll open eventually, when the timing is right, when I’m ready, when the conditions are perfect.

The conditions are never perfect. The dreamer knew that. I think I did too.

What door are you waiting to open? And what exactly are you waiting for?