Dream-Work: Unlocking the Wisdom of Your Unconscious Mind

You spend roughly a third of your life asleep. During that time, your psyche is doing work—serious work—that your waking mind either ignores or dismisses as nonsense.

That’s a mistake.

Dream-work is the practice of paying attention to what your unconscious is telling you while you sleep. Not through some mystical decoder ring or a dream dictionary that says “teeth falling out means anxiety.” Through honest, patient engagement with the images and emotions your dreams produce.

Jung put it this way: “The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul.” He wasn’t being poetic for the sake of it. He meant it literally. Dreams are access points to parts of yourself that your conscious mind can’t reach on its own.

In my own life, a single dream changed the trajectory of everything. I sat with it, reflected on it, and eventually understood what it was telling me—even though I didn’t want to hear it. That’s the nature of dreamwork. The unconscious doesn’t care about your comfort. It cares about what’s true.

So how do you actually do this? Start with a journal. Keep it by your bed. The moment you wake up—before you reach for your phone, before you even sit up—write down whatever you remember. Fragments are fine. A feeling is enough. The act of writing tells your psyche you’re listening, and over time, your recall improves.

Then sit with what you’ve written. Don’t rush to interpret. Notice the symbols that keep showing up. Notice the emotions. Ask yourself: what in my waking life feels like this dream?

You can also bring dreams into active imagination—engaging with the dream images while awake, letting them develop, asking them questions. Or bring them to a group, where other people’s perspectives can illuminate angles you can’t see on your own.

One thing I’ll caution: this work can stir things up. Dreams sometimes surface material that’s been buried for good reason. If you’re going deep, it helps to have someone alongside you—a coach or therapist who knows this territory. Not because you’re fragile, but because the unconscious has its own logic, and navigating it alone can get disorienting.

Marie-Louise von Franz, one of Jung’s closest collaborators, said every dream is like a letter from the Self. You’re getting mail every night. Might be worth opening it.