Understanding our dreams can provide relief in more ways than one

As originally published in Illumination on Medium.com.

Caution: Perhaps don’t read this before lunch, because we will be talking about shit!

For years, even decades, I’ve dreamed about toilets.

The dreams were frequent for many years, but have diminished significantly over the past four years. Last night, however, I had another.

And after all these years, I finally understood what it meant — and it was liberating.

More Common Than You Think

Toilet dreams have been reported as a common dream theme for centuries. Some say it’s the third most common dream. Others claim it’s significantly less. But either way, toilet dreams appear to haunt many.

I’ve googled the dreams often and spoken to friends and psychologists about them too. Depending on the details of the dream, there are many possible interpretations.

Here are some examples:

• Being watched whilst on the toilet could mean you need privacy in waking life and struggle to set boundaries.

• Being constipated or observing a blocked toilet could mean the energy around you is blocked and you are holding on to things that no longer serve you.

• Diarrhoea could mean you are running away from a situation/feeling/person in your waking life.

• Dirty toilets could reflect inner emotional turmoil and feelings of overwhelm.

At the end of the day, however, I believe that we need to find our own meaning of our dreams. Although they may help guide us in the right direction, interpretations are not a one-size-fits-all.

Why Should We Care About Our Dreams?

In a recent NPR interview, Dr. Rahul Jandial, neurosurgeon, neuroscientist and author of This is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life, says “Dreams with a strong emotion and a powerful central image, those are ones not to ignore.” “The dreaming brain is serving a function, and if it gives you a nugget of an emotional and visual dream, reflect on that. That’s a portal to yourself that no therapist can even get to.”

I dream often. Always have. So often I even took a course on lucid dreaming.

For many years I ignored my dreams, but after a friend recommended I write them down, I began to recognise patterns within the vastly different dreams. That revelation probably saved my life, but that’s a story for another time. The point is, I learned to pay attention to my dreams.

Back to toilets :-)

Last night as I dreamed of the toilet, I felt frustrated that this dream was recurring. The upside was that it was much cleaner.

For years my toilet dreams involved the most atrociously filthy toilets, often in dark and dingy surrounding environments — think abandoned locker rooms in a horror film or underground damp and mouldy caves.

I was always desperate for the loo and would run through buildings or other spaces trying to find a less disgusting or exposed toilet, but never could. Blocked toilets and flooded bathrooms with faeces everywhere were also common dreams for me. In all scenarios, I was prevented from doing what I needed to do.

Fear and frustration were always the overwhelming emotions in those dreams, but I never quite understood why.

Last night the bathroom in my dream was clean. The door and window were also closed, so no exposure, and yet somehow I still feared being seen.

But the most interesting part was that when I looked around there was no toilet in the bathroom, once again preventing me from being able to do my business.

Desperate to go, I was awkwardly sitting on the side of the bathtub contemplating that scenario, but towels and other objects in the tub prevented that too.

And in that moment, I finally realised what the dreams have meant for all these years. The feeling was overwhelming — and liberating.

I didn’t feel safe.

And that prevented me from doing what I needed to do.

At that moment I woke up and reflected. Simultaneously I received a strong impulse to write this article, despite my logic telling me to avoid a topic like toilets and shit. But I’m all about following my intuition, so here you have it.

Looking back to all those years when the dream was most frequent and most disgusting, I was in a very unsafe environment in my waking life. I was in a relationship which seemed great on the surface but was highly abusive behind the scenes.

I’ve been out of that relationship for years, which is why the frequency and severity of the dream diminished over time.

But lately, I’ve been feeling very stuck with my business. The dream has highlighted my sense of feeling unsafe again.

Whether that means I need to let go of the business or let go of the belief that I’m not capable or worthy of success remains to be seen.

Either way, I feel a profound sense of relief this morning. Like some weight has been lifted. Like I’ve solved a mystery that’s been present in my life for so many years.

Ironically (or not) the sun is out too, after weeks of non-stop rain. So I’m going for a run with Boris, the four-legged love of my life, and at the same time let go of the fear of any judgement this article might bring. And there’s safety in that.

Wherever you are on your healing journey, always remember that YOU ARE ENOUGH.

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