HealthyGamerGG - What Your Dreams Are Actually Trying To Tell You

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Dr. K breaks down the science of dreams and why they may be one of the brain’s most powerful ways of communicating hidden information. While dream interpretation often sounds mystical or unscientific, Dr. K shows how even from a clinical perspective dreams can reveal suppressed emotions, defense mechanisms, and subconscious knowledge that you miss in day-to-day life. Through real patient stories, he illustrates how dreams connect to relationships, addiction, and major life decisions. He explains why logical, data-driven people often benefit the most from dream work, since their intuition and emotions get pushed aside. The episode also covers practical steps like keeping a dream journal, mapping emotions onto real-world experiences, and interpreting symbols through your own personal associations. Topics include: Why evolution conserved dreaming and REM sleep across mammals How suppressed emotions resurface through dreams PTSD nightmares as evidence of dreams’ real-life connection Defense mechanisms and why the brain hides information from you Real cases: dreams about planes, snakes, and addiction recovery Practical tools for dream journaling and emotional interpretation Why the “symbols” in dreams matter less than what they mean to you This episode bridges hard science and human experience, offering a framework for using your dreams as a guide to understand yourself better and make clearer choices. HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. And so we start by understanding what literally is meditation. How does experience shape us as human beings? How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? And so by understanding our mind, we understand a very, very simple tool, a crucial tool that we have to learn how to use if we want to build the life that we want to. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast.

I'm Dr. Al-Ocinoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Today, we're going to talk about how your brain tells you what it wants, using things like dreams. So it turns out that your brain has all sorts of information that you were not aware of,

And one of the major mechanisms it uses to talk to you, which I know sounds weird, is actually by using dreams. So, hi, I'm Dr. Kay. I'm a psychiatrist. And when I was in my psychiatry training at Harvard Medical School, I thought all this dream interpretation stuff was absolute BS. Completely unscientific. And I still sort of believe that. But it turns out that if we take a truly scientific perspective, which I hope to walk y'all through today, we will see how useful dreams can be. And the weirdest part about this is that the people who think dream interpretation is BS are actually the people that benefit the most from dream interpretation.

So now that sounds weird, but like, hear me out. Okay. So when I was at HMS, I'm like, I studied to become a monk and was super into like mindfulness and things like that. So I got kind of like two kinds of patients. So one sort of patient was like someone who was like in tune with their chakras, like doing taro, like communicating with their guardian spirit. And they loved talking about like the deep symbolism of dreams.

A really good example of this is I had a patient and then one of my supervisors recommended this book called The Cat by Marie Louise von Franz, which is a tale of feminine redemption. So Marie Louise von Franz is like one of Carl Jung's contemporaries. So this is a book that like talks about like the cat symbolism and dreams and like has all these like tail of the cat and the journey to the Virgin Mary and cat and mythology and all this weird like archetypal sort of stuff. And my supervisor sent me this stuff and I was like, look, this stuff seems like complete BS to me. So these people who love dream interpretation and taro and all this kind of stuff, that's not actually who I found it really useful for. I found it really useful for C-suite executives, developers that I was working with, e-sports professionals, and all kinds of pragmatic, logical, hyper-data-based people.

People who are like, show me data, show me Excel, show me sources. I want the scientific approach. these were the people who came to me wanting to learn yoga and meditation and evidence-based like clinical psychiatry to optimize their performance so that they could make effective trades and make like a billion dollars over the course of three months instead of half a billion dollars. And that may sound kind of weird because like how would dream interpretation help these people? But this is one of the key important things we need to understand. So our brain has a ton of information.

Okay. And the more that we become hyper-logical, hyper-data-driven, the more the emotional, intuitive parts of our brain literally get suppressed because they're not useful. And the more that they get suppressed, the more that we lose access to really important information. So that may sound weird because these people are hyper-logical and hyper-pragmatic, but it turns out that the more data-driven you become, the more your brain suppresses, suppresses certain sources of information, like emotions and intuition. And for these people that I was working with, what I sort of found is that if you're a

program or working at a job, like sure, there's a lot of like pragmatic code that you need to write, but that there's an emotional component, an intuitive component of like, oh, even though your boss says that like, oh, yeah, it's totally fine, like, we'll give you an extension if you need it. There's an intuitive part of your brain that is kind of like warning you, like, hey, this is not really like a great environment. Like something is wrong here. And what I sort of found is that connecting these people with their emotions and their intuition

allowed them to achieve flow states more and make better decisions. So the first thing that we've got to understand is that our brain has a ton of information that we do not have access to. So the best example that I can kind of think of is the other day I, you know, got out of my car and I brought groceries in. And then I was like, oh, where are my keys? And I looked around for my keys. I looked everywhere. I couldn't find my keys. And then my brain, like, after 10 minutes of searching, is like,

oh, by the way, your hands were full with groceries. So you set the keys down on top of the car. And then I went back and I walked and I grabbed my keys and sure enough, there they were. But this is kind of weird if you think about it, right? My brain had access to this information all along. But like, it chose some random time. It's not like even though the brain had the information, I had access to it, which is why I spent 10 or 15 minutes looking. So let's start with a couple of scientists. facts about sleep and dreams. The first thing that we have to understand is that evolution doesn't waste any space. We don't have anything in the body or the brain or the mind that doesn't serve some kind of function, okay? And the first really weird thing is that dreams are highly

conserved in animals and humans. So basically mammals, all mammals dream, and we sort of know that they dream because there's certain signs of it, and we all dream. So there must be some utility to dreams, otherwise we wouldn't dream. Second thing that we know is that REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, which is the last phase of sleep, tends to be the most restful for human beings. So when human beings get their REM sleep interrupted or they don't get sufficient REM sleep, their mental health, their physical health, their stress levels, their cortisol levels, like the body and brain don't function well unless we get sufficient REM sleep.

We also know that REM sleep is when dreaming happens. So there's clearly a correlation between dreaming and health and fitness of the human being. So that's like the first thing, that dreams exist, they happen in animals, they happen in humans, and there's some reason. Now the question becomes, why, though? What is the function of dreams? What do they do? And this is where we get to another really interesting scientific kind of observation,

which is that dreams are not really random. Hey, all, if you want to learn more about different mental health concepts, check out Dr. K's guide. experience shape us as human beings. How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? So it doesn't really matter what studies you look at. It turns out that meditating for about 20 minutes a day is what we're shooting for. And if you want to go further with meditation, we just added a feature to help you build a consistent practice no matter where you are in your journey. With meditation tracks, you can set goals and track your progress through beginner, intermediate, and advanced paths. Each practice builds on the previous weeks. So you're not just developing a routine. You're leveling up your meditation

skills along the way. Get Dr. K's guide and meditation tracks today at Healthygamer.ggy slash guide or click the link in the description below. Now back to the video. So if you sort of think about it, dreams are always constrained to the experience of the human being. You don't dream in languages, you don't know, you don't see things in dreams that you've never seen before. Everything within your dream has to be anchored in some way to your experience in life. Now, that doesn't mean that there's clearly a meaning to it. It could all be random, right? Because it could just be like random images that don't mean anything. But I do think it's an important scientific point to sort of notice that it is anchored in some way with like things that you've encountered in real life. And then the third thing is

like the significance of dreams. And we actually have good evidence that what happens in your dream is tied to in a very tight way what happens to you in real life. And the best evidence of this comes from nightmares in PTSD. So when a human being has a traumatic emotional experience, a traumatic experience, let's say. One of the diagnostic criteria of PTSD, when you get traumatized and then like that affects you in a way that debilitates you and you have a clinical diagnosis that interferes with your life, one of the key clinical features of PTSD is actually nightmares. So if you have a clinical diagnosis, trauma and you have persistent nightmares, those two things are related. And we also know they're related because as you treat PTSD and the symptoms of PTSD go down, their nightmares actually start

to go down as well. And when the nightmares disappear, then the people are feeling well. So we actually have a really concrete piece of evidence that what happens to you in life, especially emotionally, it manifests in some way in your dreams. Now, just because there is a evolutionary reason why we dream, that doesn't necessarily mean that the symbols or archetypes that people describe in dreams are actually correct. Like, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but just because scientifically we know that all people dream and that if you have PTSD, you have nightmares, you have a lot of like psychoanalyst, people like Freud, right, who said, okay, if your teeth are falling out in a dream, that means

you are afraid of death. If you have a dream of a phallic object, that means you're in the phallic phase in penis, penis, penis, anus, anus, alas, phallus, phallus, phallis. So you have all of these, like, texts by psychoanalysts and therapists about archetypes and symbolism where they say, like, this is true. I don't really buy that on a scientific level. I think that it's fine to make that interpretation. It's fine to have that as a hypothesis. But there's a gap for me between the science of dreaming and all of these psychoanalytic interpretations. But we sort of know that there is some connection, right? So how do we understand what that connection is. And that's where we have to get to literally how the brain and how

the mind work. So the first thing that we have to understand about the brain is that it processes a lot more information than you are consciously aware of. So like my favorite example of this is if you look at these like spy movies, right, where it's like someone is training to be a spy. There's like the senior spy, like the mentor spy and the junior spy and they like go, they like walk down the street and they sit in a cafe and then the mentor spy is like, okay, which person had a yellow handbag? And then the trainee spy is like training their mind to recall this little bit of information and who's sitting over there and which person was on their cell phone and what language was the person who was talking on the cell phone speaking.

Like there's all these like, there's like all this like training, right? This like spy training. But that's actually like kind of true. Like our brain works like that. We have, we process a ton of information every single moment. And our brain basically like doesn't know what's. useful in what isn't, so it stores that information subconsciously. And then oftentimes what I'll find when I work with my patients is like, okay, let's say

someone's dating. And they're in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. And in the honeymoon phase of the relationship, they didn't realize that there were certain red flags. They always had like, oh, they had a second cell phone and they said, oh, yeah, this is my work cell phone. And they, like, would never let them see that cell phone. We kind of ignore all these red flags, right, because of the honeymoon phase.

But stop and think about that from like a cognitive perspective. What that means, in order to ignore something, you have to know it. So your brain is actually like processing a ton of useful information that for some reason you are not consciously aware of. And then what happens after you inevitably break up is you go back and you re-examine the information and you're like, holy crap, all of the signs were right there. There were so many red flags that I ignored. And it turns out that it's not just that our brain is ignoring red flags, but that's what's really important for like C-suite executives. When I work with them on this kind of stuff, they realize like, okay, the more I get in touch with my intuition. So I worked with someone who is a serial startup founder and they would find CEOs.

And like what they would sort of notice is that, you know, CEO may be like really qualified on paper, but their gut, which is basically what is your gut? Your gut is a lot of information that your brain is actually receiving, which it doesn't know how to process, package, and serve up to you in a meal. So basically, like, working with these people and getting in touch with our intuition, intuition is not like, I mean, you can make an argument that it's from divine or whatever. I've made that argument. But really, what intuition is scientifically is it's like a bunch of unprocessed information that hasn't been packaged appropriately yet.

So getting in touch with this unprocessed information allows you to make a really good decisions and avoid making really bad ones. Okay? So first thing is brain has information that you are not aware of. Second thing that we have to understand is why aren't you aware of it? Why does the brain suppress important information? And this is where we have another pillar of like science, evidence-based psychology, which is defense mechanisms. So we know that the brain suppresses all kinds of information because you can't handle it. Right. So I want you all to go back to this idea of I met my partner. I'm in the honeymoon phase. I'm so in love. I've been waiting for love for so long. And my brain is like, you know what? If I tell this person, oh my God, this person is so great.

If I tell the human body that I'm inhabiting, if I tell this dumb ass Alok that this person, these are all red flags and you shouldn't be in love with this person that this is going to end badly, they just would not. They would be so devastated. They would be so crushed. All All Olloq wants is to be in love with someone who it looks like this and, and also plays Dota 2, and like they would just be absolutely devastated. So if we look at defense mechanisms, these are things like narcissistic defense mechanism, where I'm suppressing information about literally the mistakes I am making all the time that screw up my relationships and make my work relationships more difficult. I'm suppressing that because I can't handle it. So we have narcissistic defense mechanisms.

We have things like intellectualization, but we know that there are actually very real ways where we take emotions and information and suppress them in our brain, okay? And the problem is when we suppress this information, it still comes out in other ways. So a really good example is like people who are passive aggressive, right? So people who are passive aggressive are that way because oftentimes they suppress their aggressive tendencies. So instead of actually like fixing, like addressing the problem and fixing it, hey, I'm pissed at you because you forgot my birthday, instead of like allowing myself to be pissed,

and I bury that aggression and then I'm fucking passive aggressive with you and it creates toxicity in our relationship because when when you ask me, oh look, what's wrong? Are you upset with me? I'm like, no, everything is fine. Whatever. Right? So like it's so fucking toxic. Even when we suppress emotions and we have a bunch of access to like good information, our brain still like knows this and it tries to deal with these emotions and even serve you up important information. through dreams. Okay? So this is where I think the next step that we got to do is I got to just tell you about a couple of cases of patients that I've had the dreams that I that they had and how we sort of like learn things from them. Then we'll explain how it works. Okay. So I had a patient who was married to, the CEO and founder of a very large company. And so she had this dream. So she's like, you know, I have like this recurring dream. And I'm like, okay, like tell me about it. Like whatever lady. Tell me about it. So she says that in the dream, my husband, is flying an airplane and I'm sitting next to him in an airplane and our kids are in the backseat

of the airplane. It's a propeller plane with an open top, okay? So they're flying over the ocean. They're in this airplane. And then there's an aircraft carrier. And so my husband has to like land the plane on the aircraft carrier, which is fine. So it turns out that her husband is actually a pilot, right? So he like in his free time, he like likes to fly planes. And sometimes they go on family planes. And so he's going to land on the aircraft carrier. And then as he's, is to send him to land on the aircraft carrier, he turns the plane upside down. And then she starts to panic.

And she's like, you can't land on an aircraft carrier upside down. The wheels are pointing up. The plane is open on the top. And if you turn the plane upside down, we're all going to fall out. Like you can't land on an aircraft carrier upside down. And so she starts to panic. She's afraid that her kids are going to fall out of her plane.

So what she ends up doing is she like reaches behind her with her two hands. She kind of straps herself in. She's like barely like not falling out of the plane. And she holds her kids heads. She like pushes up against her kids heads to hold them in the plane and somehow the plane lands. Right. So dreams are not like logical. Like you can apparently land planes upside down in dreams.

And so we were sort of like talking about this. And I was like, okay, what is the significance of this? So I went to my supervisor and I kind of asked her. I was like, hey, I've got a lady who wants to talk about her dreams. Like how do I deal with this? And this is where she taught me kind of a method. methodology to work with dreams, which I think is like really, really effective in ties to what is really happening in your brain.

Okay. So the first thing is that the symbols in the dream are relevant to your life. So the key question that you need to ask yourself is what is this, what is the significance of this thing to me? So I don't really buy as much that these archetypal symbols that losing your teeth means death for everybody. It may be a sign of mortality for some, but like the symbology in your dream is your brain's way of trying to communicate a concept to you. So here's what happened with the patient.

So it turned out that her husband was in the process of had just found a buyer and was trying to like exit the company, right? So he's like really, really stressed out. Work is really hard. And so like he's like stressed out. And so she sort of realized that, okay, he's like flying this. plane, it's messing up our personal life. And the kind of conclusion that we came to is like, if I can support him in the best way, if I can take care of shit, even if things get bumpy, and even if things get like really, really bad, my job is to make sure that our kids are taken

care of. It's going to be hard on me. I'm going to let him deal with the plane and I'm going to deal with our family. And the aircraft carrier was sort of a symbol of like this gigantic company that is acquiring them. And if they land on the aircraft carrier, which they did, then there was a big celebration and everything kind of works out. So she, we had this interpretation of the dream and she like sort of went into her life thinking, okay, next six months are going to be bumpy. Have faith. My husband's got it under control.

Like he needs to handle his shit. I'm going to handle my shit. And if we sort of do this together, everything will work out. And so that attitude allowed her to bring that energy into the relationship, just handle things for her kids, right? Didn't stress him out more. Was trying to be supportive. She's like, don't worry about it. You focus on you.

I'm going to focus on me. if you didn't get me a president for my birthday, like I'm not going to be passive, aggressive, whatever the fuck. Key thing is everything worked out. Ended up selling the company for a ton of money. They did great. Everything was fine.

Everything was fantastic. So I'll give you all another example. So I did a lot of addiction psychiatry. And what I sort of found was that I had one patient who had this, once again, recurring dream where there's like a snake. And what happens is like the snake eats them. And then the snake has like an opening in its belly. So like it's really terrifying.

the snake kind of clamps down, swallows them whole. They're scared, they're scared, they're scared, they're scared. And they sneak, they basically like slip out of a hole in the snake. And they feel safe for a while. But then they do something really dumb. They walk up to the front of the snake again and the snake eats them again. They're terrified, terrified, terrified.

They slip out of the belly. And then like sometimes the snake tracks them down and eats them. And sometimes they walk in front of the snake and it eats them. but the couple of recurring pieces are that they always get eaten by the snake and then like they end up escaping eventually. And so what we sort of discovered is like, okay, what does the snake mean? The snake is a threat, right? So the snake is something scary.

I don't want to be eaten. It feels really unpleasant. And then the more that we tunnel down into it, like the eaten part feels really scary, but once they're inside the snake, it feels warm, it feels safe, it feels kind of comfortable. And then they start to wake up and they panic. We sort of got more out of the dream as we started talking. about it, and then they end up slipping out. And if you all haven't pieced things together already, right? And which, by the way, if you've already pieced things together, that's kind of weird,

right? Do you all see that? So if you've already pieced together what is going on in this person's life, like, that's really interesting from like a logical standpoint. I haven't told y'all what's going on. But if you're able to piece it together, that means that dreams have a like logical interpretation even by your ass sitting at home listening to this on the internet. So This turns out to mirror this person's struggle with addiction. The snake represents their addiction. They always, even when they relapse, they end up coming, and it feels really good. It's really scary when they're relapsing, right?

So then I started asking questions, like, what's it like when you relapse? They're like, I'm terrified of the alcohol. They're actually addicted opiates, but I'm terrified of the opiates. I'm terrified of the opiates. But like, I can't resist. I have to walk back and it's scary. I know I'm making a mistake when I relapse. And then it feels amazing for a while.

And then I start to panic. Everything starts going wrong. again, I'm running into problems, and then I escape my addiction. And sometimes when I escape my addiction, I run far, far away, and I think I'm done with it, and the snake shows up again. And there are sometimes where I've escaped from my addiction, and I circle back around, and I choose it. Key thing here is that this dream relates to this person's struggle, gives them insight into their struggle. And then I sort of ask them, okay, let's talk about this. Tell me in your real life, What is walking around in front of the snake look like?

How do you know when you're making these mistakes? And this is where all the subconscious information starts to come up. And they say like, holy shit, I know like the moment that I start texting my ex again, that's me walking in front of the snake. Then my cravings come up. They still use sometimes. They were sober for a while. But I know that they're going to like relapse.

And we love relapsing together. So then we started to see like, okay, the brain actually has a lot of information about your patterns, which aren't well formed. They're not like, you know, they haven't in a process yet, which is why it doesn't know how to serve you up this information. But it is serving it up

in a way that it kind of knows how. So like when you start to make these mistakes, like, you know, on a Monday, when you text your ex, your brain like serves you this dream. And it's like, hey, bro, you're making a fucking mistake, but I don't know how to tell you that.

Why doesn't it know how to tell you that? Because it's a defense mechanism. If you tell yourself, and I don't know if this makes sense, I may be losing you or maybe all are going to get it here. When you text your ex on a Monday, because there is a subconscious part of you that craves opiates and relapse in that relationship again, if it tells you, don't do this, this is a mistake. What will you do?

Will you actually listen to it? Absolutely not, right? You know you are making mistakes every fucking day. And when you know you make a mistake, when your brain tells you, hey, bro, hey girl, this is a mistake. What do you do? Uh-uh. Nope. Nope.

Nope. It's not a mistake. I'll be able to handle it this time. It'll be okay. So you have all kinds of intuitions, all kinds of knowledge. And if your brain tries to serve it up to you in a concrete way, you will reject it. Because you, like all other human beings, have psychological defense mechanisms. your brain experiences more emotion than you can process in a given day.

That is what I think the function of dreams is. Dreams like the reason that we have dreams is because we experience all these emotions that get suppressed by our logical mind, get suppressed by our defense mechanisms. We're focused on data. And then our brain is left with all this activation, right? So just because you are suppressing an emotion doesn't mean that your limbic system and your amygdala are not active.

Blood is flowing there and then your brain is like trying to bury it. So that needs to be processed in some way. And this is why the more logical you are, the more useful dream interpretation is, because your brain is pushing aside all of this stuff. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing.

It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Now, how do you work with your dreams? So the first thing that I would recommend

is that you get a dream journal. Okay, so a dream journal can be like a notebook. I like pen and paper, strongly recommend it. I don't know why. It seems like it accesses the dream better, but you can use like a notes app on your phone. Leave it by your bed at night. If you wake up in the middle of the night with a dream,

write down as many details as you can. When you wake up in the morning, just write down as many details as you can. Some people that I've worked with who do a lot more dream work will sort of say that it can be useful to literally talk to your brain before you go to bed.

So you can have some weird, I know this woo-woo, but like people who work with dreams say that this works pretty well. Right? So you can tell your brain like, hey, bro, whatever you want to tell me tonight, like I'm open to it.

So like, open yourself up to receiving the dream. Just cognitively like tell yourself whatever dream comes, I'm going to be ready for it. Grab your pen, grab your notebook, you know, set it by the side of your bed, go to sleep. So if you wake up in the middle light, jot down the dream. When you wake up the next morning, jot down the dream. This is important.

Write down as many details as you can. So that's the first step to working with your dreams. Now we get to like the more scientifically valid part and the less scientifically valid part. So the next thing that you need to do is when you read your dream, you should write down the emotions that you feel in those moments. this is what is more likely to be like true. Okay, so we know that REM sleep involves emotional processing, or we know that sleep involves emotional processing. We know that your emotional centers of the brain are active in your dreams.

Okay, so the reason we know this is because, I don't know if this makes sense, but when you are in a dream, the terror that you feel is real, right? Like the experience of fear in emotions in the dreams, the logic is not real. the money you make isn't real. Most aspects of the dream are not real. The one aspect of the dream that is real is actually the emotion, right? That's why I really believe that dreams are a way of emotional processing, emotional like information gathering, things like that.

Okay. So write down the emotion. So if you've like written down several lines of a dream, what did you feel when you were first in the plane? What did you feel when the plane turned upside down? What did you feel how did you like, you know, what did you feel as it landed? What did you feel afterward? Right.

So write down your feelings. for each step of the dream. The third thing that we want to do is ask ourselves, okay, for these feelings, how do these feelings, how do I feel these in the real world? And this is a key thing that a lot of people, like, I think get wrong, in my opinion. They may be more knowledgeable than I am. So I don't think dreams are about your past, okay? Dreams, unless they're pathological, are really about your present and about your future. So if we sort of think about it, like, you know, the emotional, like the dream that I have today isn't tied to what I was feeling when I was six years old unless there is something like a trauma which takes that emotional energy at six and still

brings it into the present. Does that kind of make sense? So you get traumatized. The energy from a six-year-old all-oak will still exist in the 42-year-old all-oak, which is why it's a trauma, which is why I still have persistent clinical symptoms. So the emotions that you experience in the dream are tied to your now and tied to the concerns that you have about. the future. So take a look at those list of emotions and then ask yourself, where am I feeling this in the real world? Do I feel trapped? Do I feel terrified? Do I feel like I can't afford to screw up? Do I feel amazing? You know, there's all kinds of things of it. But like try to tie the emotions to the real world because that's what the brain does. It takes the real world, the suppressed emotions,

and has him show up in a dream. That I feel really confident about. That in and of itself is sufficient insight to help a lot of people with decision making. And I'm talking like big decisions. Do I go through with this merger? Do I sell this company? Do I hire this person? Do I marry this person? And it's been amazing.

Like the number of like people who love Excel spreadsheets and make decks in investment banks. That's what they do. Investment banks, PE. The number of people who've decided to break up with their partner because we do a dream analysis and it really brings to the surface everything to their feeling is astronomical. Then we get to the third part, which I think is the most woo-woo part, but I still think is pretty valid, which is the symbolism of the dream. So the objects that your brain creates

in your dreams are tied to your relationship to those objects. So a snake for one person may be a dangerous addiction. And for another person could be like maybe you're a Slytherin and you love snakes and it's a great pet. So I don't really believe that, right, so human, beings have differential responses. And if your brain, and that's kind of why we go back to that first point, I don't know if you'll remember the second point that I made, not the first point, was that your brain is like bounded by, I mean, your dream is bounded by your experience. You don't have dreams and languages that you don't understand. You don't have dreams with, like, objects that you've never seen before, right? So your brain is like, okay, like, how do I process fear?

How do I represent fear? Okay, like, let me use a snake because this person is afraid of a snake. So there's something in your brain that is an association between an emotion and an object. So as you look at the different objects in your dream, try to ask yourself, what do these objects mean to me? Like when I think aircraft carrier, what do I think? So what I think about aircraft carrier is scary, power, safety, badass, out in the middle of the ocean, all alone. But like, if you can land on the aircraft carrier, you're like, you're safe, right? It is the one spot, it is a bastion of power in safety and an endless expanse of fucking places that you cannot land.

So these are the kinds of associations that you need to form. If you're not used to this stuff, it takes a little while, but you'll kind of get better at it, right? And when I explain this stuff from an aircraft carrier, it should kind of make sense to you. The key thing to remember is that a symbol may not have a concrete meaning. It may have a meaning that is tied to you. And once you do these steps, write down, invite the dream, write down the dream, write down the emotions of the dream,

think about the emotions in your real life, write down the symbols, what do the symbols mean to you, and then try to extrapolate it to your real life. And then put yourself in a tarot-loving, guardian spirit, connected human mind, and then ask yourself, when I put all this together,

what is the dream trying to tell me? Because that's what your brain is trying to tell you. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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