"Two women. One dream. Gum Stuck in My Throat." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Dreamer #1: I have a recurring dream that I have gum wrapped around my back teeth and am trying to get it out. It feels like a lot of gum, and sometimes it will start to go down my throat, which really freaks me out. I feel anxious that it's there. Sometimes, I am trying to get the gum out of my mouth because I'm doing something in which I need to speak.

Dreamer #2: I have a recurring dream that there is gum in my throat, a thick wad of it, and I'm desperate to get it out of my mouth. The more I pull, the more gum keeps coming. It never ends and I'm totally freaked out.

Whew! Here we have two different women, living in different states, who reported to me their primary recurring dream. Forgive me for being a bit of a nerd here, but is this not just the most fascinating thing? Many people have heard of the common back-in-school and teeth-falling-out dreams and might be desensitized to how very strange it is that we can dream very similar dreams at night. But it really is pretty amazing. How does that happen?? What is the unconscious (collective or personal) representing here? What human experience is being captured by these images?

Let's explore this dream viscerally. To start unlocking this dream, imagine yourself in this situation. Imagine you're in public and you have a huge wad of gum in your throat and in the back of your mouth that (of course) you really want to get out. You try to remove it... you begin to get anxious... the gum's not easily coming out... there's a lot of it... it keeps coming... What do you do? How do you protect yourself? What are the types of fear that arise?

In this dream, the ability to speak has been thwarted. One's mouth and throat are all gummed up. The capacity for self-expression has been prevented and shoved aside by more complicated feelings of fear, shame, and insecurity. As one is privately managing a fear that she is in a strange, maybe dangerous situation, out of control of what's happening, she is simultaneously trying not to let others know of her predicament out of shame. She is in a "sticky situation," managing her own fear while trying not to let others catch on. T

he images in this dream are representing certain inner experiences; as it's a recurring dream, those inner experiences are likely rather persistent and common to the individual: a difficulty with authentic self-expression, with finding one's true voice, and therefore feelings of insecurity, of being alone with one's own emotions despite being among people, and feeling that things are not easily within one's own control.

To you two beautiful ladies who dreamt this dream (should my analysis of it prove at all true), you might consider playing with this dream a little to alter it and take care of yourself in the process. Dream it forward. You've got gum stuck in your throat, and you're anxious and panicked, but you don't have to deal with this very strange crisis by yourself. Imagine the dream and add someone in who you trust completely and who you can look to for help. How do they react? What do they do? What do you need? What help can they offer? See what arises and explore what comes next...

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"My Teeth are Falling Out!" A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

I've been having a recurring dream in which I discover that my teeth are falling out (I've heard this is a common one). In the dream, I am doing some mundane task when all of a sudden I reach into my mouth and pull out one of my teeth. Subsequently, I realize that numerous teeth are loose. Before I know it, I have a handful of teeth in my hand. I am consumed with a feeling of panic.

Yup, you're absolutely right, this is a very common dream (and so unpleasant!). I would even venture to say that this may be the most common dream that people share with other people after having it, it's just so weird! First, let's review that recurring dreams show up when things are sort of stuck when there's an issue or emotion that is working its way through our systems and can't quite get resolved. The easiest way to get recurring dreams to go away (should you want to be rid of one) is to write the dream down and talk it through with someone who can help you objectively explore it. What you're looking for is the emotion in the images, that is, it's not an entirely intellectual process. For instance, you know you feel panic in this dream, but what kind? What does it remind you of? What are the specific fears wrapped up in it? The emotion will have to find its way out of your system and be felt. Unfortunately, no impersonal dream interpretation can accomplish this task fully without your participation. The "aha!" moments are just too personal, too particular, and have to be experienced to be transformative.

But let's see if we can get a head-start on this process! Teeth. Teeth are the very beginning of the digestion process, they break down food before it enters our stomach so that the nutrients can be better integrated into our systems. Symbolically, they can point to the beginning of a similar process of psychic digestion, trying to process information and events that enter our awareness. If they're falling out, it may suggest that we're struggling to integrate something, perhaps as a result of being overwhelmed by it. Importantly, teeth also fall out naturally at only a couple of stages of life: early childhood when we are gaining our adult teeth, and in old age. We've got bare gums when we're babies and often when we're old. The shared experience between babies and the elderly is one of a lack of autonomy, a feeling of sort of being swept along by your own physical needs and the requirements of the outer world; for both stages in life, personal choice and personal desire are something of a luxury.

You say you're regularly doing some mundane task in this dream, which suggests to me a feeling of monotony and boredom in your life. I venture to say that for you, this dream is pointing to a feeling of persistent boredom and a loss of autonomy in your life, a feeling of being infantilized (by work or school?), and then panicked about how to reverse that experience and regain a sense of adulthood and control. My guess is that your panic in this dream involves an anticipatory feeling of having to face the world now. These teeth-falling-out dreams may be a version of the naked-in-public dreams: pure panic, terror, and a sense of desperation — "how am I going to get out of this situation and make this go away?"

So, I'm terribly curious about the nuances of your emotions when you discover that you're losing teeth. I wonder about that panic. Perhaps the notions of not being in control of your day-to-day existence, of having to face the world before you're calm and collected (a bit naked), resonates. What more is in there? These images may point to themes that others experience too, but the nuances are yours alone. What are the very specific fears and contemplations about the future, unique only to you, that arise when you look in your hand and see a handful of teeth? What do those feelings remind you of from your waking life?

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Spiders in my Bed!" A Dream Interpretation.

Upcoming Dream Workshop

This practice of community dreamwork at The Salome Institute has been an enlivening opportunity to join with others who are interested in expanding their relationship with the unconscious, symbols, and dreams. In this series, Satya will introduce some foundational elements of recording and observing dreams for those who are new to the practice, as well as our process of exploring dreams in community online. Then, in each of our six sessions, Satya will host live dreamwork for two participants who have expressed interest in “working a dream” in a live, interactive format.

Dear Satya:

Alright, so the other morning, I had a terrifying dream of a huge yellow spider sitting on my chest. I'm a pretty rational guy, but I woke up convinced that there were actual spiders in my bed and I had to get up!

My dear boy, rational or not, these kinds of dreams are scary! Modern research on the brain is validating what our bodies have long known: instincts often don't know the difference between what is real in the outer world and what is real in the inner world. If there's a huge spider on your chest, you get the heck out of bed! So don't feel too silly about this kind of thing, you were doing what anyone would have done... and maybe, in the meantime, you got a taste of how the unconscious mind can influence your behavior...But you're probably wondering what that spider was doing there. Well, as with all dreams, I would be curious about the details and I'd recommend you explore them: the location, who you were with, what was happening before the spider landed on your chest, and so forth. These details will offer you more clarity about the specific meaning of the dream.

Spiders are certainly archetypal symbols: that is to say, they have deep symbolic roots that extend cross-culturally and across time in the human psyche. Perhaps encoded in our human DNA somewhere, the image of the spider is evocative of the ancient feminine, mothers, and the mother complex. That the spider is huge suggests that something related to this archetype is looming large in your life these days; and that it has landed on your chest and "woken you up" suggests it is seeking your true attention. (If I were a shaman, I would say you've had a visitation.)Given that the spider appeared in your bed, I would pose the following questions: Is your mother somehow lingering in your relationship with you? Is your partner's mother in bed with you?

These questions are obviously not to be taken literally, but... in a way they are. Contemplate how your own mother, or your subtle relationship with your mother, may be influencing your romantic relationship. This image of spiders in bed is a very dream common image, and it's my own hypothesis that it has something significant to do with the way that a certain kind of energy or confusion, perhaps sort of bewitching, perhaps hypnotizing, can enter into relationships and mess shift them.

If you find spiders in your house in your dream, spend some time journaling about your emotions and the chaos in your life. Assess, in particular, your love relationships and the relationships to the mothers in your life.While the spider can often point to the dark feminine (as opposed to a house cat), and while it was scary, I wonder if its yellow color suggests a less ominous connotation. I find that when yellow appears boldly in dreams it is often reflecting a deep sense of aliveness, contentment and richness, as if representing our associations to gold or the sun. Yellow can be a symbol of culmination or change. If you're not too opposed to journaling, I would recommend you take a little time to explore this dream (it sounds like a big one!), as well as why these images from the unconscious mind might be tugging at your conscious attention.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).