Excerpt from: Every Dream Interpreted. Pages 102-105: Even though I'm in my forties, I often dream of my childhood home. Is this unusual?

Even though I'm in my forties, I often dream of my childhood home. Is this unusual?
Not at all! Remember back on page 30, when you learned that we dream earlier in the night of things from the far-distant past, and later in the night about the current situation? Many dream content studies demonstrated that most people dream about their childhood setting and family of origin throughout their lives. Often, we have those kinds of dreams when something in the current situation is reminding us of something from the long-distant past.

Blending past and present. On those nights when you do have such a dream, consider whether your present circumstance seems familiar to you in some way. Think about your childhood as it was when you lived in the house you dreamed about. One way to remember feelings from that time is to take a pencil in the hand you don't usually use to write with, and draw the floorplan of that house. Then label the rooms, still using your non-dominant hand! Feeling uncoordinated in such a basic way can help you find the state of childhood, when you were small, others were big, and every big person seemed to know more, and be able to do more, than you did.

Remember, too, that dreams are really about feelings. We can get caught up in intellectually interpreting our dreams and ignore the emotional state they express or portray. How did you feel in your dream? Is that feeling familiar to you?

Remodeling your psyche. Sometimes, you may dream of yourself exploring your own childhood home as an adult, and discovering new rooms. The house has been remodeled! This is a common dream of people in psychotherapy. As you'll see in the last half of this book, houses can represent the psyche, and effective therapy can spark a remodeling job within it. As we mature and rely less on the coping strategies we used in childhood, our inner house can reflect that change. Our dreams can blend the childhood home with our current home to represent the very real situation within our own minds: some things have changed, some things have remained the same.