What should you do when a friend shares a dream with you, and you immediately see vital meanings in it that your friend doesn’t seem to see? If you are someone who is a naturally insightful dreamer and/or has studied methods of dream interpretation, you may suddenly find yourself in these awkward positions of unequal knowledge and awareness. What’s your best approach in responding?

Let’s call the dreamer your friend, whether it’s a friend, a family member, a slight acquaintance, or even a stranger, because in this moment of talking about dreams, this person is your friend.

So, your friend shares a dream with you, and right away you get a strong sense of what it is about. You also realize this is very sensitive personal territory. What do you do?

First and foremost, don’t avoid or ignore it. Say something in response, simply to let your friend know you’re present and giving them your full attention. Whether they know it consciously or not, your friend has just shared an important truth about themselves and their experience of life and the world. You can honor that truth and show your friend immediate respect with a few encouraging words:

“Wow, that’s amazing…”

“That’s so weird…”

“That sounds incredibly scary…”

“What an intense experience…”

After that, what else might you say? Maybe nothing. Maybe you’ve said enough already.

Your friend may never have told anyone about this dream. Indeed, they may never have talked about their dreams in any social setting. That’s why it is good to let your friend know how much you appreciate their willingness to trust you with this glimpse into their inner world:

“Thanks for sharing that…”

“I’m really glad you told me…”

Perhaps your friend does actually recognize the deep meaning you see so clearly in the dream, and no more needs to be said. You helped your friend just by listening, and that is all you were asked to do.

If your friend seems open to further comments, go ahead, but always remember that you could be wrong. No matter how clear and obvious the meaning of the dream might seem to you, the fact always remains that you could be incorrect about its relevance to the dreamer. This is one good reason to proceed with humility and use a cautionary preface, something like “If it were my dream,…” when offering your friend comments and possible interpretations.

“If it were my dream, I’d be scared about losing control of a situation…”

“If I had a dream like that, the old house might symbolize…”

“If I dreamed about misbehaving cats, I would see them as…”

To the extent that you may be right about the deeper meaning of the dream, it’s best to express your insight in terms of curiosity and wonder, suggesting to your friend the ways in which their dream offers a potential opening to new discoveries. Rather than stating what the dream means, as if you are an oracle from on high, you give your friend a sense of the dream as their own special opening to mind-enhancing possibilities:

“If it were my dream, I’d wonder if …”

“If I had a dream like that, I’d be curious about…”

“If I could go back in the dream, I’d look around and explore…”

A variation in the discussion could be to compare your insight about the dream to a similar theme in a cultural form, like a movie or TV show:

“That reminds me of the ending of Stranger Things, when…”

The downside of making a cultural reference is leading your friend away from the dream itself. But this is the potential upside, too: Temporarily moving away from the dream can help your friend continue thinking about the deeper issues but without such a direct spotlight on the personal content.

Keep in mind that your friend may have unconsciously been seeking a way to share this dream and bring it into the world, even if consciously they don’t understand it. They chose you to share it with, probably because they sensed that you are one of the rare people who can help with strange or difficult dreams. In this regard, you function in these conversations as a kind of oneiric midwife: You help bring a new being into the world, namely your friend’s heightened awareness of their dream, now a living part of their waking consciousness.