What Your Dreams Are Doing While You’re Avoiding Decisions
Welcome to the O.R. | Outpatient Visit
A short perspective adjustment. No incisions required.
Most mornings, my mind wakes up long before my eyes open and my feet hit the ground. It usually begins as a dream, one that slowly escorts me into consciousness before I’ve had a chance to opt out.
I don’t pay much attention to what the dream is about.
I pay attention to how it feels.
When there’s tension in the dream, I already know the answer.
I went to bed carrying something unfinished.
When the dream feels spacious or curious, I know something else happened.
My brain finished what it needed to finish the day before.
I wake up in curiosity and creativity mode.
My goal is always to take action on whatever I wake up with.
Whatever follows me out of sleep is asking to be handled while I’m awake.
That usually starts with a Yeti full of coffee and some quality time with myself.
Where there is tension, I decide whether I need to take action or accept and move on.
Where there is expansion, I allow my curious mind to explore what’s possible.
In either case, the next move is the same.
I document what surfaced. Sometimes it’s a mental note. Sometimes it’s sitting down at the keyboard and letting the words show me what I already knew.
Over the years, a common theme has emerged for me.
A fascination with dreams.
Whenever someone says, “I had a dream last night,” I immediately perk up with curiosity and ask for a playback. I listen as the dream unfolds, paying close attention not to the storyline, but to the voice, tone, excitement, tension, fear, or whatever else shows up along the way.
I always ask the same two questions.
How did you feel in the dream?
Where in your waking life do you feel the same way?
The answers are rarely complicated. They’re usually just honest.
In my early 20s, I had a dream where I was pushing a king-size mattress and box springs up a highway while cars zipped past me. Two people close to me walked behind, following along, as I struggled forward.
I was exhausted.
In my waking life, I was struggling too. I wasn’t asking for help, and I felt as though no one noticed.
What struck me later was the parallel.
In my waking life, I didn’t ask for help.
And in the dream, I didn’t either.
Sometimes, elements in dreams matter. More specifically, how those elements make us feel.
A friend once shared a dream where she walked into a house and saw heads mounted all over the walls. They were trophies, but human heads, not deer or antelope.
I didn’t focus on the imagery.
I asked how it made her feel.
She paused, then said she felt disappointed that she wasn’t on the wall.
When I asked what was happening in her waking life where she felt the same way, she didn’t hesitate. She had been applying for jobs, interviewing, and repeatedly not landing the role.
The feeling matched long before the explanation did.
There’s a saying often shared with couples: never go to bed mad.
In my experience, a better version might be this: never go to bed with things left unresolved.
Unresolved doesn’t always mean solved.
It means acknowledged.
When decisions are avoided, conversations postponed, or questions left hanging, the brain doesn’t simply power down for the night. It keeps working. Quietly. Efficiently. Without your permission.
That’s often what dreams are doing while you’re avoiding decisions.
Not to punish you, but to keep you honest.
They’re not offering answers.
They’re surfacing tension.
They’re replaying emotional states.
They’re asking for your attention in the only space you’ve left open.
By morning, the message is rarely subtle. You wake up tense, restless, or unusually alert, already mid-thought.
The work isn’t to analyze the dream symbol by symbol.
The work is to ask what you didn’t finish while you were awake.
Because if you don’t handle it during the day, there’s a good chance your mind will pick it up again the moment your eyes close.
You’ve been in the O.R.
No incisions required.
Perspective adjusted.
See what you notice now.
