How to start a dream journal

Starting a dream journal might seem a little daunting, but once you get into the hang of it, dream journaling can be a really interesting and rewarding journaling practice. When you’re starting a dream journal it can help to see a dream journal example to get some ideas. I enjoy dream journaling because I like working with symbolism and it’s a great way to learn new things about myself. Dream journaling is also a wonderful way to get insight into the emotions and experiences that your mind, body, and soul are focused on working through. When you’ve been dream journaling for a while, you might be surprised to find out what’s going on with you at the deepest levels! Dream journaling also helps you tap into your intuition and learn the language of your subconscious mind which yields great benefits in waking life, too.

When you first start a dream journal you might be perplexed about how to understand your dreams, but stick with it and your dreams will begin to make more sense to you. Starting a dream journal is one of those things where it takes a little bit of time to begin to see the benefits, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive guide to starting a dream journal, check out the post on How To Keep A Dream Journal. This post will mostly be devoted to showing you a dream journal example entry.

Elements of a dream journal example entry

When I dream journal, I like to include a few key elements in the dream journal entry: the date, a title for the dream journal entry, a one sentence description of how the dream felt or what the general vibe of the dream was, a list of dream symbols, a description of the dream, my interpretation of the dream, and some space to write notes about the dream in the future if other ideas come to mind later.

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Here’s the order I write each dream journal entry in: first, I write out the date, title, and feelings/vibes associated with the dream. Then I write a description of the dream (for extra tips on how to describe your dream in a dream journal entry check out the post on Tips For Describing Dreams In Your Dream Journal).

After I’ve described the dream in my dream journal entry, then I go back and underline anything that might be a dream symbol. Next, I make a separate list of those dream symbols as part of my dream journal entry. Once I have a separate list of dream symbols, I go through the list and ask myself, “What does this dream symbol mean to me?” For example, if the word I underlined was “warmth,” I ask myself, “What does warmth mean to me? What do I associate with the feeling of being warm?” Then I write down my meaning next the word “warmth” in my list of dream symbols. Most of the time I have no idea yet how this meaning actually makes sense in the context of the dream itself and that’s totally okay! I just write down the first meaning that comes to mind regardless of whether or not it makes any sense because I’m not actually trying to interpret the dream yet at this point in my dream journal entry.

Once I have gone through and listed meanings for all of the dream symbols on my list, then I re-read the dream; when I reach an underlined word I look over at my dream symbols list and read the meaning I wrote down for that dream symbol. During this process I start to think about what the meaning of the dream might be (in essence, why I had the dream that I did and what it has to tell me). Finally, I come to the part of my dream journal entry where I write down my interpretation of the dream. When I get to the part of my dream journal entry where I’m analyzing my dream I often am starting to have some idea about what the dream means, but I usually develop a deeper sense of the dream’s meaning as I’m going through the process of writing this portion of my dream journal entry. Sometimes I come up with an accurate dream meaning only to discover later that there was an even deeper meaning to the dream! This is why I leave a little space to come back to my dream later at the end of every dream journal entry (I call this part of the example dream journal entry the “re-visit”).

A real life dream journal example entry

Here’s a real life dream journal entry from my dream diary as an example. I chose to share this entry for two reasons. First, this dream was pretty short in comparison to my other dreams which makes it an easier example dream journal entry for you to follow. Second, I halfway woke up during the end of this dream and started asking myself, “What does this dream mean?” This never happened before I started dream journaling regularly and now it happens occasionally, so this is a good example of how regular dream journaling can be beneficial to understanding and interpreting your dreams. Here’s the example dream journal entry!

Dream Title: Ghost In The Mansion

Date: 3/5/23

Dream Vibes: pleasant, dark, opulent, calm, warm

Dream Description: There was a small ghost (the kind that looks like a ghost made from a sheet with two hole cut outs for the eyes) going room to room in a large beautiful old mansion. It came into rooms and went near fireplaces. It never spoke, but it was clear that it was asking me if it should light the fireplaces. Without speaking, I told the ghost, yes, it should light the fire. The ghost magically lit the fire by pointing at the fireplace and a pleasant warmth filled the room. It floated around the room and into another room, clearly looking for another fireplace. I saw that the mansion was quite old, but well-maintained. The ceilings were tall. There were green velvet curtains with gold tassels in front of the windows. It was dark, but not dreary. The ghost found another fireplace and again without speaking asked if it should light the fire. Again, without speaking, I told the ghost, yes. It lifted its arm and lit the fireplace. It seemed like the ghost was the only one there in the mansion, but also like a younger me was there (11 years old maybe), and also like maybe my sister was there and we were all following the small ghost through the mansion.

Dream Symbols:

Ghost: inner child (young)
Mansion: body/self
Fireplace: locations in my body
Warmth: pleasant emotions
Fire: pleasant emotions/suppressed emotions?
Green velvet curtains: ?
Gold tassels: ?

Dream analysis: During the dream I woke partially and started asking, what does this dream mean? I asked what the fire was – pleasant emotions (after waking I forgot this and initially interpreted the fire as anger). I asked what the ghost was – inner child. At waking I wondered if the fact the ghost is white and not speaking was an indication that this child version of me is so young that they can’t speak yet (pre-verbal, white = innocence). I had a dream earlier where there was a symbol for a torso and that symbol was also white and I interpreted it to be about a younger version of me before I could talk. I think the mansion is about me/my body, maybe me/body when I was younger and now me that I’m older and have done a lot of work recently with keeping myself well-maintained emotionally. The lush green velvet curtains might represent growth and comfort with being in my body, but I’m not sure and I don’t know about the gold tassels.

Dream Re-visit: Fire in other dreams has been associated with suppressed anger, but it’s always appeared in a furnace in those cases. I think fire appearing in fireplaces is instead about pleasant emotions. Gold has also shown up in other dreams since as a symbol for bringing something I’m processing to completion. I think this dream was about bringing one cycle of processing to completion so that I can experience pleasant emotions and physically feel them in my body. Since this dream, the 11-year-old me who was following the ghost around has appeared as a guide of sorts in other dreams, explaining to even younger versions of me in dreams how things will be or what to do. In this dream, I think she was telling younger versions of me that it is safe to feel pleasant emotions. Windows didn’t initially register as a dream symbol to me, but now I think that the windows represent a view/connection to the outside world; this makes sense because when I had this dream I was focused on keeping to myself as part of my healing and growth process and felt very comfortable in that.

Woman sleeping on bed and dreaming. — *Photo Kuz Production/stock.adobe.com*

You can probably see from this example dream journal entry that I could have underlined a lot of other words as dream symbols. I chose to underline what stood out to me at the time I initially recorded the dream, and that’s totally okay and part of the process! Connecting to what stands out to you in the dream is part of learning to connect to your intuition in order to understand the dream itself. You can also see from the dream journal entry example above that I didn’t really have great guesses for the meaning of the green velvet curtains or gold tassels even though I underlined those words. If nothing comes to mind, it’s okay to leave it blank and come back to it later.

This example dream journal entry also shows how much more depth there was in my analysis when I re-visited this dream later and how much information I’m bringing in from other dreams. Dreams connect together to tell you a story about yourself; this is why getting into the habit of dream journaling can be so helpful. Before I started a dream journal my dreams didn’t seem to be connected to each other, but now I see that my dreams are all very much connected and even dreams that I had as a child have come to mind as I dream journal about present day dreams.

You might also be thinking, how on earth would you get those symbol meanings or that analysis from that dream :) Dream symbols and analysis hold some commonality across people, but in many ways our dream symbols are unique to us. The understanding of the symbols that appear in this dream and my interpretation of this dream are heavily guided by the bigger picture of my life and by the bigger picture of the dreams I’ve had since I started a dream journal.

For a little bit of context, at the time of this dream I was in the midst of a lengthy process of understanding, reliving, and emotionally processing difficult aspects of my childhood. I was also undergoing somatic therapy and learning how to re-connect with my body and how to physically feel feelings in my body rather than disassociating. (To read a little bit more about that, you can take a look at my post What I Wish I Knew Earlier About Healing.) I also knew from earlier dream journaling that buildings and homes generally appear in my dreams as symbols for me and my body (I mean, pretty much everything in dreams is a symbol for yourself, but buildings seem to have a direct connection to my self/my body in my dreams). In addition, fire had already appeared in my dreams as a symbol for suppressed emotions, so I had that to work with already.

I hope that context helps explain a little bit about how I interpreted this dream, but the language of your dreams will be unique to you! Starting a dream journal can help you learn your own unique dream language. I know that starting a dream journal has benefitted me immensely, and I hope it will do the same for you!

I will also add that one super fun thing that helped me learn to interpret and understand my dreams was the Jungian Ever After Podcast. In the podcast you listen to a fairy tale and then a Jungian analyst provides a Jungian interpretation of the fairy tale. This podcast isn’t directly about dream interpretation but a lot of the principles that are applied to fairy tales in the podcast can also be applied to dream interpretation and it’s also a fun listen.

Check out the free instant download dream journal template, or the dream journals.