Begin with a specific dream. Unless you know something about dream interpretation, it's best to work with a dream of your own.

Write down the dream in as much detail as you easily can now.

Now look over the dream's story-line. Usually, a dream can be divided into three sections: the beginning situation, the ending situation, and the transition between the two.

In an upsetting dream, there's some kind of conflict or trouble in the middle section. So, we have the first situation (which might include action across several settings, or even sudden, unexplained changes of setting); we have the change in situation (the conflict), which might be simple and quick or complicated; and we have the final situation.

Not every dream follows this pattern: some are good all the way through; others begin frightening. However, this is the most common pattern of dream, and especially of dream that people want to understand, so it is the one we will use.

Divide your dream into a beginning, a middle, and an end.

You can imagine your dream as a conversation. Just as a conversation might go in a number of different ways, beginning sad, turning argumentative, and ending friendly, or beginning friendly, turning sad, and ending as an argument, so a dream can go in a lot of different ways.

If your dream doesn't follow the trouble-in-the-middle format of this workbook, that's fine; the logic of your dream will be the same, but with different emotions attached to it.