WORKPLACE

Schools, colleges, universities and the workplace have much in common. They are all centers of learning, anxiety and ambition, and places where people interact and learn from each other. This is why the unconscious may use them as interchangeable dream metaphors. Your boss may appear in your dream as a teacher, or colleagues may appear in the guise of school friends or classmates. So if a dream places you in a workplace, remember to look for any links with school scenarios.

If your dream featured your actual workplace and colleagues you work with everyday, it may have been highlighting your preoccupation with your job. It may also have been trying to draw your attention to a specific aspect of your job. You spend much of your time at work, so work is of considerable importance emotionally.

If you are comfortable at work, dreams of the workplace and the people with whom you work may become symbols of reassurance and reward; but if you are not comfortable at work, they can become symbols of frustration.

If you had a dream in which you were performing mindless repetitive tasks on an assembly line, perhaps you feel as if you are being treated like a mindless automaton in waking life or that others are making relentless demands on you. Or do you feel that you are losing your sense of identity in your job or that people in your life are taking you for granted?

The “work” aspect of your life.

Your real-life work or job (even if the dream workplace doesn’t resemble your actual workplace).

The idea of working or being productive.

The idea of your job status (such as having one, not having one, needing one, or getting one).

Your relationships at work, or people you know there.

See Business, Building, Factory, Working, Job, Coworker