Dreams about celebrities are among the most popular of the dreaming experiences analysed by Ian and this probably reflects our fascination and fixation with celebrities in contemporary culture.

The famous people that we dream about can often help us become aware of the qualities that we value most, by considering what unique quality that a particular celebrity embodies.

These dreams encourage us to look at our own unique talents and how we might like to develop them, and to help ensure that our performances are enthusiastically appreciated by others.

As well as analysing dreams about celebrities, Ian also regularly analyses the dreams of celebrities themselves. Although he vigorously guards the confidentiality of his clients dreams, he reveals that celebrities dream about the same things that everyone else does. He says ‘They experience the same tensions and anxieties that everyone else does, probably more so because of their celebrity status. Most of them dream of leading ordinary lives out of the public eye’.

Dreaming is a vital activity in the healthy growth and development of children. Up until three to four years old, children tend not to distinguish between dreaming and waking life. Between four and six years old, they begin to differentiate between dream episodes and reality, and beyond that they are able to realise that dreams are internal individual phenomena.

Children’s dreams are often filled with anxieties and fears, often in the form of predatory animals and scary monsters. Dreams in which animals play a big part express the child’s unconscious and intuitive side, and usually reflect the pressure to balance instinctive behaviour with social convention.

Dreams of being chased by monsters often mirror how the parents or authority figures are experienced by children. A smack on the wrist during the day with no warning or explanation is often experienced as being bitten on the hand by a monster in a subsequent dream. It is important that any analysis of a child’s dream should be participative, rather than evaluative, to ensure the most benefit and confidence and the least trauma and anxiety.

These Dream Answers help to illuminate the most commonly asked questions about dreams and dreaming.

Although we are all uniquely individual and each have our own unique dream vocabularies, we often have dreams that are familiar to us all. It may be that our own childhood houses were different in waking life, but when we dream about our childhood houses they often have a similar significance for all of us.

The content of familiar dreams mirrors the collective awareness that we all experience in our daily activities as we travel through life.

Our familiar dreams reflect the universal opportunities and challenges that we encounter in our waking lives. As we explore them we can find specific answers to universal questions such as ‘Who really am I?’, ‘Where do I need to go in life?’ and ‘How will I get there?’.

It can be tempting to think that the answers to these deeper questions are the same for all of us, but in the same way that our familiar dreams have specific messages for all of us, each of us needs to delve into the familiar to find our own individual truths.

Nightmares are often frightening and unpleasant experiences, and it can be tempting to ignore them. The most common themes are being chased, someone or something you love being destroyed, terrorised by a monster, and being a victim of violence. However, the apparent trauma of a nightmare is usually a blessing in disguise as it can alert us to an issue that we need to urgently attend to in waking life.

The most disturbing aspect of a nightmare is the feeling that we have no control over it and we often feel terrified as our unconscious self forces us to confront our repressed feelings, frustrated intentions and deepest fears. This is the gift that the nightmare brings us as it helps us to identify specific solutions to the frustrations and anxieties we experience in our waking lives.

The more you try to ignore your nightmares, the more your unconscious turns up the volume, and so a nightmare is really just a normal dream on full volume. Your dreams are an incredibly valuable resource, which most of us simply ignore. The more courageously you explore your dreams, even the horrible scary ones, the more easily you will achieve your real dreams in waking life.

The most powerful way to resolve a nightmare is to try and remember as much of the experience you can, as everything your unconscious is presenting to you can be a vital clue. These clues can be translated and integrated into the safety of waking reality, and use them to powerfully resolve the underlying tensions that are causing the nightmares.

A recurring dream is part of a series of dreams in which a particular image or event repeatedly appears. Sometimes they are associated with stress and trauma experienced during childhood, often in the early teenage years.

Recurring dreams are often triggered when we are transitioning from one stage of life to another and when we are finding it difficult to resolve underlying tensions and anxieties in our waking lives.

Rather than being viewed as something unpleasant or fearful, a recurring dream is an opportunity for healthy growth and deeper insight.

The more that we engage with and explore our recurring dreams, the more successful we will be in resolving the stresses and traumas we experience in waking life.

After a recurring dream has been explored and its message absorbed, it will disappear, leaving us space to create new dreams.