THE DREAM I was handling a snake. It was acting very unexpectedly. I was holding it by the neck so it couldn't bite me and it slid backwards making my hand vulnerable. Then it wrapped itself around me. My friend Dave was there at some point.

GUESSWORK The day before the dreamer overheard a conversation. Two women were whispering about him at work. He was sure that they were talking about him. They were very close to him at the time which was especially annoying. There was some very nasty comments. The dreamer was not very good with people and tended to wind people up so often he felt tense around people.

The "Guesswork" stage of interpreting a dream involves spotting issues likely to cause dreams. For help with this click here

ASSOCIATIONS AND SYMBOLIC MEANINGS
1. Snakes can symbolise any kind of bad feelings. The fact that the dreamer overheard some very nasty comments about him the day before make this dream very easy to understand. It was definitely about this.
2. Handling a snake suggests that you feel it can be controlled and that the dreamer feels that they can cope with a level of danger. But here the snake acts in an unexpected way.
3. The dream featured the dreamers friend Dave. Therefore it could be about anything involving him. The day before he was with him when he overheard the conversation.

DREAM ANALYSIS In guesswork the dream was linked to the conversation the dreamer overheard the day before. The dream deals with the following themes
- bad feelings between people
- A belief that you can handle something dangerous
- A threat which gets out of hand

If you weave together the different themes you find that they could capture this thought that the dreamer was thinking at the time-"I just ignore her and believe it will not affect things. I was surprised at the level of venom in her comments. Its getting a bit serious now. The worst thing about it was that she was so close I could almost hear her whispers."