I’ve been listening to a couple of songs lately that have had me ruminating over the meaning of the word home, and they have inspired me to write a bit about dreams of Houses and Home.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been experiencing a massive change in my personal life. For reasons that are not relevant now, I had to leave my home and create a new life in a completely different environment, on my own. So, let’s begin.

There’s nothing quite like being displaced from your home.

Have you ever had too many things to carry on your hands? Have you ever had to hold something fragile in one hand, while needing to use the other hand to open the door, or answer the phone? Displacement is a little bit like that. You stumble around your daily life with your heart in your hands, never knowing where to put it down. Your heart beats, and it needs you to survive. You also need it to survive. So, it interrupts you while you work. Boom Boom Boom. It blurs your focus during regular conversations, because it needs your undivided attention. Where do I belong, it asks. You don’t know.

Displacement pierces every thoughtform and emotion, and it impacts every aspect of your life. It’s a form of grief, because separation can be felt in a variety of ways. You can be displaced:

• From your home
• From your environment
• From your country
• From your language
• From your health
• From your safety
• From your ability to express or defend yourself
• From the culture you were formed in
• From the people that you care for

Looking for a Home in Another

It was when I finally found a place to call home that I realized how deeply down the rabbit hole my search for the idea of finding a home had gone. Which led me to another truth I did not expect: That in my grief of separation from my previous life, I had been trying to find a home in someone else.  This is a harsh truth to acknowledge. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I wondered, “Don’t we all do that in one way or another?”

Dreams of Houses and Homes

There’s a deep sense of exploration in a house and home dream.  Houses represent psychological structures that ‘house’, keep, or guard our emotions, memory and life experiences. A house that is not a home means that the dreamer is either being asked to recover a part of themselves, or to prepare and make room for a new life experience.

View from the Outside

If you’re looking at the house from the outside, you’re being asked to view your life or psychological framework from the outside looking in, as a journey into recognition. What did you notice about the house?

View from the Inside 

If the dream is inside the house, you’re being guided through an exploration of your inner psychological framework. Notice the following: Where are you? What is happening? What are you doing? Why?

Childhood Homes

Exploring a childhood home can be about taking a look back into your childhood experiences in order to understand something that you are experiencing right now. People who have experienced trauma in childhood often dream that they are in their childhood home.

I like to look at these dreams as an exploration of vulnerability, fears, and desires. Continuing this article’s context about home and relationships, you might want to ask yourself, whose home this is and what they mean to you – Are you displaced from them, or from what they mean to you, in some way?

New Levels and Passageways

Exploring a house that suddenly has new passageways, wings, basements, underground tunnels, or attics signals that the dreamer is in a deep phase of inner exploration. Going below shows that something needs to be uncovered from the past, maybe even excavated? or perhaps the dreamer is looking for a way out? Going above may mean that the dreamer has chosen to look at their situation from a higher perspective, but an attic might signal mental stagnation. Passageways and wings suggest alternatives to be explored about the dreamer’s way of being or experiencing life, or a situation.

Not my Real Home

Realizing that the house being explored is not the dreamer’s real home is a point of awakening within the dream. During a session, I might ask a dreamer, “If this is not your home, what is?”

Buildings and Condos

If your home is in a building or condo, you might want to consider your sense of Self in relation to the collective energy, the community around you, and your family. Are you feeling at home in the place that you live in, or with the people you live with, right now?

Can’t Find my Way Home

This is a very common dream among people who are experiencing a transition or a life change – The dreamer is searching for their sense of Self. Often, this dream is accompanied by themes of transportation, such as driving a car, that will bring more insight into this particular dream.

Holding Space for Another

Dreams of houses and homes always involve relationships because we signify our sense of Self in relation to our dynamics, engagement, and experiences with other people.

Should you be the one to build a home for your own heart? Yes… partly.

Human social relationships are not only deep, they are deeply needed for our growth. We can survive without relationships, but we cannot thrive without them. Deciding to learn how to take turns and carry each other’s hearts is where love truly begins. There’s a journey of trust, compassion, vulnerability, and responsibility involved in this dynamic. If you’ve been dreaming with houses or home, consider the following: Who’s been holding your heart? Is it comfortable there, or is it time to take it back? Whose heart have you been holding? Are you doing it lovingly, or begrudgingly?

Thus, the core message of this dream is this: Are you willing to hold space for another, and are you willing let someone else hold space for you? 

Building inner, emotional homes for each other is a wonderful way to create a new community based on love and trust. Through dreamwork, we can notice what needs to be worked on within to make this happen, and that is what dream healing is all about.