YF - Dream Analysis in Sand Tray Therapy

by Y. Fountain
(Sand Tray Student)

This sand tray dream analysis dream is based on a traumatic dream that I had after a car accident on interstate 20 in July of 2010. The yellow truck represents the big car that hit me from the left side on behind. That hit led my car (symbolized by the pink car tilted) to hit another car in the lane to my left (symbolized by a silver car). The blue tray is symbolic of the rain, as it was raining very hard that night. I also vividly remember seeing a strong flash of light (the car’s headlights before hitting me) out of nowhere. I had re-occurring dreams of that flash of light and would awake in a panicked state and sweats. The Dictionary of Symbols (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, 1996) symbolized car accidents as the following: “Cars crashing is a painful reminder of the destructive power of internal conflict which should have been allied to the powers of development. The collision of opposites is traumatic. To crash into some obstacle shows that the conscious ego, too, is colliding with something which blocks the path of its development. What that obstacle is remains to be discovered. It may be external or internal, but it is subjectivzed into this shattering crash.” I called the police and remember riding in the ambulance. The fire truck, ambulance, police, and cones are symbolic of the help received. I could tell that the woman in the ambulance with me was angry (as she thought that I hit her on my own). It was not until she sued me that she realized that I was not at fault. It also took a lot of courage to get back into a car as a rider and drive. As a rider, my mom drove me from the hospital and I was highly anxious, irritated, and panicked. As a driver, I jumped and panicked each time it rained or when a car switched lanes behind me too fast or with their lights on. There were multiple negative consequences of the accident including flashbacks, nightmares, body contusions and pain, weight gain due to medications and inability to purchase my own food, lost wages, anger and depressed mood, legal processes/dealing with an attorney, and a job change. I have shown one of these in the tray, in which I felt trapped laying on the couch for two weeks (symbolized by the cage on the couch). I also placed a pill bottle next to the couch to symbolize the (mostly highly addictive) drugs that doctors often pressed on me to take for the physical pain. I only took them for a week or so and had like six full bottles of pills left over. I currently still have muscle spasms (two years later) from the accident.