Emotions in Dreams
What the dream felt like
The feeling of a dream is often a more honest clue than its plot. A snake can mean a dozen things; a snake you were afraid of, or curious about, or oddly fond of, means something specific. These pages read the emotions that run through dreams, one at a time: what each one tends to point at, the dreams it usually arrives in, and the questions to ask of your own. A companion to the dream symbols library, and the lens Lunar Log uses to chart your nights over time.
Bright
The feelings people forget to write down. Joy, love and peace in a dream can say as much as fear does, and because darker dreams demand attention, the quieter ones are easy to overlook.
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Joy
Bright, open gladness — the simple pleasure of being alive and unburdened.
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Love
Warm attachment and care — being drawn toward someone or something wholly.
Also in this group: Excitement, Euphoria, Tenderness, Peace, Relief, Hope, Gratitude, Pride, Freedom.
Wonder
Dreams that are neither good nor bad, only strange: awe, curiosity, the ache of a place you cannot return to.
Pages on the way for: Awe, Curiosity, Surprise, Nostalgia, Longing.
Dark
The dreams most people remember. Fear has an object; anxiety has none; sadness and loneliness are about what is missing.
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Fear
The body's alarm — threat perceived, whether or not it is real.
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Anxiety
Diffuse worry — tension looking for a target, the mind running ahead.
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Sadness
The weight of loss or lack — heaviness, slowness, the world gone grey.
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Loneliness
Being without others — or with them and still unreached.
Also in this group: Dread, Panic, Unease, Grief, Helplessness.
Hot
Anger and its relatives. The feelings we hold back by day sometimes seem to arrive at full size at night.
Also in this group: Frustration, Jealousy, Disgust.
Self
Feelings about who you are rather than what happened: shame, guilt, embarrassment, and the confusion of not knowing your role.
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Shame
Feeling fundamentally exposed as wrong — wanting to disappear.
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Guilt
The weight of having done wrong — owing something you cannot pay back.
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Confusion
Lost in the story — not knowing where you are, who that is, or what is next.
Also in this group: Embarrassment.
Every dream in Lunar Log is tagged with how it felt, from this same list, so over months you can see which feelings your nights keep returning to, and what they arrive with. Not sure how a dream felt? Start by writing it down: how to keep a dream journal.