The Three Pools
A Dream, a Psyche, a Therapy Philosophy
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Therapists have long been interested in the domain of dreaming and as a spiritually curious and neurodivergent therapist, I am no different. I’ve always found dreaming to be fascinating and suspicious— these wild worlds that disappeared by morning leaving sometimes not even a memory behind.
I’m particularly interested in recurring dreams and the magic we access easily in childhood that eludes us as we grow up. This dream held that magic of recurrence, returning to me again and again for several years and then disappearing in adulthood—until recently. As I was doing my own deeper inner child work I understood, quite completely and intuitively what that dream was trying to teach me. This dream, which I know call the “Three pools” revealed something essential about how I view the psyche, and how I approach therapy itself.
Returning to the Dreamscape
The first pool
I am sitting at the edge of a retaining wall staring down at the water that’s collected at the bottom. My legs are dangling off the edge and the pool at the bottom is dark. Pitch blue if such a color exists. I am often sitting with a friend or neighbor, just talking as if this is a very natural ledge for us to be at.
The second pool
The second pool is one I almost always walk by but rarely sit at for long as I am hurried along by adults around me. The water is purple and gold glitter swirls up and out of this pool. I’m always fascinated by it and always find it slipping away.
The third pool
The last pool is a shallow wading pool, identical to one from a park in my childhood. It is filled with gold fish.
And occasionally the goldfish turn into pirhannas.
Interpreting the three pools: A psyche in three parts
🌀 The First Pool: Depth and Shadow Work
For those of you who may be psychodynamic in nature this pool can be seen as the unconscious, or the stuff that is kept out or our awareness, murky and maybe painful.
Going there feels like dangling your legs off a ledge and yet this practice doesn’t always have to feel scary. In fact you do not have to face these things alone. This is a place you visit with a therapist, friend or trusted spiritual guide.
In my work, this pool shows up when we drop into the shadow:
The experiences you didn’t get to choose
The earliest pains you weren’t equipped to hold
The beliefs that pierce you, creating strange structures inside of you that hold you together, but don’t allow for freedom
This is the kind of therapy that moves beneath words. The kind that takes courage, the transformative stuff that requires a hand to hold, and a leap into the darkness.
✨ The Second Pool: Awe, Magic, and Flow
If the first pool is depth, the second pool is awe.
This is the magic that we’re being forced to rush by or that is rushing by us. The second pool holds my inner witchling, my connection to source, my connection to play.
I think of this pool every time I:
Enter a flow state while creating worlds as I write
Wear glitter to work
Whip out the tarot cards in session
Pause to celebrate and not just “process” with a client
In my life this pool is creation as spiritual growth and in my therapeutic work this is taking risks, exploring intuition and ancestral wisdom, and not being afraid to get silly.
🐟 The Third Pool: Goldfish and Piranhas (aka the ADHD Mind)
Here we are at the shallow end, teeming with short memory goldfish and the occasional pirhanna—if that isn’t a metaphor for my ADHD brain I don’t know what is.
But I believe this image can represent our direct consciousness, everything bubbling on a day to day basis.
This is often what clients come into therapy wanting help with.
Their goldfish are slippery
or the pirhannas are constant and eating them alive
or they want to get to the deep stuff but get stuck here.
But this part of our brain is necessary— its holding all of our conscious thought! A lot of early therapy work or therapy work thats based more in skill building swims around these waters.
What the water gave me
I find it especially interesting that my dream has me start at the deepest pool and end at the most shallow. As if I dove to the bottom of a lake and slowly floated back up.
If I had started at the wading pool I may have never met the other spaces in this dream.
The lessons that hit me the hardest are
Spend more time in the second pool.
Bring someone with you into the first.
Have compassion for the goldfish waters of your mind.
And while my clients are also jumping between the shallow end and the deep end, I ultimately want to help them find more space and access to their magic, their playful joy, their flow states.
Truth or truth
It’s important for me as I share my own philosophy and a truth I think others could benefit from, to say that truth in itself has the nature of flight. It can be very grounded and very objective and at the same time it can be floating and changing and permeable based on perspective.
As I’ve grown older and healed from my own religious trauma I have also become very skeptical about any bringer of singular truth— the ways we are obsessed with structuring truth and serving it back to each other and calling it new.
I come into the therapy room knowing that I have both earned and unearned authority and there is no way to put that down. This is why I (and the many therapists I admire) encourage our clients to find their own truths. My hope is to use my authority as a tool of validation rather than a way to present myself (or my recurring dreams) as Miracle Cures.
A Necessary Tangent (I Swear)
This is also why I identify as an integrative therapist—and why I often resist rigid certification culture (don’t worry, I love training!).
So many therapy modalities wrap themselves in jargon to stand out, when what really matters is what they share. Connection. Attunement. Humanity.
Research shows that the therapeutic relationship is the work or at the very least the crucial foundation for any of the other work. Modalities are paints. The relationship is the canvas. And without the canvas, we’re just squirting people in the face with paint. (Shoutout to anyone who’s ever been personally attacked by poorly delivered CBT.)
There’s also a strange MLM flavor to a lot of continuing ed, and I often find myself wondering: Did a nonwhite, non-male person say this first? Can I learn it from them directly?
(My therapy TBR list is very full. I’m okay with that.)
Fly With This Truth
If the image of the three pools is helpful, use it however you like. Adapt the language, change the metaphor, or toss it entirely—just take what resonates. What feels universal.
You can credit me if you’d like, but I know I’m not the only one who’s felt this way. These truths are shared. And truth, like flight, is meant to move freely.
Whether you’re wading, diving, or pausing at the edge—I hope this dream brings you somewhere meaningful.
🌀 For My Subscribers: Tips on Real Dream Interpretation
Fun fact: as a therapist, I actually took a CEU-approved training on dream work and dream interpretation. When folks think of dream interpretation, they may imagine big books of Jungian symbols and what those specific symbols mean to every dreamer. As a modern therapist, this isn’t really how we do things anymore (and excuse me for not having credits to specific theorists on hand—let me just say, these are not truths I invented, but ones that have been passed down and that I’ve made my own).
✏️ First: Start with the Objective Content
If you’re interpreting your own dream, begin by writing out the content exactly as you remember it happening.
If you’re interpreting for someone else, ask them to walk through the dream out loud—twice—going slower the second time through.
💭 Next: Acknowledge the Emotional Content and Direct Associations
This is where we step into your personal dream universe. A black cat for one person may be some kind of omen because they were bitten by a black cat. For another, a black cat might be a beloved symbol, representing their favorite childhood pet.
Ask yourself (or your dreamer):
What emotions came up in the dream?
Where are those emotions echoed in waking life?
Then: Time to Play the “What If” Game
This may sound silly, but often in modern dream work we begin asking questions like:
“I wonder what would happen if…”
“I wonder what the boy in the corner was thinking?”
“I wonder what would’ve happened if you had been able to speak—what would you have said?”
These questions help break open other aspects of the dream, or in the case of nightmares, explore how we might shift the content for healing.
🩹 My Personal Recommendation: Dream x Trauma Work
If you’re working on your own dreamwork and there’s traumatic content involved, I highly recommend working with a trauma-informed practitioner of some kind (again—let’s not go to the deep dark first pool alone).
But as a therapist with a lot of recurrent traumatic dreams, here are a few suggestions for recovery and understanding in the aftermath. (Disclaimer: this is not therapy or a substitute for therapy.)
🛑 1. Treat It Like an Intrusion
Notice if any of the following themes are present: shame, danger, helplessness, hopelessness.
If these show up strongly, treat the dream less like an interpretable source and more like an intrusive thought. This dream doesn’t have to mean anything deep about you.
You already know what it’s trying to say:
“AH! I WAS TRAUMATIZED!”
📓 2. Don’t Write It Down (Unless for Therapy)
Writing our dreams down helps us remember them more clearly—and not writing down a trauma dream can be a way to gently help it let go.
🧊 3. Reset Before Your Day
Take a moment to counteract the leftover trauma feelings before diving into the rest of your day.
Ask yourself: What do I need?
Connection?
A good squeeze?
A glass of cold water?
If you’re not sure what you need emotionally, start with the physical.
🔁 4. Remember This Doesn’t Mean You’re “Back at Zero”
Trauma dreams are often just signs of nervous system dysregulation—especially for those of us with PTSD.
Their return can reflect general stress, not necessarily a regression in healing. That being said, if you just started trauma focused therapy and your dreams are much worse, impacting your sleep, and coming with a return of other symptoms, tell your therapist immediately.
In general bring these dreams to your therapist if you have one.
And as always, take what works, and take your own truth forward.