THE DREAM I was on this cliff edge. My path would clearly end in disaster. I could either decide to stay there or go backwards.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION The dreamer had been thinking a lot about a friend who had been feeling suicidal. This friend had set himself a goal of quitting smoking. Yet during this suicidal period he needed to smoke, it was should not have been his top priority to stop. However, if he continued smoking then this would be seen as a move backwards. His friend emphasised how he did not want to step backwards.

DREAM ANALYSIS: People tend to link dreams to the dreamer. They believe that dreams deal with issues regarding your own emotions and personality. This is true to an extent. However, its best trying to relate dreams to issues which have been on your mind. Often we get drawn into the issues involving other people. In this case the dreamer's friend was suicidal. So inevitably he had been thinking about him.

Given this knowledge of an issue which was troubling the dreamer its easy to see how the dream links to his friends suicidal thoughts. He was on the edge of a cliff, surely an excellent metaphor to describe suicide. People say they are on the edge of a precipice when they mean that they are deeply troubled and suicidal.

We can even see evidence of this other issue involving the dreamers friend, stopping smoking. It is easy to see how that is dealt with in the dream. The dreamer does not want to step backward. Quitting smoking was becoming a defining issue for him. It was a sign of how he was still making progress in life.