When you can’t see the forest for the trees

Sometimes we get so bogged down in the small details of a problem that we miss seeing the whole situation.

We can’t see the forest for the trees. Or, if you’re British, like me, we can’t see the wood for the trees. Either way, we’re too close to the situation (too close to the trees and all their details) to stand back and see the reality of the big picture.

It’s a metaphor fit for a dream, isn’t it? I once had a dream of wandering around in a forest (except mine was probably an English wood), quite lost until I finally found my way out, climbed a hill, and looked down on the forest from afar. No longer lost in the small details, I discovered what I needed to know. The size and shape of my situation was now quite clear, and I could see various ways in and out of it.

Dreams often play out as metaphors. I once dreamed of a cat with a human tongue in its mouth. A cheeky dream clue about a situation where ‘the cat got my tongue’. As a teenager I dreamed of being in the passenger seat of a car being driven up a vertical brick wall. I did feel, at the time, that someone was ‘driving me up the wall’ (driving me mad).

Dreams can be quite weird and surreal, but that is their power. When you’re too close to a situation, a problem, or an issue, a metaphoric dream helps you to step away from the everyday and see the bigger picture. A dream of a rock blocking a road might help you to acknowledge that you have been feeling blocked. You might see from the distance in the dream a way to move around the rock or remove it, or jump over it, or use it as a tool to progress further along the road. If you solve the puzzle while you’re dreaming, you’re likely to wake up with a solution to the parallel waking life problem.

If you don’t solve the problem during the dream – if you fail to get past the block in the road – you can play with the dream symbols and dramas once you wake up. Ask yourself questions: can I get someone to help me move this rock? Can I climb over the rock? Can I run around it? Can I paint it in bright colours to transform it in some way? Can I blow it away because it is, after all, a rock born of my own dreaming mind? When you work with the symbols and dramas of a remembered dream, you are simultaneously working with the life situation that prompted the dream. Something begins to stir and shift deep within, and the ‘rock’ that has blocked you from seeing the bigger picture gives way to a clearer view. Problem solved.

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