I was in my mid-20s, finishing a doctorate in linguistics, and preparing for the kind of future that looked perfect on paper. I was in a committed relationship with someone steady and supportive, and we had already begun planning our next steps: marriage, a stable home, and a predictable, orderly life. And yet, as I moved closer to our wedding date, something inside me began to feel unsteady. Not wrong, just quietly off, a soft fear I couldn’t name.
I probably would have kept going, following the plan and fulfilling the expectations—my family’s, society’s, even my own—if not for a dream that disrupted everything.
In the dream, I was standing in a room dressed for an important celebration. Soft music played while people gathered in warm conversation, raising glasses as if honoring a milestone. It looked exactly like the future I was preparing to step into: harmonious, familiar, safe.
But then, in the middle of that perfect scene, a quiet realization rose through me: I wasn’t alive. I could see myself standing there in my dress, taking in the room, but there was no life inside me. No breath, no presence, just an outer image being spoken to, smiled at, admired. What unsettled me most was how naturally everyone around me carried on, as if nothing was wrong. As if the outer shell of who I appeared to be was enough.
When I woke up, my first instinct was to brush the dream aside. My real life was comfortable. Predictable. Easy to understand. A part of me wanted to hold on to that comfort and pretend nothing was wrong, but the dream was too vivid to ignore. Something in me understood instantly that it wasn’t merely symbolic. It was a warning. A message. A truth I hadn’t wanted to face.
My dream’s emotional urgency pushed me to seek help, leading me to a Jungian analyst who invited me into the work of decoding not just that dream, but my entire inner world. I began exploring the unconscious parts of myself I had never slowed down long enough to meet—the fears I inherited, the expectations I carried, the identity I had constructed around pleasing others, and the buried instinct inside me fighting for a life that felt authentic. It was the first time I realized that my internal compass had been speaking for years, quietly at first, then urgently, then in a dream it knew I couldn’t ignore. And only gradually did the meaning of the dream begin to surface.
It was warning me that adulthood would demand emotional muscles I had never built. My conscious self didn’t anticipate difficulty, but my unconscious did. And while I didn’t want to dismantle my life, once I understood that, I couldn’t continue on the same path even though a part of me desperately wanted to.
I left the relationship, stepped away from the academic career I was training for, and moved from my home in Iran to the United States. In the U.S., I abandoned the professional identity that my family had chosen for me and went back to school—first for a master’s in marriage and family therapy, then a doctorate in clinical psychology. I had to learn adulthood from the ground up: how to make decisions, how to take care of myself, how to build a life I was strong enough to inhabit. I gave up the security of a predetermined life. Those years were difficult and humbling, but for the first time, I felt alive.
And yet during that period of rebuilding, I questioned myself constantly. Everything had suddenly become harder—emotionally, practically, financially—and there were nights I wondered whether I had made a mistake. I couldn’t understand why my soul had pushed me so forcefully in this direction. Why had I left a life that was easier, clearer, more predictable?
And I wouldn’t understand until the day everything shattered again.
Years later, I flew home to visit my parents. They were driving me back to the airport for my return flight when a drunk driver crossed into our lane. His truck landed on our car. I was thrown from the car, severely injured, and lost consciousness. My father died on impact.
When I came to, I couldn’t move or open my eyes, but I could hear everything: the chaos, the panic, the strangers shouting for help. And in that blurred moment between consciousness and oblivion, I felt the same sensation I had felt in the dream: I was in the world, but not fully in my body.
The accident didn’t just injure me physically. It dismantled the foundation of my life. My father, my emotional anchor, was gone. Overnight, I became the one who had to support my family, emotionally and financially, while navigating my own grief.
It took years to understand the connection between those two defining moments, but now I see it with clarity: The first moment prepared me for the second.
The independence I cultivated became the very thing that carried me through the trauma that followed. I knew how to function under pressure. I was able to show up for my family, handling difficult decision-making and logistics. In those moments, independence wasn’t about strength or choice; it was the skill that allowed me to endure when support systems were suddenly gone.
The dream had been the soul’s way of saying: “If you don’t reclaim your life now, you won’t survive what’s coming.”
As a clinical psychologist today, I help others recognize the quiet signals their psyche sends long before the conscious mind understands what’s at stake. The unconscious isn’t dramatic; it’s precise. It speaks through dreams, restlessness, intuition and unease, messages we override until life forces us to pay attention.
Many of us experience these quiet internal shifts before we understand why: a pull toward change, a restlessness we can’t explain, a need to become more self-reliant. What feels like intuition in the moment often turns out to be preparation: a deeper intelligence readying us for challenges we haven’t yet imagined.
Shahrzad Jalali, PsyD, is a trauma psychologist and author of The Fire That Makes Us.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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