The Secret Language of Dreams and Symbols

Climbing, slipping, and the struggle to get somewhere

Staircases appear surprisingly often in dreams.

We climb them, descend them, fall down them, discover hidden ones, find ourselves unable to reach the top, or, occasionally, arrive somewhere we never knew existed.

A staircase takes us from one level to another. Perhaps that is why it lends itself so readily to dreams of change. We are no longer where we were, but we have not yet arrived at where we are going.

Some time ago, I dreamed of a staircase.

At the time, my husband was in hospital, and I was deeply unhappy with aspects of his care. I desperately tried to get information, answers, and sometimes just someone to listen.

I called the GP. I contacted consultants. I spoke with specialist nurses. Then I called again.  Each time, I hoped I might finally reach the person who could tell me what was happening or help move things forward. Each time, I seemed to end up back where I started.

That's when I dreamed I was climbing a staircase.

I knew there was something at the top that I needed to reach. I don't remember knowing exactly what it was, only that it mattered and that I needed to get there.

I began climbing. But the stairs were incredibly slippery.

I made my way up, only to lose my footing and slide back down. I started climbing again.

Up I went. Down I slid. Again and again.

Going up/going down

We tend to associate upward movement with progress.

We rise through the ranks. We aspire to greater things. We climb the ladder. We speak of being on the upswing, reaching the top, getting somewhere.

In dreams, climbing can carry some of those associations. It may suggest ambition, growth, effort, greater awareness, or simply the attempt to move from where we are to where we need to be.

But I think we need to be cautious about assuming that up is always good and down is always bad.

Much depends upon the dream.

Descending a staircase might lead us toward something buried, instinctive, or forgotten. In myth, descent into the underworld often marks the start of transformation. Hades takes Persephone into the underworld, where she becomes its queen. Inanna descends into her sister Ereshkigal's realm, surrendering her finery and power as she passes through its seven gates. Orpheus descends to find his beloved Eurydice, hoping to bring her back from the dead.

Sometimes we need to go down before we can come back up again.

My dream, though, was unmistakably about trying to ascend.

I needed to go somewhere. The problem wasn’t that I wasn't trying hard enough. The problem was that I couldn't get any traction.

When effort isn't enough

Looking back, what was happening in my waking life seems almost blatantly obvious.

I was doing everything I could think of. I was making phone calls, following up with people, asking questions, trying to understand what was happening, and trying to advocate for someone I loved when he was extremely vulnerable.

Yet I kept slipping back to the beginning.

The dream did not show me standing at the bottom of the stairs, doing nothing. Nor did it show me turning around to walk away. I kept climbing.

When we struggle to get somewhere, it's easy to conclude we should simply try harder. Make another call. Send another email. Explain ourselves more clearly.

Sometimes that is exactly what is needed. But sometimes the difficulty is not our lack of effort. Sometimes the surface itself is slippery.

Something about that image remains with me. My feet could not find purchase. No matter how much energy I put into climbing, nothing beneath me was firm enough to support me.

It captured something of the helplessness I felt at the time far better than I could have put into words.

The staircase between worlds

Staircases connect one level to another: downstairs and upstairs, below and above, earth and sky. Like ladders, mountains, and trees, they can become images of movement between states of consciousness.

In the biblical story, Jacob’s ladder connects earth and heaven. Angels travel up and down it, moving between the human and divine realms.

Houses in dreams often seem to offer a similar passage between different parts of ourselves. We discover rooms we didn't know were there. The attic may hold something waiting to be explored; the basement, something we have pushed out of sight. The staircase lets us move between them.

But a staircase also demands effort. Unlike a lift or elevator, it does not carry us from one floor to another. We have to take the journey one step at a time.

Perhaps this is why staircases are such apt images of psychological change. We may long for a revelation or a sudden breakthrough. More often, change happens by degrees — one step, then another. Sometimes, infuriatingly, it is followed by several steps backward.

Sliding backwards

Sliding down those stairs could easily be read as failure. I don't think it was.

At times, we do everything we reasonably can and still cannot achieve the outcome we want. Illness teaches us this well, as do bureaucracies and large institutions.

Some people we cannot make respond, some answers we cannot extract, and some timetables we cannot control. Something may matter enormously to us, yet we have very little power to change it.

Wanting to reach the top of those stairs was not the same as being able to get there.  

Is there another staircase?

Another aspect of the dream interests me now.

I assumed I had to get up the staircase.

Dream logic is like that. We rarely pause halfway through a dream and say, "Hang on a minute. Is there another staircase?"

Yet waking life sometimes requires exactly that question.

When one route repeatedly fails us, perseverance may be admirable. But persistence and repetition aren't quite the same.

At some point, we may need to ask whether climbing the same slippery staircase is the best use of our energy.

Is there another route?

Is there someone who can help?

Do I need better support?

Am I trying to reach something I cannot yet reach?

Or, most difficult of all, am I confronting something over which I simply do not have the control I desperately wish I had?

None of those questions is easy when someone we love is ill. Love makes us want to act. To protect. To solve things. To get to the top of the stairs.

Yet sometimes life asks us to discover the difference between what we can influence and what, painfully, we cannot.

What kind of staircase are you climbing?

Staircases can take many forms in dreams.

A grand staircase may carry associations with status, ambition or arrival.

A narrow staircase can feel claustrophobic or precarious.

A staircase disappearing into darkness may lead towards something unknown or unconscious.

Broken stairs may suggest no obvious route forward.

An endless staircase can evoke exhaustion: always striving, never arriving.

The spiral staircase is especially evocative. We circle around and seem to return to the same place, yet each turn brings us to a slightly different level. Psychotherapy can sometimes feel like that. We find ourselves revisiting an old wound or familiar pattern and wonder, Haven't I dealt with this already?

Perhaps we have.

But not from here.

We are not quite the same person who encountered it last time.

My slippery staircase was specific to one period of my life. Another dreamer's staircase would mean something different.

That is why, as ever, the dreamer's own associations matter more than any dream dictionary ever could.

Questions to reflect on 

If a staircase appears in one of your dreams, you might ask yourself:

·       Am I going up or down?

·       Where am I trying to get to, and what do I imagine is waiting there?

·       How do I feel about going there?

·       Is the staircase easy to climb, or am I struggling?

·       Am I climbing willingly, or because I feel I have to?

·       Where in my life do I feel I am making progress, and where do I keep losing ground?

·       And perhaps most importantly: is this the only staircase?

Finding another route 

Dreams rarely solve our practical problems so readily. But this dream showed me, with startling clarity, how hard I was trying to get somewhere — and how exhausting it was to keep losing my footing.

I stopped to consider all the medical professionals we had encountered since my husband’s diagnosis. One person stood out: a specialist nurse who had seemed genuinely empathetic. I found her email address and wrote to her. She replied within a day and asked us to come in for an urgent review.

I had been trying to climb the wrong staircase. I needed another route — and this one led to an open door.

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In these blogs, I share my thoughts on dreams and their symbolism. When I discuss a client’s dream, I put far more work into it than I wish to reveal here: time spent exploring their associations, memories, and feelings, through which the dream’s personal meaning emerges. My aim in this series is to help readers become curious about symbols and recognise their possibilities, while keeping the fuller exploration of a client’s inner life within therapy.

All client material is shared with explicit consent, and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.