Narrator: If you feel blocked in your life, look to your dreams. This is Science Today. Psychologist Virginia Tonay of the University of California, Santa Cruz says that our daily frustrations are often reflected in our dreams -- especially creative frustrations encountered in jobs, hobbies or other pursuits.

Tonay: So if you find that you are stuck, that there's some reason that you either get involved with people who don't seem to allow you to do what you want to do, or you don't seem to ever find the time or you keep procrastinating or you lose energy, if you start to look at your dreams, usually they'll portray that process that you go through in your creative life.

Narrator: Tonay says, look at the obstacles you encounter in dreams and observe how you deal with them. That will show you how you deal with obstacles in your waking life.

Tonay: So you ask yourself, huh, here's this thing and what I did was I ran from it. Here are these bears in the stream and I saw them and I got terrified and I ran. So is there something -- what happens to me when I do feel threatened or when I do feel stuck, do I run? What else could I have done in that dream?

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Steve Tokar.