Hidden Door Coaching offers depth-oriented support for people navigating life transitions. When the usual way we live our life no longer works Jungian coaching can help.

This work draws on a depth psychology oriented approach which includes dreamwork, guided imagery, active imagination, embodied imagination and other approaches that help us reconnect with our inner wisdom.

The work begins with curiosity, wonder, and openness.

For millennia, human beings have turned to dreams, intuition, images, synchronicities, and symbolic methods for guidance. These experiences can open a door into new understanding — especially when we feel stuck, lost or ready for a fresh start.

About Erika

Erika Steffe is a retired physician with 30 years of experience accompanying people through life changes. Early in her medical career, she came to understand that healing often comes from within. That discovery led her toward a lifelong passion for depth psychology, specifically Jungian psychology. Her training includes:

• Certification in Jungian Coaching with IACTM

• Certification in Dreamtending - Level I and Advanced with Stephen Aizenstat PhD, Pacifica Graduate Institute

• Certification in the Jungian Approach to Trauma with Donald Kalshed PhD, Pacifica Graduate Institute

• Embodied Imagination with Robert Boznak, Jungian Analyst, Pacifica Graduate Institute and Jung Platform

• Certification through the Academy of Guided Imagery with Martin Rossman MD

• SF Jung Institute training including a year long training for clinicians and over 100 hours of lectures

• Certification in Jungian based Tarot with Ken James PhD, Jungian Analyst

• Over 100 supervised client hours with Jungian Analysts

Her work is based in Sebastopol, California and is available locally and online.

Offerings

• Jungian coaching

• Dreamwork and dreamtending

• Guided imagery

• Active imagination

• Embodied imagination

• Integration sessions after vision quests, ketamine clinics, plant medicine retreats, or other planned transformative experiences

• End-of-life counseling

• Dream incubation (Asclepian healing dream method), including local retreats of 1 or more people

• Jungian-oriented Tarot readings

• Dream Group Facilitation

For information or appointments, contact Erika at:

Hiddendoorcoaching@gmail.com

Click here to send Erika an email directly

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This group has started. However, if you have a group that wants to meet and would like Erika to facilitate a few sessions, please reach out to hiddendoorcoaching@gmail.com.

Our dream group will begin again in June 2026, with Zoom sessions and some in-person gatherings in Sonoma County.

New members are welcome.

This group is for people who want to make more room for dreams, images, symbols, synchronicities, and the inner life. You do not need to be an experienced dreamworker to join. You only need curiosity, openness, and a willingness to listen to your dreams.

Dreams often arrive when something in us is asking for attention.

A dream may bring a person we have not seen in years. A landscape we do not recognize. A deceased loved one. A house, a road, an animal, a door, a child, a stranger, a feeling, or a question.

Sometimes a dream feels ordinary.

Sometimes it feels urgent.

Sometimes it feels like a hidden door.

What we will explore

In this group, we will make space for dreams and the images they bring.

We will explore:

• remembering and recording dreams

• listening to dream images without rushing to explain them

• dream tending

• dream incubation

• active imagination

• symbolic language

• synchronicities

• divination as a reflective practice

• the ways dreams may guide us during life transitions

The goal is not to reduce a dream to a quick interpretation.

The goal is to stay curious.

What is alive in the dream?

What feeling remains?

What image wants attention?

What might the dream be asking us to notice?

Why dreams matter

Dreams speak in a different language than ordinary waking thought.

They may use image, story, emotion, sensation, memory, symbol, and surprise. They may show us what we already know but have not yet been able to say. They may bring forward grief, fear, longing, guidance, or new possibility.

In Jungian work, dreams are not treated as meaningless. They are approached as communications from the unconscious — not always clear, not always comfortable, but often meaningful.

A dream group gives us a place to listen together.

Hearing a dream spoken aloud can change it. Having others witness the dream with care can help reveal layers we might miss alone. The group becomes a container for curiosity, respect, and discovery.

Who this group is for

This group may be a good fit if you are:

• interested in dreamwork

• curious about Jungian approaches

• drawn to active imagination

• wanting a more regular relationship with your dream life

• interested in symbols, images, and synchronicity

• seeking a thoughtful group space for inner work

You are welcome whether you remember dreams often or only occasionally.

Sometimes the first step is simply making room for the dream to find you.

Meeting format

We usually meet on Sunday late afternoons for Zoom sessions.

Some in-person sessions in Sonoma County will also be announced.

The group will begin in June 2026.

A note on the spirit of the group

Dreams are personal. They deserve care.

This group is not about analyzing one another or telling someone else what their dream “means.” It is about listening, wondering, reflecting, and honoring the images that arise.

We will approach dreams with respect, imagination, and the understanding that there is often more than one layer of meaning.

To learn more

For more information about Dream Groups or personal coaching around dreams you’ve had and are curious about, please contact Erika:

Hiddendoorcoaching@gmail.com

Hidden Door Coaching is based in Sebastopol, California and available locally and online.

A hidden door is the opening we do not see at first.

At the beginning of a life transition, we may feel loss, confusion, and uncertainty. The old way has stopped working. The new way has not yet appeared.

We may feel as if we are standing in front of a wall facing a loss of a loved one, illness, job change or ending, caregiving, divorce, an empty nest, or a quiet inner knowing that something needs to change. We do not know what to do next. We do not even know what question to ask.

But sometimes, in the middle of that uncertainty, something begins to appear.

A dream. An image. A memory.

A body sensation. A longing. A coincidence that feels meaningful.

A question that will not leave us alone.

The next step is hidden but we want to look for it.

The door is not always obvious

We often imagine change as a clear decision. We need to make a plan. We need to turn our life around somehow. We wait for a revelation.

But inner change does not always begin that way.

Sometimes it begins with restlessness. Sometimes with a recurring dream, a strange image, a forgotten memory, or an emotion that feels larger than the situation at hand.

Sometimes the hidden door appears as a feeling that the life we are living no longer fits the person we want to become. At first, this can be uncomfortable. We may want to go back to the familiar room.

Or we may want someone to guide us. What direction should I start looking? What is the dream trying to make us aware of? Where is this feeling leading to?

This deeper work often asks us to slow down and listen.

To become curious.

A different kind of doorway

In depth work, the hidden door is not something that we find right away, nor can we force it open. We need to leave space and notice as new ideas appear.

Dreams, intuitions, synchronicities, images, and body sensations may all be ways the inner life tries to communicate. They do not speak in ordinary language. They can communicate through symbols, feelings, metaphor, or intuitive hits.

A dream may be of a place you have never seen before, or a place you have seen before but it’s different this time.

A memory may return with new feeling.

An image may arise during guided imagery and carry unexpected meaning.

A body sensation may point toward fear, anger, grief or wisdom that has not yet found words.

A synchronicity may make you pause and question what is going on?

These moments are easy to dismiss. But when we give them attention, they may become thresholds.

When the old path ends

A hidden door can appear when the old path has come to an end and something new is needed.

It may not feel dramatic. It may be a quiet ending. Now a role no longer fits, a relationship that has changed, a body asks to be listened to differently or a way of coping no longer works.

The psyche may begin to send signals. Not because something is wrong with us, but because something in us is trying to emerge.

This movement may not be linear. It may not make sense to the part of us that wants clear answers. But it brings a deep intelligence.

The unconscious often speaks before the conscious mind understands.

The hidden door in dreams

Dreams are one of the most common ways a hidden door appears.

A dream may show us an image: a house, a path, a stranger, an animal, a child, a dead loved one, a stairway or a landscape.

A dream may simply arrive. It usually does not explain itself and can have multiple meanings.

Working with the dream means resisting the urge to reduce it. Instead of asking only, “What does this mean?” we might ask:

Who is visiting? What feeling has it brought? Where does the energy lead us?

Why does this dream want my attention?

The dream is inviting us into a relationship.

The hidden door in the body

The body also speaks.

A sensation, pain, tightness, heaviness, warmth, or sudden feeling may carry an image or message. In guided imagery, we may ask the body what it wants us to know. Sometimes the answer comes as a color, a landscape, a figure, a shape, or a scene.

This does not have to be logical or immediately meaningful. The body may know something before the mind is ready to name it.

A hidden door may open when we stop treating the body as an object to manage and begin listening to it as part of our inner life.

Finding the hidden door

The way may include a creative impulse you need to follow, or a dream you need to write down.

You may realize there is a part of your life you need to stop ignoring. A place in the body that needs compassion.

Finding a new way changes what you pay attention to. That can begin to change your life.

Why Hidden Door Coaching

Hidden Door Coaching is based on the belief that life transitions often contain deeper openings than we first understand.

When we are facing loss or new circumstances we may need more than advice. We instead could leave space where dreams, images, feelings, and body wisdom are welcome.

This type of work draws from depth psychology. Jungian coaching includes dreamwork, guided imagery, active imagination, embodied imagination, ritual and the long human tradition of listening inwardly for guidance.

The goal is not to impose an answer from the outside. The goal is to help you listen for what is trying to emerge from within.

A life transition is not only a change in circumstance.

It can be a change in identity.

Retirement, grief, illness, caregiving, divorce, aging, an empty nest, or the death of someone close to us can change the shape of daily life. But often the deeper disruption is harder to name.

Who am I now?

What still matters?

What is ending?

What wants to begin?

What do I do with this new version of my life?

These questions may not arrive all at once. They may come quietly. They may appear in the middle of the night, in a dream, in a sudden memory, in a feeling in the body, or in the simple realization that the old way of living no longer fits.

When the old map no longer works

Most of us carry an inner map of who we are.

We know our roles, our relationships, our responsibilities, our routines. We know what is expected of us. We know how to move through the day.

Then something changes.

A career ends. A partner dies. Children leave home. A body changes. A diagnosis arrives. A caregiving role begins. A relationship shifts. A long-held identity no longer feels true.

The outer event may be clear.

The inner change may be much less clear.

This is why life transitions can feel so disorienting. We are not only adjusting to new circumstances. We may also be discovering that a familiar part of ourselves is ending.

And another part has not yet fully appeared.

Advice is not always enough

When we are in transition, people often offer advice.

Make a plan.

Stay busy.

Get out more.

Move on.

Be grateful.

Look at the bright side.

Sometimes advice helps. But often, a major life transition asks for something slower and deeper than advice.

It asks for space.

It asks for listening.

It asks for time.

It asks us to notice dreams, images, emotions, body sensations, memories, and longings that may have been waiting beneath the surface.

A transition may not be solved by deciding quickly what comes next. Sometimes the work is to stay close enough to the experience that the next step can reveal itself.

The in-between place

Transitions often place us in an in-between space.

The old life is no longer available in the same way. The new life has not yet taken shape.

This can feel frightening, lonely, or confusing.

It can also be a deeply creative place.

In Jungian work, these threshold moments matter. They may bring material from the unconscious into awareness. Dreams may become more vivid. Old memories may return. Images, symbols, or synchronicities may carry unusual energy. Emotions may appear that do not seem to match the surface situation.

These experiences are not interruptions.

They may be part of the transition itself.

They may be showing us what wants attention.

Aging and the inner life

Later life brings its own transitions.

Aging can ask us to meet limits, losses, and changes in the body. It can also ask us to reconsider what a meaningful life is.

When the outer world becomes less defined by work, productivity, achievement, or family roles, the inner life may become more vivid.

Dreams, memories, spiritual questions, creative longings, and old unfinished feelings may come forward.

This is not failure.

It may be an invitation.

The psyche may be asking for a different kind of attention.

Grief changes identity

Grief is one of the most powerful life transitions.

When someone we love dies, we do not only lose that person’s presence. We may lose a role, a future, a daily rhythm, a sense of who we were in relation to them.

Grief can make the world feel unfamiliar.

It can also make us unfamiliar to ourselves.

In grief, dreams may bring the dead close. Memories may become vivid. The body may carry sorrow in ways the mind cannot organize. Time may feel strange.

This is why grief needs more than explanation.

It needs tenderness, room, and witness.

The hidden door in transition

A life transition may begin with loss, confusion, or uncertainty.

At first, it may feel like a closing.

But sometimes, inside the closing, there is also a hidden door.

This does not mean the loss was good. It does not mean grief should be rushed or pain should be made meaningful too quickly.

It means that the psyche may still be moving.

Something within us may be trying to respond, adapt, deepen, or emerge.

The hidden door may appear as a dream, an image, a memory, a conversation, a new question, or a quiet sense that there is another way to live from here.

A different kind of support

Depth coaching offers support for this kind of inner transition.

It is not about forcing a solution from the outside. It is not about telling someone what their life should become.

It is a space to listen more deeply.

Through conversation, dreamwork, guided imagery, active imagination, and attention to the body’s wisdom, we can begin to notice what is ending, what is unresolved, and what may be trying to emerge.

Sometimes the next step is practical.

Sometimes it is emotional.

Sometimes it is symbolic.

Sometimes it is simply telling the truth about where we are.

A question to begin with

If you are in a life transition, you might begin with one quiet question:

What in me is asking for attention now?

You do not need to answer quickly.

You might carry the question into sleep. You might write it in a journal. You might draw an image. You might notice what memories, dreams, or feelings appear.

Life transitions can be disorienting because they ask us to cross from one way of being into another.

The crossing may take time.

But if we listen carefully, the in-between place may begin to show us a path.

And sometimes, where we thought there was only a wall, a hidden door begins to open.

Images are one of the ways the body and mind communicate.

Long before modern medicine, human beings used images, symbols, ritual, dreams, and imagination in the healing process. Shamans, ancient healers, physicians, psychologists, and spiritual traditions have all understood that images can carry meaning, feeling, and healing energy.

Today, guided imagery continues that ancient conversation in a more conscious way.

When we work with an image, we are not “making something up” in the ordinary sense. We are allowing the imagination to become a doorway into the body, the emotions, and the unconscious. Sometimes the image that appears is surprising. Sometimes it is simple. Sometimes it is strange. But it may contain information we could not reach through ordinary thinking alone.

The body speaks in images

If you have a pain somewhere, you might try asking the painful area:

What is wrong?

The answer may not come in words.

It may come as a color, a shape, a landscape, an animal, a memory, an object, a temperature, or a sensation. The image may not be logical. It may not be what you expected. But it may give you a way to listen.

Images are one language of the body-mind.

They can help us approach what is difficult to say directly: pain, fear, grief, overwhelm, illness, anxiety, uncertainty, or the feeling that something in life needs attention.

Imagery and healing

Guided imagery has been used to support people through many kinds of healing experiences.

It may help a person prepare for surgery or medical treatment. It may help soften anxiety before an intervention. It may help someone feel more receptive and less overwhelmed when facing a diagnosis. It may help with relaxation, chronic pain, fear, or emotional distress.

This does not mean imagery replaces medical care.

It means imagery can support the person who is receiving care.

In my years as a physician, I saw again and again that healing is not only something done to the body from the outside. Healing also involves the inner life: fear, hope, trust, memory, grief, imagination, and the body’s own wisdom.

Guided imagery gives us a way to enter that inner landscape.

Active imagination

Carl Jung taught a related practice called active imagination.

In active imagination, a person may return to a dream image, inner figure, or symbolic scene and allow it to continue. Instead of analyzing the image from a distance, we enter into relationship with it.

For example, if a figure appears in a dream, you might imagine speaking with that figure.

What does it want you to know?

What does it need?

Where does it want to take you?

This kind of work should be approached with respect and care. It is not about forcing an answer. It is about letting the image unfold.

Dream images often carry information that is useful to us, even when we are not yet consciously aware of it.

Interactive guided imagery

Interactive guided imagery is different from listening to a recording.

A recording may guide you through a general relaxation or healing image. That can be useful. But interactive guided imagery happens in real time. It works with the images that arise from your own imagination, your own body, and your own inner wisdom.

The guide does not impose the image.

The guide helps you stay with what appears.

That might be a landscape, a room, a color, an animal, a person, a symbol, or a sensation. The image may change as you attend to it. It may speak through emotion, movement, memory, or metaphor.

The work is interactive because the image is alive in the moment.

It is not a script.

It is a conversation.

Why this matters

There are times when words are not enough.

We may understand something intellectually and still feel stuck. We may know what we “should” do and still feel unable to move. We may carry grief or fear in the body before we can explain it in language.

Imagery can meet us there.

It can offer a bridge between body and mind, conscious and unconscious, fear and trust, illness and healing, the known and the unknown.

Sometimes an image gives comfort.

Sometimes it brings a question.

Sometimes it shows us where we are hurt.

Sometimes it shows us the hidden strength that is already present.

A simple beginning

You can begin gently.

Close your eyes, if that feels comfortable. Let your attention move toward a place in the body, a feeling, or a question you are carrying.

Ask:

Is there an image here?

Then wait.

Do not rush.

You may see something, sense something, feel something, or simply notice a color or shape. Whatever comes, meet it with curiosity.

You do not need to understand it immediately.

You only need to listen.

Images can open doors that ordinary thought cannot. They can help us hear what the body knows, what the heart carries, and what the deeper self may be trying to bring into awareness.

Sometimes a dream asks for your attention.

It may come as an image you cannot forget. A person from childhood. A deceased family member. A place you have never been, yet somehow know. A nightmare that returns. A strange scene that seems meaningless, but leaves a feeling behind.

You may wake with the sense that something has happened.

Not just in the dream, but in you.

Dreams speak in images, symbols, emotions, and body sensations. They do not usually arrive as explanations. They do not always tell us what to do. But they may point toward something that wants to be known.

A dream may ask us to remember.
To grieve.
To change.
To listen.
To become curious about a part of life we have been avoiding.
To notice a hidden door.

Why work with dreams?

Because something in you is already asking.

A dream that stays with you is not random in the ordinary sense. It may be carrying energy, feeling, or meaning that has not yet reached conscious thought.

Sometimes dreams bring old material forward: a forgotten house, a childhood landscape, a person we have not thought of in years. Sometimes they bring new images that feel mysterious or even absurd. Sometimes they bring fear. Sometimes they bring comfort. Sometimes they bring a sense of guidance.

The first step is not to interpret the dream too quickly.

The first step is to make room for it.

Begin simply

You can begin by remembering.

Keep a notebook by the bed. Write down whatever you can, even if it is only a fragment:

A color.
A room.
A road.
A person.
An animal.
A sentence.
A feeling.
A door.

If writing is difficult, draw something from the dream. Place an object near your bed that reminds you of it. Tell the dream to someone who will listen carefully and not immediately explain it away.

Then wait.

Dreams often unfold over time. The first meaning is rarely the only meaning.

Try not to say, “I know what this means” too quickly. Try not to say, “This means nothing” too quickly either.

Stay curious.

Assume there is more.

The dream as a threshold

A powerful dream can feel like a threshold experience.

It may arrive during grief, illness, retirement, caregiving, creative change, or a period when the old life no longer fits. It may appear when we are between identities, between decisions, or between one version of ourselves and another.

At these times, dreams may bring images from the deeper self.

Carl Jung understood dreams as one way the unconscious communicates with consciousness. In Jungian work, a dream is not treated as a puzzle to solve from the outside. It is approached as a living image, something to enter into relationship with.

What does the dream want us to notice?

Where is the energy?

What feeling remains in the body?

Which image will not leave us alone?

What might be trying to come through?

When a dream feels urgent

Some dreams feel like more than dreams.

They may wake us with a sense of alarm, wonder, grief, or recognition. They may feel as if they are asking for immediate attention. They may bring information that changes the way we understand a relationship, a loss, a decision, or our own life.

A dream like this should not be dismissed.

It may be useful to bring it to someone trained in dreamwork, Jungian coaching, Jungian analysis, or another depth-oriented approach. A skilled listener can help hold the dream open without reducing it too quickly.

The work is not to force a meaning onto the dream.

The work is to listen.

A few ways to begin

If a dream is asking for your attention, you might try:

• Write it down before the day begins.

• Give the dream a title.

• Draw one image from it.

• Notice the strongest feeling in the dream.

• Ask which part of the dream feels most alive.

• Imagine continuing the dream and asking one image or figure what it wants you to know.

• Keep the dream nearby for several days.

• Ask for another dream.

Dreamwork is not about controlling the dream.

It is about developing a relationship with the inner life.

The hidden door

A dream may not give us a direct answer.

Instead, it may open a door.

Behind that door may be grief we have not yet felt, a strength we have not claimed, a memory that needs compassion, or a future self beginning to take shape.

The dream may come as a mystery because the deepest changes in life often begin that way.

Not as a plan.

Not as advice.

Not as certainty.

But as an image, a feeling, a question, a path, a room, a figure, a door.

And if we are willing to listen, the dream may lead us somewhere we could not have reached by ordinary thinking alone.

Jungian coaching uses the tools and ideas developed by C.G. Jung, the founder of Jungian depth psychology.

Unlike coaching that focuses mainly on goals, plans, and outward performance, Jungian coaching begins with a different question:

What is trying to emerge from within?

From a Jungian perspective, we have access to thoughts, feelings, images, instincts, and inner knowledge that are not yet fully conscious. Dreams are one way this deeper material can reach us. So are strong emotions, body sensations, intuitions, recurring patterns, synchronicities, and images that stay with us.

Jungian coaching offers ways to listen to this material with curiosity and respect.

Some of the methods used may include dreamwork, active imagination, guided imagery, embodied imagination, symbolic exploration, and attention to the feelings or sensations that arise during the work.

The purpose is not to force a quick answer. It is to create a space where something new can be heard.

How is this different from traditional coaching?

Many forms of coaching help people clarify goals, make plans, and change habits. That can be useful.

Jungian coaching works differently. It is less focused on pushing toward an outside goal and more focused on reconnecting with inner wisdom.

It asks what old patterns may no longer be serving you. It listens for images, dreams, emotions, and instincts that may point toward a new way of living.

This can be especially helpful during life transitions: retirement, grief, illness, caregiving, aging, identity change, creative renewal, or the feeling that an old life structure no longer fits.

What is individuation?

Jung used the word individuation to describe the lifelong process of becoming more fully ourselves.

Individuation is not about self-improvement in the ordinary sense. It is not about becoming more efficient or impressive. It is about becoming more whole.

Sometimes this means shedding old roles, listening to neglected parts of the self, or discovering meaning in experiences we had not fully understood.

Dreams, symbols, and images often speak in the language of this deeper process.

Why dreams and images?

Symbols and images are often the language of transformation.

A dream may bring us a figure, place, animal, object, or scene that feels strange but important. Guided imagery may reveal an image that carries emotion or meaning. A body sensation may point toward something we have not yet found words for.

In Jungian coaching, these experiences are not dismissed. They are approached with curiosity.

What might this image want us to notice?

What feeling comes with it?

What part of life is asking for attention?

What door might be opening?

Is this therapy?

Jungian coaching is not the same as long-term psychotherapy. Some people use it alongside therapy, while others come because they are facing a specific life question or transition and want a different kind of reflective support.

The work is usually short-term, though some people continue with dreamwork or guided imagery over time.

The goal is to help clients discover their own insight, language, and next steps — not to impose an answer from the outside.

Why this work matters

There are times when ordinary problem-solving is not enough.

A life transition may ask more of us than a plan. It may ask us to listen differently. To pay attention to dreams. To notice what the body knows. To make room for grief, imagination, memory, instinct, and meaning.

Jungian coaching offers a way to approach these moments with curiosity rather than fear.

Sometimes, when life no longer fits the old shape, a hidden door begins to appear.