Dreams...how Our Little Selves Are Represented

[Chava]

I feel like I'm either missing something or yet approaching something in therapy. I've been horribly violent dreams...creepy what comes out of my brain. But I assume the little person in the dream is me, represented different ways. What experiences have you had with dreaming about trauma, or representations, and who the kid is...and if you are watching from outside the dream?

Warning: violent dream images...maybe triggering?

I won't share all details, but a few examples: My dad and brother had decapitated a little girl and were kicking her head around and laughing. I was watching, but through a window and really outside the dream. They didn't know I was there.

In another dream, I was myself but young...I was watching men get murdered around me as I had to stand scared and frozen because my mom was molesting me. All the guys being murdered were oblivious to us, but I felt a connection to the guy who just cut his own guts out so nobody else could.....it seemed so powerful...I was focused on that while being molested.

In another dream, I was again outside the dream...nobody could see me watching. An insane couple cut several people to pieces...very bloody, and they were having fun...dressed up a dead guy in his business suit after all the blood was gone, set him at his desk, and took a pic for his family (wtf?!). A 20-30 something daughter showed up. Just when I though what a blessing that she's normalm she stabbed her 4 or 5 year old daughter in the back.

Latest: my dog was going to kill a girl and I was apathetic because I think the girl was me and I hd the personality of my mom (in real life my dog could never even mildly hurt someone). Well he only chewed up her hands then stopped. I was irritated to even be involved...but took her to ER. She thought she was fine but I suddenly needef to make sure her hands were okay.

Little bits of this could be real, but mostly scary exaggerated representations, I assume. For those of you who have nightmares are they more like replaying your trauma or are they bizarre and/or violent in representational ways? I'm trying to not be afaid to go to sleep. But I do still need ambien (nightmares on muscle relaxants too, so I don't thin med related because I swich and use as needed). Anyway, wishing you all peaceful or comforting dreams...

(sorry so long...thanks for reading)

 

[Fadeaway]

I have had some pretty demented dreams that are trauma related. Sometimes i have nightmares that put me in the exact same situation as my traumas but the place will be different or other details, but I always know exactly what they represent. Also I feel in the dream exactly what I felt at the time.

Others are sometimes me doing horrible things in my dreams. These ones used to really bother me, but my therapist assured me that they weren't representations of who I was, just my mind trying to cope and understand what happened to me. The one that freaked me out the most was I was biting a child and was extremely angry in the dream. It took until just now as I am typing it out to make the connection of the fact that when I can't cut, I bite myself. Hmmm...

 

[Chava]

@Fadeaway thank you. I can't quite believe I bothered with the details did (partly blame me sleeping pills), but "demented" is a good word...and yet not taking dreams as a representatioins of who we are (though representations of trying to cope with something). I want to understand these bad dreams with my little selves instead of being completely afraid of them, though without trying too hard to actually analyze or piece together any sort or reality from these demented represenations...assuming somewhat related to what I'm trying to process.

 

[Springer80]

I think they are about power dynamics. The lack of control you had. I've had plenty like that. Not as violent as that any more, but I still have strange ones where dogs eat other dogs etc.

In a way these dreams are your friends, they are rinsing out the emotional horror you endured. The intensity of them will die down eventually. Rest yourself as much as you can.

I think hands are powerful symbols in dreams. I used to auto-draw myself in a dissociative state and I'd come out with no hands or feet, just stumps. Hands defend you and hands also allow agency over your environment, creativity, expression. There is a reasonably good interpretation site called Dream Moods but I always find I know best what these things mean to me, because I can remember the feeling associated with them.

 

[Springer80]

Here's a tit-bit of info for you. A lot of my dreams have animals in them, bulls, lambs, birds, manta-ray, eagles etc.
There is a word derived from the Greek, physcopomp (no it's not a crazy person in state regalia!) but it means animals that reflect spirit that lead you to the underworld/sub-conscious. It's very interesting.

 

[Chava]

@Springer80 thank you...and glad they are normal and will hopefully lose intensity. Your notes on hands make sense...I have a lot of hand shakyness/tremors in therapy, and not like good release sort, but like freeze (feels helpless, probably torn between need to connect and need to protect myself...therapist tries to help me separate these). No feelings in this dream because I was so detached from those little hands....had them stitched up out of sense of obligation. But it's interesting I had looked up blood on walls (other dream, total slaughter) and that was a sort of warning of something I had to confront, which made sense because I also developed a heart arrhythmia and a load of anxiety around that time. Don't think I've made the right confrontation, but at least settled my body to non-emergency status for a while.

Also weird my dog was involved...my good buddy and hopelessly affectionate and non-aggressive...so like reminiscent of old feelings but a piece of the present reminding me we are okay, maybe

 

[Springer80]

Decapitation is interesting. If you remove the gore part, they have separated your head from your body. Your mind from your feelings, Your thought's from your actions. And they are laughing at you. You feel humiliated because you don't have control. The fact you watched this from behind a window is indicative of the dissociation at the time. Your inability to stop it.
(I occasionally have had very vivid dreams about scarves blowing off in the wind. Scarves seperate your head from your body).

The second one. Did you have males in your life that you hoped might help and didn't come to your rescue? Or it may not be literal it may be the masculine in general which is more aligned with power culturally? So you are being molested by your mum and representations of power are being killed. The one who takes his own life is admired. You hurt or sabotage yourself so as not to allow anyone else to.

The third. Dressing up the dead in normal scenario's. Forcing people to pretend to live normally. And then there is hope of rescue that's taken away. But taken away by a woman, culturally more caring and she does the worst, she stabs a little girl. I think this sounds like the things that hurt us most are not that bad people do bad things but that good people do. I find it very hard to have any relationship with my non abusive mother because she never intervened or helped me afterwards. Perhaps that older daughter is you, and you want her to come and help but she kills the child. Maybe it's some emotion that you need to listen too and you can't yet.

 

[Chava]

@Springer80 wow, and thanks for all the thought. Dressing the dead interpretation (no. 3)...had not thought of that but it makes a lot of sense. So sinister and F#-d up. I can't say much about no. 2 without feeling my pulse get screwed up. But I was way over-sensitive to sharing this with my therapist...I felt like it scared and disgusted her (partly my projection, partly she responded telling me I should pay for missed appts...like a reprimand because I canceled and instead ended up getting ECG to make sure I wasn't having a lethal heart issue...wildly missing beats, sick feeling.) I do feel like the younger mother who stabbed her daughter was possibly me (no. 3), but it came within week after this other stuff, so felt like she was also maybe my therapist. I saw all this slaughter, looked away, and just when I thought it was safe to open my eyes felt reassure by this seemingly normal person...but then she abruptly stabbed the little girl and I was horrified I had to see that turn. I woke up right away. I don't really blame my therapist because she apologized for a misjudgement...but I did feel stabbed in the back. There's blood on the walls and I feel like I can't trust anyone, so possibly retreating but staying safe.

Anyway, lots of complicated relationship stuff for sure. thanks again!

 

[Springer80]

I've had an ECG before! I got temporary arrhythmia from a combination of exhaustion and coming off beta blockers and anxiety levels.

I've had pretty vivid dreams for 15 years or more. LIke I say the violent ones are gone now. I think I used to try and hold onto the imagery first and then the metaphorical/intellectual meaning and then slowly the emotion of them I could handle.

Just last night I had one where I was trying to walk a black dog by a canal and my dad was sort of in the wings, blocking my path.
It's like it allows me to remember the fear of his presence. How looming it was. In some ways I still live in relation to a looming presence that isn't there any more. The dream throws into relief the fact that I am safe now but also that behaviourally I still operate like I'm not. So it shows me something, it brings me back to my reality now.

 

[KwanYingirl]

As a child my nightmare was a recurring one. My bedroom floor was all my bunny rabbits and a bunny crusher that looked like a big horseshoe crab went around and killed the bunnies.
As an adult my distressing dreams all have the element of water in them. I am driving and get hit by a tidal wave, or I am trying to escape water rising up around me. Water is overtaking me. My acupuncturist said water in dreams is sexual. Duh!

 

[Springer80]

I have lots of water based dreams too. I've never heard of them being described as sexual. It is more widely thought they are the subconscious. I often have dreams where water based animals are in the wrong context. The type of water varies from contained manmade to waterfalls etc. The last big shift into my body I had I dreamt of a massive shoal of mantra rays in the South American ocean and I was watching them from way above, flying through the ocean.

Do you feel sexual in these water dreams? I don't.

 

[KwanYingirl]

No not at all, she said it is evidence of abuse. Damn did not want to hear that.