While my opinion on your dream probably isn't worth two cents either--it seems pretty clear that it's an abandonment dream. And psychologists seem to be in longstanding and consistent agreement about parental abandonment being at the core of a host of psychological/emotional problems as setting the foundations for our expectations and experience of the world, not only as children, but therefore, as the beginning of the "snowball" that gains size as it barrels downhill into our adulthood. Everything from Borderline Personality disorder to dissociative disorder to general attachment disorders, and what's referred to as psychodynamic "object relations theory" is based around the sense of rejection that a child experiences from a parent.
Often these things only begin to kick in, and have a really pronounced effect, during the stress that marks the beginning of adulthood, around 19-22, especially: put simply, children/adolescents not only have the opportunity to see the world more in rosier terms, of unbounded hope for the future, which enables us to keep our focus there, (the "oh, it'll all just get better, soon, just don't think about it" rationale), in addition to just not having had anything like the full weight of the world's responsibilities come to rest on us, yet--which frees us up from a lot of stress.
And stress makes real, underlying emotions come out, finally. That's the theory behind why people with an at least somewhat traumatic childhood often think they've just put it behind them, and function well--until a real traumatic event "opens the floodgates" to all of this stored, "papered over" emotion, which can then turn into severe, full-fledged PTSD symptoms, even when a trauma is relatively significant, or seems as though it should be, to the sufferer.
I agree with the above post--all dreams that seem bad aren't--sometimes healing means "picking off the scab" of a gangrenous wound, in order to clean it out. And when dreams churn up issues that are deep-seated, it's often a sign that we're beginning to become not only willing to confront them, but that it's time to deal with them, as they're pressing against the doors of our conscious lives, finally--knocking at that door and demanding to be recognized and given credit for their significance.
I know this was the case for me. Around that time is when my childhood began to rear it's ugly head, in an overwhelming way that interfered with basic functioning, and at the time I had no idea why. That was all behind me, right?
I agree, as well, that everyone else in the dream represents objective reality--as though on some level, you're very aware of how objectively wrong he is/has been in his behavior...but your response to him in the dream is the question you've long needed answered, but been shoving down below a conscious level, and not looking at..."Why? Why are you doing this?"
And that's almost inevitably the first question of trauma survivors: "Why?". It's a natural question, of course. Our instinct tells us, that if we can just figure that out, it will somehow magically untangle the question for us, and provide some comfort in a logical answer that makes sense of everything...and that that will enable us finally to put it to rest.
But "Why?" is an intellectual question, demanding a logical answer--and the feelings and experience of trauma aren't based in intellectual answers nearly as much as dealing with feelings--and feelings of rejection and betrayal are still there, regardless of what the answer is to "Why?". It took me a long time to appreciate that distinction, and I still have to be reminded of it regularly.
I wish I'd been made to appreciate this much earlier--that it could be confronted, and these feelings dealt with in some productive way, so that they could be moved through, and eventually emerged from--so that I wouldn't have wasted so much time and energy just trying not to acknowledge them for so long.
As it turned out, for me, the answers to "Why?" turned out not only to seem pretty insignificant, but to not hold much power--to not have much overall effect in changing my reality or feelings. It was of some comfort to finally get it all untangled and sort it out, don't get me wrong...but it was pretty anticlimactic, and was along the lines of "well, they were pretty screwed up people, themselves, and had their own good reasons to be, even if they didn't care to do much about it."
Judith Herman, M.D., talks about the question "Why?", as the trauma survivor's first preoccupation in her seminal work "Trauma and Recovery", which was really the insight that finally "blew the doors off" for me, and opened them to recognizing trauma as not only something that deserved to be treated as a legitimate issue, but provided the hope that it could be dealt with rather than just ignored and wished away. I always recommend it to everyone with trauma issues.
I'm glad you're continuing to post, and seek support from those who understand. And even bad dreams can be good, if we recognize them as the attempts to focus us on issues we need to confront and deal with, in order to move forward.
