Sexual Assault Uncertain dream from childhood or a truth?

[Eloise12566]

When I was very young, anywhere around the age of 3-4, I had a dream that's been lingering in the back of my mind for over a decade. The undertones of the dream felt so unnerving for the age I was, and something about it refuses to leave and stop unnerving me.

I was in what appeared to an empty carpeted room inside a closet with one of those sliding doors, which were open. I was entirely naked, except for the fact I was wearing this oversized shirt... But the oddest part that makes me feel it was just a bizarre dream was the fact I was hanging from the coat hanger (via the shirt). In the room there were 4 (maybe more?) older men who I wasn't able to recognize. Either fully undressed or fully. The energy of the dream was very uncomfortable and I felt powerless, and to this day it feels so random and unsettling. I woke up with only this visual left behind.

What irks me is what triggered this dream, but most importantly the sexual undertones I later realized it had. I wasn't molested or assaulted to my knowledge at that point, though I do know I was around a man who would later do so while drunk (he molested me around the age of 9 by making me lay down with him on the couch, though it was just over my clothing). No other further incidents aside from early exposure to pornography and being around other predators (who laid no hands one me).

I guess I've come here to ask if this is a normal type of dream for someone to have, or if it's something I should dig deeper into... I've always been a very sexual person, and I don't know if that's just the cards I was dealt or something deeper. Thank you <3

 

[Friday]

Existing as something else? (Hanging from the closet like a shirt -or by a shirt- defying physics & gravity, tucked under a ledge like shoes or in shoes, plugged into a wall &/pr turned on & off again like an appliance, worn by someone else like clothes, flying like a bird, jumping like a cat, used to hold paper together like a staple or paper clip, being driven like a taxi, dunked in a bucket and used to mop the floor, etc., etc., etc.) is a totally age appropriate -and are very common types of- dreams for toddlers.

Not realizing the sexual undertones of nakedness, until later? Also age appropriate, as well as indicative of no sexual abuse.

Ditto, age appropriate for various themes of “taboo” & “don’t do that!” IE being hidden away, whilst people are in the other room in various states of undress, in cultures/families with nudity taboos. In cultures without those taboos more common toddler-dreams around nakedness would be wearing clothes in the baths, being dirty in the spa, every time you take off a shirt there’s another shirt under it, etc. In both cases? Most commonly sparked by an incident earlier in the day, (Privacy please! Suzy, we don’t walk into rooms where people are changing. Bobby, we don’t run naked through the house, we get undressed in a room, where people can’t see us!) or a lesson repeated 10,000 times finally “sinking in”.

So it all sounds completely normal/age appropriate to me.

Does your PTSD stem from later sexual assault/abuse?

 

[Eloise12566]

Thank you very much for your insight, that puts it all into a much more comforting perspective. I was hoping, and assuming, it was a normal age appropriate dream relating to shame of some sort. It's just something about it has just haunted me since I was young.

I've never been sexually abused or assaulted (unless you count being molested a bit later in my childhood and early exposure to hardcore pornography). I've understood concept of sexuality and nudity since I was very young, as well as experienced a lot of uncomfortable exposure to sexual topics both due to my father (not maliciously or with pedophilic intent, him being a very "they're going to learn eventually" type of man) and another man who later molested me (as mentioned). So perhaps just shame over that.

Thank you again. I'll think this over.

 

[RainbowSearchParty]

The thing that’s hard with dreams is that we can’t know if they hold truth or not. REM sleep is when our brain tries to process stuff, but it doesn’t do this processing into a factual memory-remembering way, so everything comes out distorted and weird. Dreams don’t necessarily reflect reality. Or maybe they do. But we can’t know, and I think one of the challenges (for me at least) is recognizing that I may just never know if some of my dreams are related to life events or not.