I was attending a sleepover at a school/church function (places where I felt safe as a child). I was tired and went to sleep early. The beds for the sleepover were lined up against the wall like you see in an orphanage or boarding school. Other people were still coming and milling about while I slept. I could never really drop off.
My body was “out,” but my mind was aware as my ex-friend took the bed next to me. My mind was on full alert even while my body slept. (This was my norm as a child.) She moved my body around to make sure I was really asleep.
Then, my dream went into flashback mode. I felt her pulling the covers off my body, just as when I was a child, and I felt the weight of her body climbing onto mine. This wasn’t a nightmare – this was a full-fledged reliving of every detail of experiencing it.
As a child, I would dissociate, leaving my body for the ceiling while my abuser did whatever he or she wanted with my body. In my dream, however, I fought back. I couldn’t move anything other than my head because of the weight, but I bit her right on the nose and kept biting with everything I had in me. I woke up with my heart racing.
In real life, my body was extremely exhausted, so I dropped back off to sleep and re-entered the dream. I was packing up my stuff and leaving the sleepover. I told the leaders that my ex-friend had attacked me, but they seemed oblivious/unconcerned. I went home.
Then, I and my sister were forced to have a play date with the ex-friend. Her mother kept trying to patch things over, and I had to pretend like everything was OK, even though it wasn’t. I knew I couldn’t let my guard down for a second, but I had to pretend that everything was normal.
I had this nightmare on the day after Thanksgiving, and I have already written about the nightmare from Thanksgiving night. If I am going to have nightmares every night until Christmas, it’s going to be a long holiday season.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
How horrible, I’m so sorry.
I don’t know if this will help, but this is *exactly* the type of dream I have about my ex-friend, too. She always gets into a safe place, it’s always detailed and vivid and there’s always sexual abuse of some kind (not always physical contact, sometimes she says things that imply her ownership of me) though she never abused me in that way. I wonder if it’s a metaphor for the dysfunctional friendship being due to the abuse; that fact about how survivors/victims tend to attract and be attracted to people-users. It’s like the abuse has infiltrated our lives outside the abuse in a very physical way. I definitely relate my ex-friend to the abuse and consider being pushed in her direction to have been an extension of it, and my association with her makes me feel ridiculously ashamed, like I betrayed myself, even thought she’s not the worst person in the world by a long way. I know someone who knew both of us and has come down “on my side” so to speak, someone who dislikes her too, which is very comforting, so I know I’m being tough on myself, but as we all know, you don’t have to truly blame yourself to feel the full force of the shame.
That sounds exhausting in every way.
One thing you can try is to listen to a soothing tape before bed. One which makes you feel safe, whether musical or not. Also, I’ve heard that recording affirmations in your own voice and listening to them can be helpful. “I am safe” “I sleep peacefully and wake refreshed” etc…
Take care,
m
Good for you biting her nose and fighting back. What a scary dream/flashback. It is so awful all that happened to you and that you are still having to relive this at times.
I too had a certain “dream” last night. Mine was scary but not a flashback.
Hope you are able to self-soothe today. Treat yourself special- take care of that little girl that needs extra comfort right now.
Hi Faith,
I am sorry that you have been having such awful dreams.
Very good for you for fighting back. That is a significant change. Perhaps you feel more power now than you did when this happened when you were a child? (I know you have stated this on many occasion, and the dream seems to confirm your waking feelings).
My current therapist believes that we are every part of our dreams. The observer, which is the angle you told the story from, the object of the dream, which is your sleeping child self, and in this case your ex-friend. She says it is helpful to put ourselves in the place of each of these parts. It can be very revealing, from my experience viewpoint.
And I wonder what the significance is of biting her on the nose. I have a hunch, but what do you think?
Hi, Freasha.
I would love to hear your interpretation. In the dream, I wanted to fight back, and she was on top of me, so I just starting biting as hard as I could and got her nose. I just saw it as making contact even if it wasn’t in the most powerful place to fight back.
- Faith
It is simply that long ago, I read that many symbols/words that come up in dreams are puns of a sort. That rings true for me in my dream interpretation experience. For me what stood out is “nose” and “nosiness”. (And look at that: another pun from daylight consciousness; “stood out” – like noses stand out from the face.) But it could be different for you. What your friend very nosy? Sticking her nose places you felt it didn’t belong?
OK, think on that and I would love to know what you come up with. It could be that doesn’t feel right for you, but hopefully you will have some insight on what it did mean to you.
Hi, Freasha.
I do dream in puns a lot. I hadn’t thought about “nosiness.” Interesting…
- Faith
This may help- Dreams are the souls way of helping the mind to understand and if the mind is ‘remembering’ the ‘dreams’ then messagers are getting through and awareness is growing. Dreams will not always be troubling and the troubling ones often have positives in them(support yourself and be aware of these). Biting back, fighting back and not tolerating the wrong in your dream says to me that your mind has embraced your true warrior side of not co operating with the pain or the paingivers (this part of humanity, the allowing of oppression is the biggest weapon against us and we all need to do support our child with courage and love to achieve this) and you are saying no from the deepest part of you to the more narrow linear aspects of the mind. Know yourself and be proud of this. It’s when the dreams of swimming with dolphins or playing in fields of flowers, wild and free or many other good dreams the soul will express that is truth of our paths. These do come.
Nightmares are awful! Especially whenthey are a reliving. I had one of those not too long ago and I woke up sweating, etc. The interesting part is that, like you, I was unable to fight back in real life, but I did in the dream. That part was amazing. My T and I discussed the benefits of such a dream in our next session.
The dream sucked, but yeah, it felt good to fight back and scream.
I hope you don’t have more nightmares over the holidays.
Lothlorien
I no longer have night terrors, flashback or nightmares. I do have bad dreams, visions and what I call thought dreams. The night terrors etc are gone as I had the ones I needed to and did not overly resist them. To be clear if someone said years ago that night terrors were positive I would assume they have never had night terrors.
I have asked my people and Faith is the fist one who has ever had a dream that they could go back to. I go back to many dreams and if I want can start one.
I astral project which some would call dissociation. It is my belief that I just never forgot how. I did some experimentation with going to someone and pinching them. It left a bruise and I have never done it again.
I did an experience with having someone leave out a book and see if I could read it. I could see a book I could not read it. If I wanted to do the experiment again I would have them use a color and see if I could go and see the color.
I often travel down electrical lines.
A few time I have done what I call a sling shot thing. This is a kinda speed astral projection and I go long distances.
I do not interpret dreams at all. For me dreams are dreams and they do what they need to do. I do notice things that tend to follow a dream like ice means memories are being not processed. I take no action based in it.
Visions are different for me. They are not predict of the future they do tell me things. Kinda like when you go to sleep with a problem and the solution is there in the morning.