I was plagued with weird dreams last night. I was visiting with friends at a mall in my hometown. I can only remember one friend (P – used to be my best friend in my 20’s, but I haven’t heard from her in years), but I think there was a second one there, possibly my sister. Anyhow, we were having a good time until they told me that two people were coming. The first was C, a high school friend who I would love to see, and the second was momster. I said I was sorry to have to miss out on seeing C, but there was no way in h@#$ I was sticking around for momster and fled.
I tried to blend into the crowd in a different store, but momster and the others found me there. Momster came up to me and wanted hug (like she did when I saw her last at my sister’s graduation). I gave her the weakest hug ever, and her end was just as weak. P and the others were saying, “See. I knew you would be OK seeing her.”
I ran out of the store and ran as fast as I could through the mall with P and the others trying to catch me. I leaned over and vomited. P and the others were still saying that I was OK and this was good for me, but I had to stop and vomit again even harder.
Then, it was Halloween (my ex-friend and I took our children trick-or-treating together on Halloween for eight years – this was our first Halloween not doing so), but I had to attend a make-up class that was being held in ex-friend’s classroom. (Ex-friend is a teacher.) I didn’t want to see her but knew there wouldn’t be a choice. She was polite to me (in real life, she pretends I don’t exist), but it was awkward. I borrowed a textbook from the speaker, but ex-friend took it from me.
Then, my son said he was hungry, and we went looking for food. He had bought himself a mansion filled with ponies, and I kept commenting how keeping ponies on carpet isn’t really the best idea.
Strange, strange dream. I had trouble falling back to sleep and am now pretty tired from being so restless all night.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
When does the movie come out?
I wonder if all the drama with your son is triggering dreams of your own growing up stuff… It’s interesting that people from your past, your mom and your son were all in the same dream…
I have recurring dreams about malls. They are always schools as well. Malls with schools in them or schools with mall in them. When you walk to class you have to walk past all the stores and etc.. There are always bars in them as well. Especially this old bar I used to work at. Wonder if the mall has some kind of significance?
I hope you get some restful sleep tonight.
peace,
m
Intense. I have also had dreams in which people tell me things that are contrary to what I’m experiencing (ie, you throwing up while people tell you it’s good for you) and I think of that as a particularly stressful kind of dream.
I had a lot of involved dreams last night too. I got a disturbing message from my mother-abuser late in the evening, so that’s not so surprising. What struck me when I woke up though is that the dreams weren’t really nightmares, and mainly dealt with me spending time with my partner, my best friend from long ago, and my therapist. The dream was complicated, but not bad, and I felt surrounded by support. Thank you, unconscious, I need that today!
You have to analyze the feelings above all- like the vomiting; for me, whenever I begin to deal with anything from my past I get very nauseated and even bulimic at times. I feel like I am vomiting poison out of my system. Vomiting is a purging of poisons.
Its interesting how you kept being forced to see people you did not want to see. In the first case, you are enjoying life and the intrusion of your mother against your will keeps coming. Could that be how you are feeling? Like you just want to enjoy life and those you love, but the intrusion of all you are working through concerning past abuse keeps interfering with the pleasures of today?
And then others saying, “See, I knew you would be ok seeing her” – could that represent some that may be indifferent to how horrible this all is to you?
Great points, heavenlyplaces.
Throwing up for me is part of processing. It seems to be a build up of chemicals in my body and throwing up helps. I have thrown up before therapy. It is just something that is part of it all for me. most of my life I would do anything to prevent throwing up as it was painful. I had to learn to have it not painful. It is similar to shaking. Some times my body needs to shake. It is not fear and it is not about what happened before it is just what my \body needs to do. If I stop it or the throwing up that can lead to a crash.
I notice things in my dreams. I do not analyze them. Pretty much my dreams do what the need to do. I am aware that some of us dream differently and that some of us can be in each others dreams.
I do notice sometimes observing black gooey things that are more horrid than anything in real life. I do sometimes notice caves, openings, places under building and such and know we are going to work on memories in a way the dream is part of the work. Sometimes I notice things getting larger and larger and sometimes in pairs. Seems that is memories coming to the surface.
Unlike triggers or flashbacks which tell me more specific what needs to be worked on dreams are just dreams for me.
I do notice ice and when I do I know that there is memory work that is on the way/ongoing.
I some times think that much of the result of the trauma is that I do things asleep better done awake and things awake better done asleep.
I always sleep after therapy. It used to be an issue that I could not find my way home. That is gone. We do find it best not to have anything to do like a phone call or errand after therapy. We find it best to have food on the ready as we might sleep the whole day.
I sleep a lot when doing the work of therapy. I stay away from the depression model this work takes an incredible amount of effort and therefore requires much sleep and rest.
Pretty much I am healing my brain and body. That is not easy.
Faith,
I notice you didn’t really say how you felt after the dream. I used to have some strange dream patterns that would go in cycles. Sometimes I would have horrifically violent nightmares whose images I would remember, but wake up with absolutely no feelings – as if it were a benign dream. Usually the feelings would start coming to me later in the day, but not always with the full ‘terror’ appropriate to the images; sometimes the feelings would remain fairly moderate. Others would eventually come on full with all the appropriate terror feelings. Other times I wouldn’t remember anything at all at first, but then eventually remember the images, and then finally a few hours later the feelings would come.
But some of my worst ‘nightmares’ were seemingly innocuous dream images that wouldn’t really make sense, and wouldn’t contain any overtly violent imagery, but I would wake up with feelings of terror. And the worst ones were where the images were benign but the delayed feelings were of violence/terrorizing.
Not trying to project anything here, but the content and ‘feel’ of your dream reminded me of this last type.
One consistent theme I see in your dream is that you or people around you are expecting you to suppress your truth and play polite in public with people who have badly abused &/or betrayed you or, in the case of your son, you are forcing youself to hold back the truth and give an (perhaps inappropriate?) extremely tepid response. It appears to me you are being a passive character, rather than an active actor, in your own dreams: dreams full of images of people that are practically crying out for appropriate consequences for their harmful behaviour.