Dream Series: Facing my fears

Locale

The location is the dreamer's hometown, she is there with other unknown people. The other characters are the children soldiers and the brother.

Exposition

A UFO causes the dreamer and everyone else to panic and hide. The dreamer has recently moved to a new country, alone. The unknown threat in the form of the UFO is revealed as Kevin's home alone. This dream image makes the dreamer realize that she is scared to be here by herself. The threat seems to be very humorously presented by the unconscious in the form of a comedy movie and children soldiers.

Peripateia

Then the dreamer easily disarms the child soldier, showing that the fear can be easily defused. However, the dreamer doesn't know what to do with the gun and hands it over to an animus figure that seems to be similarly hesitating.

Lysis

Her brother, who recently traveled alone to another continent, represented a more confident, masculine energy to her. However, she wasn't sure whether the image of her brother was positive — symbolizing the right attitude to overcome fear — or if he represented a negative animus repressing valid emotions. This uncertainty came also from the fact that the threatening soldiers in the dream appeared to be children. At the time, the dreamer was also reading a book, and she felt that the author would have encouraged befriending the fear instead. Over the following days, the dreamer is once again crippled by fears of driving, triggered by the challenge of navigating a new country, unfamiliar roads, and having little to no driving experience.

Locale

No location is indicated. The dreamer is not present in the dream, the dream is watched as if it were a movie.

Exposition

The dreamer would like to go hiking but she is afraid of the dangers of doing it alone. A fugitive thought that she could get a guardian dog to deal with this problem, produced this dream. Here we see the dog devouring a cow.

Peripateia

As a consequence, the bovine god figure appears, covering the whole horizon. It's as if the act enraged the god. If we assume that the cow stands for the fear instinct that the dreamer wanted to overpower with the help of a German Shepherd, here we see the unconscious's opinion of that. The moment that the dog consumes the cow, a powerful and ominous Cow God appears. The Cow stands for a symbol of life, since the cow gives birth and nourishes with its milk. So we can extrapolate that this fear instinct is synonymous with life. We fear because we want to live.

Lysis

The encounter with this archetypal image leaves the dreamer in awe.

Locale

The location brings the dreamer back to where she grew up, which indicates to us that the problem posed by the unconscious in this dream dates from back then, and still needs to be resolved. The characters in the dream are the brother, the ego and the fish.

Exposition

This dream came as a response to the dreamer's question from the previous dream with her brother: "Is my dream brother's attitude correct, or is it wrong?". In the previous dream, the interpretation was that the animus figure in the shape of the brother thought the source of fear needs to be decisively removed. The dreamer hesitated, wondering if a compassionate examination of one's fear is not more appropriate. In this dream, there is a fish that tries to bite the dreamer's brother, but he keeps it contained and plans to cook it, which means to integrate this instinct. But the dreamer finds this sad and feels pity for the fish, mirroring the real life attitude. Then the scene changes, and the narrative restarts in the same vein.

Locale

Now we have the dreamer swimming underwater with the fish, which is to say - she is going in her unconscious.

Exposition

Here she tries to befriend the fish, to understand this instinct and relate to it.

Peripateia

However, we see that the relationship does not go well. The only way that the fish can get close to the dreamer is by harpooning her, which causes small wounds. That the dreamer does not feel the pain and ignores it suggests to us that there is a repression of feeling, an incapacity to perceive the extent of damage caused. In real life this can mean that the quality of her fear is too primal, too primitive to integrate. For instance, one may try to connect the source of this fear to childhood trauma and this way to resolve it and integrate it, but doing so may only exacerbate the fear further rather than resolve it. The dreamer ignoring the small wounds would amount to ignoring the negative mental health effects from her focusing on her fear.

Lysis

The dreamer has the slight insight that the wounds may become infected and the problem would get more severe. The brother once more disapproves. The brother, the animus figure, can be interpreted here as a feelingless approach to the problem. Not everything that comes out of the unconscious can be understood and integrated in a delicate manner. Sometimes, a cognitive approach where you simply refuse to fall victim to the unconscious drive or instinct, is the best option. The dreamer realizing that some of her fears are irrational and pushing herself to do the things she fears, the way it is done in behavioral therapy, is what is required from this situation. This is what it means for the brother to keep the fish contained and to cook it with no sympathy.

Locale

The cave as well as the forest are symbols of the unconscious, and the cave as an underground dwelling reminds us of the belly of the mother from which life is born. This way we can parallel it with the previous dream of the celestial cow, another mother symbol. The intensity of the green in the vegetation further emphasises that this is an image of life itself and of love for life. The dreamer is at the entrance of this forest-cave with a young man.

Exposition

When a wolf appears. The wolf tries to come to the dreamer and the animus figure but they are terrified of it and run away. The dreamer has a flashlight that she plans to use as a weapon against the wolf if it reaches her. To hit the wolf over the head with the flashlight is a funny image, given that the way we normally use a flashlight is to illuminate things. Here she wants to use it as a club, to hit and render unconscious. Tools in dreams typically refer to conscious control, so here the conscious mind would not be used for illuminating but for subduing.

Peripateia

The moment when the wolf starts running after them is the peak of the dream.

Lysis

The lysis is brought about by the appearance of the bear that allows the dreamer and the young companion to enter this community in which they are safe. The bear here as the bringer of safety is a highly positive figure. From this point on, the dream continues into a second narrative.

Locale

The young man is no longer in the picture, but we still have the ego and the wolf.

Exposition

Then the ego asks what happened to the wolf and we get a very interesting and insightful answer. We find out that all along the only purpose of the wolf was to find out where a certain snake was. The reason for that is that the wolf is temporarily replacing the snake in the role of protector for the water creatures.

If we think about the wolf and the snake, they are both wild animals but the wolf is closer to a human brainwise, compared to a snake. What would this mean in terms of instincts? We could extrapolate that the wolf is closer to something human, such as emotion, while the snake is more primal, perhaps a gut instinct. The snake is the protector of the water creatures. We know that water (lake), just as forest is a symbol of the collective unconscious. Then we get the additional information that it's in particular the birds (pigeons) that are the most vulnerable of the water creatures, and in need of protection.

The birds, as flying animals, may stand here for a freedom instinct, since flying is the most representative metaphor for freedom. Thus we understand that the wolf as a replacer for the snake means well, and its purpose is merely to protect life, since life itself comes out of the unconscious. The dreamer can verify this by shining the flashlight on the wolf whereupon she can see the wolf watching over the pigeons.

The deep seated fear that the dreamer experiences when going for a hike, and which she tries to fight off by thinking about solutions such as getting a German Shepherd, is a protective instinct that is there, when something more primal in her like a gut instinct is not available.

Peripateia

Then the dream ends in a manner that is meant to shock the dreamer. A butcher pulls off the wings of a dead pigeon. This image is meant to illustrate the danger that lurks just around the corner, and the importance of keeping freedom instincts at bay with the fear instinct that keeps us safe from deadly encounters.