The Moving Stairs
1st of May, 2024
Context
The dreamer is a female of 29 that lost her job recently due to layoffs in the company.
Previous day thoughts
I've been laid off from work over two weeks ago. I have enough money to support myself for a long while and I started working on a personal project. However, I feel pulled back by a sense of low self esteem, like I don't believe in myself somehow. Yesterday before going to bed I had a slight feeling of anxiety that I am not looking right now for a job in my old domain and perhaps if I delay it I won't be able to get one if things don't work out.
Ana was climbing some stairs that were moving. The steps were rotating and shifting and she fell through them. I was watching her from above. She was holding tight, but eventually she fell down the stairs injuring herself.
Then I was talking to her and she told me she and Daniel were divorcing. The reason was that she really wanted to buy a house but Daniel would avoid the topic every time she brought it up. We then went together to see the house she purchased. The previous owner, a young woman, welcomed us. Her taste in clothes was as bad as the house itself. The house was made of plastic and it had leopard print curtains on the windows.
Dream
Associations
- Ana — she is a friend I used to have. She was crippled by anxiety and had a lot of negative self thoughts and poor self-esteem.
- marriage with Daniel — Daniel was more confident, even cocky, which Ana seemed to like in men probably since it was the opposite of herself. They loved each other and were together in real life for many years.
- house — a house represents stability, it grounds you.
- kitsch house — an obviously bad choice, made in a hurry, but not representative of one's tastes.
This dream is structured as two dreams, where the lysis in the first dream generates the second dream as consequence.
Locale
The locale here contains the dreamer watching from a distance, without any involvement, her friend Ana. This suggests to us that the dreamer experiences what is happening without feeling like she takes part in it, we could say that she experiences it as if she were a victim of circumstances.
Exposition
A shadow figure in the dreamer, representing her unintegrated feeling side that is crippled by anxiety and negative self-thoughts, is shown climbing stairs that move, rotate and shift. To climb stairs is synonymous to going higher on a consciousness level. And to lift Ana out of the unconscious would mean to process those negative feelings, digest them and integrate them. This would result in a successful climb.
Peripateia
However, the climb is difficult. This indicates to us that the ego is not yet prepared to face this challenge. Ana falls down, injuring herself. An injury could represent an intense emotional hurt.
Exposition
The result of this fall is shown in the second dream as Ana's decision to divorce herself from Daniel. A fall takes you to a lower level, which represents a regression in the conscious attitude. This regression brings about a feeling of impatience for finding stability (house), even if this stability goes against the true self. It's the dreamer's poor self esteem, a shadow side, that takes over, divorcing from a more confident and masculine attitude that is capable of enduring uncertainty.
Lysis
The result is the purchasing of a plastic house with leopard print curtains. Which is to say, that the dreamer pursues a path that brings her stability but feels fake and unrepresentative of one's true self. This happens because the dreamer is not yet ready to integrate the shadow aspect of her personality revealed in this dream.