When we have Bad Dreams about our Children

Hi Tina,

This does sound disturbing, and of course raises the obvious question about if your child is safe in waking life. If you have doubts in that area, the dream would be prompting you to confront reality.

Hopefully, your kids are safe and this dream is about your inner world, not your children’s outer world. In this case the dream could be interpreted along the lines of “your grandparents’ street” being the place of your higher consciousness as a parent. In this realm of inner consciousness your inner child is being suppressed by your inner Shadow Animus (your own male aspect). Thus your child is calmly under a toilet, suggesting that you have yourself felt passive, disempowered and devalued (i.e. a receptacle for what others don’t want, particularly crappy and angry feelings). In this sense the dream represents an inner situation, where your angry male self is both “pissed” but also yearning to more fully express itself; meanwhile the “calm” child in just panties is both sexualized, devalued and also perversely powerful (the crappy power around which the low-self-esteem person’s world circles). This set-up begs the question about “passive-aggressive” dynamics (see http://privilegeofparenting.com/2009/11/04/what-does-it-really-mean-to-be-passive-aggressive/).

The fact that you reference money, in connection with power and subjugation is also consistent with the notion of the gold being in the poop (see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2009/06/11/the-gold-is-in-the-poop/).

Of course dreams have so many potential meanings that my suggestions may be all wrong for you and your current situation. What makes good sense is to think about the different symbols (grandparents, toilet, child, etc.) and see what your mind offers up. Perhaps some journal writing, asking for another dream to help clarify, drawing, etc. might open some inner doors for you.

If there is trauma in your past, it wold be lovely for your children if you were to heal. If it is more purely symbolic, it would be good for you to be able to express what you truly feel. Generally speaking, as we embark upon the journey of individuation (i.e. becoming our true Selves), we typically meet the Shadow. If your real man is decent, and your real parents and grandparents, then the Shadow tends to bring a woman her power. Imagine if you could be lucid in this dream and say to your inner not-quite-really-your-husband: “I know you are the inner part of me who would put the little girl part of me under a toilet and pee on her, but why? What is it you need me to realize and recognize so that we can be on the same team and not hurt anyone, not inside me or outside of me, but not be hurt by anyone either?”

Finally, Tina, we all need to feel safe, loved and empowered. As do our kids. My wish for you is that you not take any of my suggestions as possibly knowing more about your life, your psyche and your family than you know—merely the wish that everyone feel respected, safe and loved (i.e. less blame, more compassion, inner and outer; but always with kids kept safe in real life as our first priority).

All Good Wishes

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Hi Monique,

Firstly, let me say how sorry I am to hear about these terrible nightmares—whether awake or asleep, bad things happening to our kids is just about the worst feeling imaginable.

As to what these dreams could mean, I can only offer some ideas to consider while you’re heart and your own instincts must guide you from there.

One possibility is that your son in your dream symbolizes the child part of yourself (think about your life when you were your oldest son’s age for clues about how or why you might have felt like you were trapped or being hurt, perhaps emotionally, perhaps actually in some physical or sexual way).

Even if there is no trauma in your past, your unconscious is trying to make you consciously aware of some sort of pain and need for liberation and protection, perhaps even some sort of new inner adventure (suggested by train station and travel to other places, or perhaps other thoughts and feelings).

You wake with migraine, suggesting just how painful it is to think about, or be aware of, the pain of our children, inner or real.

While I would not assert, based on a dream, that you in the past, or your children are in any danger from strangers, the symbolism of the dream does point to the possibility of being hurt by sexuality. “Penn” station has the root of (penis), and trains can be classically phallic symbols (but, of course, not only that).

In this context it would be important, if you had suffered abuse in the past, to be aware of it and seek help to talk about it and heal it.

Protecting our kids from abuse is part of our job as parents, and one resource in this regard is a book by a colleague of mine meant to teach kids about what is appropriate and what is not regarding their bodies, boundaries and privacy.

For more on that see the book at Amazon: http://amzn.to/JBzHWc

As to how to stop the dreams, my hope is that by thinking deeply about it you may become conscious of whatever message of healing, protection or transformation is arising in your own psyche, which then makes the dream no longer necessary.

Wishing you safety, peace and pleasant dreams :)

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Hello Momma,

Firstly, I am sorry for such a scary dream, but besides keeping a close eye on your child as any parent would, and not letting him drive until he has a license :), we can turn to exploring the possible meaning for yourself.

One possibility is seeing the dream as a reflection of different parts of your own self, perhaps even offering wisdom to the rest of us too. In this context your “sister” is your similar, but different, self who watches helpless as this all unfolds (i.e. the passive part of you who must become integrated into your full self via increased consciousness). You are both near a lamppost (a small bit of light, or consciousness, but not enough for the whole picture). You are “near a corner” (about to turn to a new way of seeing things) and there are townhouses, which are separate, but share walls (together AND apart).

A Van is a collective vehicle, not as big as a train or big truck, but bigger than a car, thus suggesting a need to get somewhere with more of yourself. The problem is that your child-self is driving. This could mean that you are not taking good, firm and loving care of your own self, not your kid necessarily. Perhaps in some way your less mature, or conscious, or responsible self feels like it is at the wheel of your life, but not able to control or guide where it is going.

It all goes to the water, which is perhaps a symbol of emotions, tears, the river of life, the great place of crossings (including growing all the way up). Of course rivers can mean renewal and also death, but symbolically as well as literally.

Thus your child self draws you, in your love as a mom, into the water to powerfully set things right (turn over a van, at first all you can see is the tire, perhaps you’re “tired,” as parenting and life can be exhausting).

The sleeping child is the part of you who needs to be loved and allowed to awaken gently… by the loving, brave, protective and increasingly conscious mother aspect of yourself.

Trust your dreams, nature, love and family. We all need to wake up, but in our own good time, and gently, and maybe in the arms of the great Mother that is Divine, or Nature, or God depending on your lexicon. And when we are awake and grown up, then we work together to keep our kids safe, and take good care of whatever portion we are blessed/tasked to look after.

Hope this gives you some ideas to work with. All Good Wishes

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Hi Keiri,

Firstly, I’m so sorry that you had this terrifying dream—I can feel the sheer terror and anguish in it (and I’m sorry I did not respond sooner, as I was traveling).

My first thought is to look at this dream in terms of your daughter, and the red-haired woman as symbolically representing parts of your own self.

The steps might represent developmental steps (i.e birth, crawling, walking, separating, etc.). When your little girl won’t give you a good-bye kiss it could represent your unconscious wish to NOT have to separate from her, as as two she’s starting to have a stronger will of her own and to experiment with not needing you quite as much as when she was a newborn.

I wonder if you had some painful separation or loss when you were two (particularly something traumatic?). Your daughter hanging between steps could represent your own feeling of hurt in the past when you had to move, or start preschool, or have a new or different caregiver. Perhaps something that was so upsetting made you feel like you couldn’t understand it and this felt like your head exploding (or maybe a relative was violently hurt, i.e. shot or hurt in the head and your infant self picked up on the images but were never told what really happened?).

The red haired woman might represent your own angry or passionate self (it depends on your own personal associations with red hair), but the main point is that your daughter, we hope, is fine and it is your unconscious that is trying to be aware of your own pain about loss, hurt and the difficulties of transitioning to this recent step of being the mom of a two-year-old.

Hopefully, thinking and talking about this dream will mean that it does not repeat, but if it does you might want to explore your own hurts with a therapist. The reason would be that UNRESOLVED (i.e. not talked through) traumas tend to have a negative impact on our kids (causing anxious attachment. see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2010/12/15/attachment-in-the-lab-implications-on-the-couch-and-in-the-brain/)

In any event, I’m sorry for this scary dream and hope it prompts any healing that needs to happen for you, rather than fear for your child.

Warmest Regards

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Thanks for your feedback, Natasha—here’s to mindfulness, keeping it real and compassion for our own self, each other and all our collective children.
Namaste :)

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Hi Marinliza,

I know these dreams can be so haunting and horrifying, yet we might think about it in terms of your own thoughts and feelings and not about danger for your child.

Given that you lost one of the twins in your pregnancy, perhaps you are still trying to come to terms with that loss, which metaphorically becomes expressed as a drowning (i.e. to die in the womb is to die in water).

Swimming and water can be symbolic of the unconscious, thus a “popular swimming resort,” might be a symbol for a collective “pool” of our unconscious—just as talking together here on this blog is a collective pool of thinking, and your dream joins several other dreams as we all try and understand our fears, accept life and loss and strive to love and be kind to each other—perhaps even to the spirits of those who have died.

The “manager” of the swimming resort might symbolize the part of yourself who is in charge, who “manages” the feelings and thoughts of ALL the swimmers. You were having coffee with your manager self, and coffee might symbolize waking up, or becoming more conscious or aware (of feelings, losses, of the different parts of your self).

Seemingly as an effect of coffee with the manager you “remember” or come back into consciousness of your child (this might be the child you lost, but also the child that you once were when you were three—perhaps a time of pain of “drowning” in difficult feelings?).

You ask the other swimmers if they saw your child, and they had not—symbolizing how your child self, and your pain (and particularly the pain of losing a child before term, which is generally not truly recognized in our culture as the tragedy that it is) has not been seen by the group.

You have to think about what red might symbolize, but certainly anger, passion and love are possibilities as for the meaning of the red t-shirt and short.

You jump into the water (i.e. you accept the unconscious and the need to go there into your deep and sad feelings… which allows you to “wake up” and realize that your actual child that did survive is okay, but that you need to fully grieve the loss of your child who died at 16 weeks.

Thus I wish you condolences and compassion, and invite other readers who come across these words to join me in sending love to you for your loss, and to the spirit of the child you did lose.

While the past contains terrible sadness, this dream is not a harbinger of the future so much as an opportunity to come to terms with the past and into greater life and joy in the present moment.

Warmest Regards

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Hi Tasha,

Firstly, I am very sorry you have been bothered by nightmares—and for such a long time. It’s true that telling you to “take medicine” or that you are depressed or need to go out and have fun don’t much help, mostly because we need to be truly understood in order to feel better.

In that spirit, I would invite you to trust your own wisdom, and particularly the power and importance of these dreams. While we live in a shared “reality,” the emotional and psychological power of dreams hints at another reality, our inner psyche (or soul).

Dreams can be seen in a number of ways, but they speak of an emotional/psychological “situation” that is trying to make its way into consciousness. When we are conscious of our fears and wounds, of our desires and our impulses, we tend to be freed of our nightmares (sometimes even freed in “real” life of our painful pasts or painful current situations). It is essential that we take our dreams, just like our lives, seriously; and that we try to understand these realities, even if painful, rather than trying to deny them or chase them away.

Our children take us back through the feelings of our own early lives—through feelings that we may store in our bodies but not in conscious memory. In this way, the image of your 3 year-old in a “back flip” suggests a child whose heart is completely exposed, and against that child’s will. The crib is a protection but also a sort of prison. Being “possessed” as in the exorcist is, strangely enough, the opposite of being “dispossessed” (i.e. being persecuted by bad energy is, in the child’s mind, preferable to complete abandonment, which means death to a small child).

I would think your 3-year-old would find both “Hansel & Gretel” and “Where the Wild Things Are” very interesting; I think you too would find them mysteriously soothing (for helping put forbidden fears into a collective imaginal space—that of the classic children’s story).

While we have all experienced good and bad things, we have not all necessarily come to terms with those bad things. Perhaps you were hurt, neglected or intruded upon (either physically, but also psychologically) when you were a little baby?

It would be amazing and transformative to remember that if something outlandish is happening to your child (back-flips, knives, etc.) you are very likely dreaming. If you tell yourself this before sleep, you just might realize you’re dreaming next time the bad thing happens (hopefully the nightmare will never return, now that you’re thinking more consciously about it, but just in case, it’s good to have a plan).

If you do find yourself aware in the middle of a nightmare, you can say to the baby: “I realize that you are the part of me who seems possessed and scared and hurt. I love you so much I am willing to feel what you are feelings right now, and you can be safe and calm. Once upon a time I too was a terrified baby, but now is not that time, and you have me, your mom, to understand, love and protect you.”

Sometimes the tormented child will then transform into a magical, wise or compassionate figure that turns out to be your inner strength, purity, eternal power of love. If you are fortunate you realize that you are a container of hurt and lostness, but also of Love and foundness. Then you can dedicate your own tranquility and safety to helping others feel safe and good—which is all you really want right now for your children (and it is your profound love for your children that offer you this golden opportunity for healing and for making the meaning of your own past pain be all about helping others who suffer… not telling them they need medicine or to go and have fun, but hugging them in your mind and intuiting that pain can be a teacher of compassion and a love that forms us into true families).

Now for the second dream: this is a classic Shadow dream. Thus the “bad guy” in the “mask” (the hidden self, the destructive self—that which is NOT understood and turns to hate because they were wounded in love) could be understood as that very part of your own self. When a woman has this dream, this is her own power coming to meet her. If a woman has been hurt, or has been taught not to be powerful, then she rejects her own power; upon being rejected, the hurt bringer of power has no choice but to become the intruder, the haunter of dreams.

Again, if you meet a guy in a mask (or a girl acting as a guy wearing a mask) then you are very likely in a dream. If you say to that Shadow: “I recognize that you are my power, and you are frustrated that I have run away and rejected your gift. I am ready to understand what you are all about, but I am a little afraid that if I accept my power I, because I am so hurt and angry, might become scary and destructive like you. I’m particularly afraid about what that would mean for my children.”

The Shadow is very likely to look less scary when respected and understood (you see, running away and hating on the Shadow is like telling her to take medicine or to go have some fun and lighten up). I know you think you’re fairly old now at 23, but we don’t really begin to grow up until 26 or 27. Your brain isn’t even finished developing (even though, like your kids, you have a wise old loving spirit).

Perhaps, as long as we’re playing around with imagination, you might discover a Wise Old Woman in your imagination, as sort of “good witch” who can do a little magic and help you keep yourself and your kids safe, loved, happy and trusting. She is the you that, over years, you will surely grow up and into. For now I think you need to be safe, protected and understood so you CAN become free of your fears and so you will indeed end up having fun, but also meaning and purpose.

Finally, the setting of the second dream, a hotel or castle, hints that this is not just about you and your pain, but about the collective situation for humans. Whether or not you were hurt when you were a child, humans have done many terrible things to each other. It is precisely the “waking up” out of ignorance (ignorance that we are, ultimately, each other—and to hurt anyone, even by way of unconscious hurt, is to hurt one’s own Self) that we may find a way to truly heal our children, love them and protect them and thus transform our Selves and learn to treasure life and its mysteries (those of shared reality and those of our inner mysterious journeys that still somehow might connect with the private journeys of others).

Even if these ideas prove less than helpful, my wish is that you will feel better and be able to sleep safe and sound (and to awaken feeling just as good).

Warmest Regards

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Hi Corri,

This strikes me as both personal and universal.

At the personal level, I wonder if your mom was not as present in your life or childhood as you might wish, and thus your grandmother became the key caregiving figure in your child’s world? If so, perhaps you felt that your grandfather resented the love and attention your grandma paid to you, and thus it might have seemed to you the grandfather wanted to “cut off that face” (the kind face).

On the other hand, you may have felt that your grandmother presented a false face of some sort (denial of problems, denial of trouble between her and your own mom, or perhaps these are paternal grandparents?). In such a situation the dream could represent an unconscious wish to cut that mask away and your need to see the real grandmother (so that you could learn to see the real you in the mirror and bring that real you to the world).

Now turning to the deeper or archetypal level we have a relationship between a Great Mother (perhaps the feminine principle, intuition and mystery, often symbolized by the moon) and the Great Father (the masculine principle, reason, rationality and intellect, often symbolized by the sun).

The scissors are implements which cut (the feminine connects, the masculine discerns or divides to make concrete “reality,” language, culture, architecture, etc. possible). The scissors can be seen as castrating to the male, or wounding, but also as phallic and penetrating. Thus your grandfather, or better understood, your own inner archetypal bossy-pants, cuts the face (the feminine, principle of compassion and family and community and understanding).

Sort of like the uptight banker who is preoccupied with time and precision in “Mary Poppins,” we have to see the Divine Mother principle enter (Mary Poppins herself) to rescue the children from bad manners and lack of life spirit and fun.

Thus scissors are a bit like hands of a clock. Time makes life as we live it possible, and yet also makes us sad for it passes. In our vast human history the sun and moon have eclipsed (or “cut”) each other many times, just as masculine and feminine eras have risen and fallen.

When childhood is sad, time hangs heavy. When we have kids of our own days take forever and years fly by quickly.

Thus at the personal and the collective levels it just might be time that we stopped blaming either men or women, stopped being slaves to time nor denying that it is precious, stopped trying to be right or “good” and instead learn how we are all woven together into some fabulously mysterious story.

In an Indian (Hindu) legend, the weaver of the universe is a spider. In a Greek myth the fates share one eyeball and use a scissors to “cut” threads of human lives… your dream taps into very old stories indeed.

In your psyche you meet all of us, and thus I am sorry if your childhood was sad or scary, lonely or painful, in any way. Now you are grown, so in simple terms, if you need love imagine your grandparents treating each other with love and respect and holding you safely between them. If you manage to feel safe, offer such integrated (scissors/knife/intellect & lap/hug/love/garden) compassion to anyone who seems to be scared or suffering.

That’s my two cents on your powerful and terrible and wonderful dream.

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Hi Erin,

I would view this dream as being about you in relationship to your child self. Perhaps when you were around five something difficult happened in your own life (loss, separation, a move, etc.) and the might have felt like your childhood innocence or some sort of feeling you had when you were three was “stolen” from you.

Thus your unconscious shows you what it wants and needs: for you to be conscious (“in the sun”) in a field (in the reality of life on earth) lying down (close to nature) and with your smiling, laughing happy child self.

This is a good dream. In waking life you have a five-year-old who you adore, but in your dream world you also meet a new child who doesn’t need the sort of roll-up-your-sleeves work as your “real” daughter, but who needs you to relax and enjoy and allow the magical epiphany of this dream to restore some sense of wonder, play, hope and joy.

You’re real daughter was not kidnapped, just removed from the center of your consciousness for a few brief, and potentially lovely, moments in your dream. Just as going out with your girlfriends is not the same as abandoning your child, dreaming of your secretly forgotten child self is not about losing your real little girl.

Love is abundant, shower it on your daughter and on your inner child too.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Nikki,

When people came to Freud with suggestions that they had been hurt as children Freud believed them and suggested this to his colleagues who couldn’t face this idea. So Freud came up with complicated theories about children wishing for hurt or sex… and no one got better (although Freud got very famous).

This dream makes me wonder if you were hurt as a child. Things that don’t belong there got put in your head (bad ideas, cruelty, fear) and in your mouth (don’t speak, or tell or you’ll be punished or abandoned).

Then the train could be a symbol of man’s industrialization (which has lead to vast discrepancies in wealth, and is part and parcel of war; over-producing things leads to surplus of things and lack of money so war has historically been the answer to economic problems).

Trains are also phallic and perhaps you are trying to protect your child-self from the harm you have already suffered. Whether physical, sexual, psychological, political… you are awake and fully committed to the safety and well-being of your child.

Look to the pain of when you were four, and trust that simply being a good mom will prove healing to yourself and of the greatest value to your child.

Even if you have had not trauma, vast numbers of your brothers and sisters have been hurt, and if you are sensitive then you care and it permeates your consciousness.

Care, love, connect. This is the way forward for all of us.

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Hi Nicole,

While we parents always have to keep our kids safe, this dream is not necessarily a warning about your daughter being in danger.

Another way of looking at this dream is that all the parts might symbolize your different feelings and then the dream would represent your inner situation emotionally.

In this way of thinking your baby is symbolic of the child part of yourself. This vulnerable and innocent part of you is trapped in the city where your bi-polar ex lives. This might be symbolic that your inner baby does not feel safe, or that your inner feeling is one of anxiety and fear.

The baby is running, as if she is afraid and trying to get safe (but she could be just exploring and expressing her newly found ability to run—to go where she wants).

When our baby gets old enough to walk or run, she gets old enough to run away from us. This creates the possible danger in the big bad world, but it also creates the feeling that our beloved baby could run away from us.

I wonder how your life was when you were fourteen months old? Maybe you felt unsafe then, or there was danger in your household. If so, you are reliving the nightmare of the past, not having a premonition of the future.

You might take note of Nikki’s dream (posted a couple of comments before yours), the theme of a train shows up there as well, and we might wonder what a train could symbolize? Trains are powerful and they don’t steer left or right, only running on pre-set tracks. Perhaps the train is the part of you that fears she’ll be railroaded into the pain of the past, unable to protect her baby self, as the world stands by doing nothing and the darkness of unconsciousness swallows you up.

By having this dream your fears become conscious; by writing about it and asking for opinions you become less alone (even if all our opinions are wrong, in some way we all actually care that you and your baby should be safe).

More important that what the dream might mean is the need we all have to not be alone, to be free, to care about each other and each other’s children. When we are scared or hurt we need community, and we need love and compassion and understanding. And when we feel strong we can give protection , compassion and understanding to others.

I’m sorry you have been scared and hurt, probably not only in your mind but in real life; and it’s clear you desperately want to keep your baby safe. Yet sometimes a dream has a little bit of secret or forbidden wish inside it; and the truth is that as much as we adore our children they can be exhausting and parenting can be very very hard sometimes. When the child runs away in a dream we might be facing the forbidden feeling that we need a little break sometimes.

Maybe your friends can help you get a little “me” time (if there is someone you can trust to watch your girl). We always say “it takes a village,” but we don’t quite yet form that village or feel like there is a net to catch us if we stumble or struggle.

When we allow ourselves to be aware and honest about our fears and our frustrations we come together and are less lonely.

Maybe you can think about these ideas and then see if you get some new dreams, maybe dreams that guide you or give you comfort (such dreams are like signs from within that you are on the right track).

And if you have had hurt or trauma in your life (i.e. some real reasons that might lead to bad dreams), seek a qualified professional to talk this through—you will become less scared and your happiness and sense of security will help your baby grow more confident and secure as she develops.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Amanda,

Although I suspected that you had been badly hurt, I’m very sorry to hear that this is the case.

As for your question, I do believe that these dreams will go away, but that talking them through and the abuse that has been re-triggered by having a child will free you of the bad dreams.

As for “needing” professional help, I would urge you not to think about it as a mark of being “crazy” or “wrong,” but instead frame it like this: you have been hurt as a child and you DESERVE compassion, understanding, healing and support from caring and competent humans who understand how to help people who have been mistreated.

If you can find someone who is a competent professional I would by all means speak with them as an act of love for your little girl. A healthy happy mom is a gift to any kids.

In addition to this I would encourage yoga or other Zen sorts of things as they can really help calm and quiet the mind. Read things by Thich Nhat Hahn for starters.

Finally, my own book “Privilege of Parenting” is not just a collection of blog posts, it is a separate work meant to help parents better understand themselves and their children no matter what the struggles may be, including the sort you have been through.

Trust that the spirit of others who have survived and healed from what you’ve been through will help you through, and then one day you’ll be helping those who must also make the hard journey into healing through these dark nights of the soul.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Agape,

They say “name is destiny,” and so we must start with Agape, which (as I’m sure you know, means Divine Love).

As is said in the New Testament:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
—John 3:16, KJV

(and “Love” is “Agapao” in the original)

The other side of Agape is Eros, which is desire. In myth this relates to the origin of humans (while Agape has to do with human transcendence, spirituality and higher Love/Consciousness).

As you might sense from reading comments and responses above, I would encourage you to think of the children in your dreams as the child part of yourself.

In this sense we see an inner split between the Shadow (the bad men with lust and poor boundaries) and the Puella (eternal child, innocent, pure, ever reborn, eternal).

In this sense we see your dreams trying to work out a relationship between the carnal/incarnate and the sacred/spirit.

To solve this dream you must commune with the inner devil, the abusers, asking them (if you can, while you are dreaming, otherwise in waking imagination), “I know you are a part of me, why are you hurting this other part of me? What is it you want me to do? Is this about me owning my power and your anger at me running away from this power? Have I tried too hard to be an angel and so I must accept my all too human sexual, dark and not-so-angelic aspect too? Have I been projecting that onto my husband and other men these days? Or is there real danger and I must do something to protect my real children?”

Make your Shadow YOUR Shadow, a baddass who works WITH you to keep you and your kids safe, but not a frightened accuser ready for a witch trial.

ON THE OTHER HAND, you must also review your life and what was happening for you when you were seven and nine. If you WERE abused, it’s time to do some more work around that with a professional to complete your healing, and to divide the past from the present so you can live and love happily now and trust your kids are safe.

Hope this helps & All Best Wishes

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Hi E.E.,

I don’t know if you read through any of the other comments and responses, but if you do you will see that you are not alone in this sort of dream.

I this case I would view the situation as the unconscious conspiring to get your own self and your “brother self” back in contact (this might not need to happen in “real life” but it does need to happen in your inner psychology). You are trying to come to terms with the pain of the past, of childhood and hurt and abuse, and this felt like an earthquake and disaster when you were little. The destroyed house might symbolize the destruction of your self as a child, and the baby might symbolize your baby self who was both destroyed, but who was also rescued (by the you you have become now, the mother and the survivor and the more conscious and loving being). The endless well is a symbol of the despair of your very early childhood, the unremembered past.

The ledge is the line between being and non-being, reality and insanity (for we leave our bodies and float away, not just when we die, but when we are abused). The well is both the pit but it is also the wellspring of new birth, and alas you are pregnant, soon to birth the second child, which symbolically is also yourself in relationship to an older sibling.

You are also Mother earth, the earthquake, and you are the water, symbol of mother, feelings, tears and the unconscious. You are angry because you have been hurt, but you are also alive, safe and able to stare into the abyss and wonder what this life is all about.

None of us can say for sure, but we can give compassion to those who suffer, and accept compassion from those who love us, wherever they may be (i.e. even if they are ancestors, the spirits of those we carry in our hearts and minds, but who we team up with to love and protect not just our own children, but each others’ children too—this is the beginning of community, culture and true civilization).

In your dream you stand alone at the ledge, but when you share the dream you stand with all of us and you are not alone.

Warmest Regards

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Hi Louisa,

If we consider the different people in the dream as symbolic of different parts of yourself, then you have your child self injured on her “left” side (left as in abandoned or rejected). Your parent self is able to see the injury when no one else paid attention (suggesting that in your past you might have felt both neglected and hurt, and then neglected about your hurts). You have the media and police called (the part of you that are the authorities, and the public eye) and this shows your wish to be seen and to have justice.

In the second part the bad guy (who, symbolically, was the one who hurt your kid in the first part) shows up face to face and now HE hurts your own “left” side, with a screwdriver (phallic object connected with “screw”).

Your unconscious is pushing you to be conscious about your hurts in the past and to confront the Shadow. The bad guys are now older and weaker men and you and your child are safe, in reality. Your unconscious is also having you confront your own power. This “bad guy” part of you needs a little rehabilitation, as it has power, and has “tools” but needs to use them to build and to contribute rather than to hurt or abuse.

My hope is that you will feel more empowered as you think about this dream as an inner landscape. Consider dialogue with the scary guy and see what he says he really wants (most likely he wants you to own your power and he can disappear like shadows after you turn the full lights on).

Warmest Regards

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Hi Paula,

View your kid in these dreams as symbolic of your own self at 3. A clothes rack is symbolic of costumes and masks, the image we put on to deal with the world (in contrast to our truest selves). The Ladder might symbolize rising, or in this case descending, consciousness.

You are being led backward down the ladder of your memories to three, when you were “hurt in your head” (i.e. either physically or with painful thoughts/emotions/experiences). In other dreams the kid’s “back” is hurt, confirming the sense that “back” is in the past. Finally, the neck is what connects, or separates, brain and heart.

You are struggling to realize how hurt you were in the past. You must both think about it (i.e. fully realize it) and you must FEEL it, which is painful, but also it is how we heal.

You need compassion, from yourself, and from others, and you will heal and grow less haunted by the pain of the past.

Or so I hope

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Hi Vanessa,

Your “first house” could be symbolic of your mother’s womb. My instinct here is that your mother carries (or carried) unresolved trauma, thus even being “in her house” was a difficult place to be.

While I’d not want to put too much into astrology, the “first house” in that way of thinking is the house of the self. Thus we all start out in the first house, it’s just a little different for each of us—and before we’re complete we all have to make our way around the wheel of experience.

You get to this first house through the ocean, which is the Great Mother and also symbolic of the unconscious. If you read the other comments and dreams above you will find a lot of water imagery; this might help you realize that you are not alone.

The ocean can also be the salty veil of tears. Think of Alice drowning in her own tears in “Alice in Wonderland” once she grows small (i.e. regresses to a baby state where her own feelings are too much for her). If your mom’s feelings were too much for her, then your feelings would be too much for her also, and they would remain too much for you. And then you become a parent and are desperate to grow solid enough to protect and contain and love your own kids… and hence these dreams, this seeking help, healing in the service of our children.

The bits of furniture might symbolize the brokenness that were your childhood feelings. A bit like Noah and the flood, all is wiped out by the great rising tide of Mother Ocean.

You “drown” to end up in mother’s house. Think T.S. Eliot in “Prufrock”:

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

*
lots to glean from such poetry…

But perhaps the beach is that place between unconscious and conscious. For you it might be a door in your mother’s house that leads to the ocean of our collective feelings, myths, memories, loves and pains…

You go in and out of that door, as if incarnating multiple times. But the clock is the signifier of the Father: Father Time.

4:03 and 5:30 seems to be dealing, possibly, with ages, in both cases dropping backward. Perhaps at four something happened to you, and then you felt like a “zero” obliterated by hurt. Perhaps you then regressed to three, or wishing you could be three again, before the bad thing happened. At five you might still be wishing to go back to three, or the wish for zero—for non-being when being hurts so badly.

But this prompts you to “wake up” to your kids, to think of them and their future instead of yourself and your past. This is the healing impulse. Your love for your children will indeed wake you up and it will heal and transform you.

You don’t need no parenting expert for this, you only need love and understanding. That is what we all need, and that is what our kids all need and that is exactly what we have in our tattered hearts and up our torn sleeves.

You run “down the stairs” meaning you go deliberately toward lower consciousness, but not off a cliff or into the sea, in a step by step manner that you can handle.

You see lots of kids across the street. This is because so many of our collective kids are in this situation of hurt, risk, vulnerability. This is why parents are coming together to help each other care about all the kids. The collective idea of caring is not political, or economic, or social… it is the realm of the Great Mother inside every parent, if only the veil of hurt can soften and drop away.

This is the call to the hero’s journey, but men tend to puff up and try to be the hero, women form a circle and get down to actual helping and protecting.

You go for the oldest but disregard the youngest (in a sense YOU are the oldest kid so you must be sure to not forget the actual kids you have when you are awake, they are the “youngest”– but you realize, unconsciously, that you can’t help the youngest if the oldest/yourself is not safe and okay.

“Middle school” might also mean that new learning is in order for you, and it is in the middle between parent and child, the ocean of hurt that you must deal with. Try not to “hate the ocean” respect her and love her and let her teach you how to become one with her, then you can never drown as the ocean does not drown.

The Zombie thing I have more to say about here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2011/09/28/zombies-on-the-couch/

“Ringing the bell” is a symbol of call to prayer, of liberty, of enlightenment… your child did ring the bell, the little Buddha, you just had not heard (for the roar of the ocean can be deafening).

You had not “opened the door” to the heart place where all healing must occur. Thus you have to let that child who is you, and who has cried a river and an ocean of tears, into your heart, the Vanessa’s Ark of your very own soul.

The child looks awful. You bear witness. This is essential, you do not turn away from witnessing the hurt.

Here we get to sexual abuse. So whether you experienced this, or your mom did and you never knew it, but somehow DID know it in your unconscious (ask her, maybe she’ll validate what you’ve always known, and suffered in secret bonded shame with your mom. If we’re right it will liberate you and heal your relationship with your mom).

If you were abused, you were also not protected and this has to be healed. I get the sense that your unconscious is ready for therapy. Thus the cop gives you an appointment to “come and talk” in a week. The cops are also you, the authority part of you who can hook you up with the part of you who needs to talk this all through as an act of love for your children.

I know this all hurts, but it is becoming conscious, which is the opposite of things having to be acted out.

I hope this helps and I send you Healing Wishes

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Hi Tracey,

Perhaps we can think about this dream at both personal and collective levels. At the personal level it might be about how you are trying to integrate your child/male aspect that resists “growing up” (i.e. going up to a higher level of consciousness). Your own yelling and spanking behavior raises questions about the way you were parented, as it shows you feeling helpless to discipline your inner child aspect. Up the stair you go, along with your own inner mother. This could be a symbol of a step-by-step way to go up to higher consciousness and integrate the inner child and the inner mother.

The stairs get narrow, implying that we have to go single file on the journey, mother first, then you as your conscious self, then your child (lead by example, not coercion). Dreams are architected by the deep unconscious, and thus there tends to be a bit of a wish hidden in what happens. Not a wish for harm to our children, although that can be a part of our understanding—a safe way to express aggression and frustration (i.e. the hitting that didn’t actually happen because in a dream no one is physically hurt and it’s our own self we’re mostly dealing with).

The wish, however, might be that the women (mom and grandmother) are pushing the child higher (30 stories… are you nearing 30?) and the child doesn’t yearn to grow up, climb towers (often a male symbol of power, tower building and climbing) but rather we see a violent and scary movement back to earth—the Great Mother.

Perhaps if you meditate on compassion and hugs for your own inner kid, whoever you were at 7, and let her be in touch with nature at the earthy level, it will give you better dreams.

At the collective level, all these dreams of children being hurt makes me wonder if we might heed the warnings of our own parent souls—too much climbing and controlling and striving and we miss the eternal wisdom of children and child-mind.

As parents we must socialize our children, but we have been too much about climbing and competing, not enough about community and connecting. As our world possibly trends toward more connection (evidenced by your ability to connect with me around this dream for example) we have a chance for a re-think on what we value. If we all come a bit more down to earth we might learn that our children lead us in a good direction if we allow them—the importance of play, of fairness, of tenderness, of compassion and trust.

Maybe all us grown-ups have been hurt, and if we realize we are not so alone, or inadequate (i.e. “bad parents”) as we fear, we might be able to support each other to hang out, enjoy, learn something new.

I am increasingly humbled by confusion and by the sadness and fear that comes from loving and deeply attaching. The fact that we dread losing our children also speaks to how they are our greatest treasure, how they teach us to love beyond ourselves and become aware that there is nothing to get that we don’t already have.

Then the challenge is how to tolerate the march of time and loss, how to find something eternal and soothing in the face of eventual death in even the best-case scenario. Maybe our deep wish is to know we are safe and loved, and to be taught by our ancestors how to make our way slowly and safely up the stairs when it is time.

Or maybe the child in us wishes there will be a new way, something we do not yet grasp, in which neither children, parents nor grandparents will have to suffer so much in this world.

I have no clue, but maybe the kids, if we treat them well enough, will come up with a better way to understand life as we think we have understood it.

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Hi Taishe,

You just miss your boy. Your dream is also about the child part of you who misses her own mom or feeling of being safe and loved. Pretend you are in the dream and comfort your child as if it were your own 4 year old self; have a group hug as if the father of your child is also your own “father self.”

Unify these parts, with love, in your imagination and see if your dreams don’t turn lovely.

I hope they do :)

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Hi A,

This dream is probably mostly about your older sister’s psychology, suggesting that she has some unresolved resentment toward you and your middle sister.

No worries, I trust that your older sister loves you very much and your middle sister.

However, the dream suggests that your childhood was not perfect (but then who has had a perfect childhood? Or what would that actually be?)

An air mattress suggests a psychological state as if on a cloud, away from the earth element. The water element connects with the mother and the unconscious, thus it sounds like at least your older sister might have experienced mother as difficult, perhaps she felt like she had to be a mother to her younger sisters.

To be loved is to be deeply known, thus the sisters in the dream would be the younger aspects of your older sister’s own self that feel like they are both drowned (i.e. subsumed in the needs of mother) and their thinking function is impaired (i.e. shot in the head).

The dream is about a feeling of helplessness, but also about protecting herself (in an air mattress is like being in a bubble—unable to save her younger self, but perhaps also protected from further harm).

Being in an air mattress, away from the drowning could be a way that your sister’s psyche represents some sort of trauma, as we sort of leave our bodies when fear or pain are overwhelming.

Sometimes a part of us has to die in order for a new part of us to be born, or more precisely (in psychological terms) our identification with some victimized or immature part of our self must become recognized and integrated into our full personality so we can move forward.

Perhaps your sister was so disturbed about having unconscious aggression toward you and your sister that she felt guilty and worried and thus told you her dream and then you are seeking solutions to your sister’s pain.

It would probably be quite healing, if it were true, for you to tell you sister that you recognize that she has had pain and anger and you are sorry if you have contributed to that in any way, and that you also have had pain and anger and forgive your sister(s). Then if the three of you can come to both recognize your mother and father’s limitations, accept that there has been pain there too (there always is some, so it seems) and forgive them for whatever it was you become freer and more alive.

If you manage to do this then get ready for soon your children will tell you how you have hurt them. If instead of denial you acknowledge, apologize (without undue guilt) we move into more real, less perfectionistic relating.

Finally, it strikes me (without any particular basis to suppor it) that we could think about this dream as having collective resonance in which the “older sister” could represent our parents (no matter how old we are) generation, the middle could be our own generation (whatever era in which we live, boom, x, y, etc) and the younger could represent our children’s generation (i.e. whatever we both leave behind, but also in some sense become… eventually).

If the Older (i.e. wisdom, maturity) is helpless to protect the present and the future, perhaps such consciousness itself might end the tragic cycle of violence, alienation and general douche-baggery that has so seemed to typify life on planet earth in terms of war, pollution, greed, lying and fame-for-fame’s sake—the lurid narcissism that would seem to elevate the self-important and leave the great vast sea of the kind and the quiet scratching their heads as to why this is so.

My fantasy is that more of us might realize that we are quiet, nice and actually do want the best for everyone; but also that very many more of us than we might imagine see things roughly the same way. If someone truly wants the best for others and wants to live a good life and is willing to say we are sorry when we accidentally hurt others because of our own hurt, shame, unconsciousness, etc. perhaps some odd tide of consciousness, which I have thought of as a feminine principle (inspired by Jung’s thinking, and having little to do with gender and much more to do with compassion and empathy and a vision for a world that is more fun and less tacky) might rise organically.

Who can say for sure. It doesn’t hurt to dream, especially if we pay attention to those dreams and meet in the space of thinking, sharing, feeling and connecting in the service of whatever dream weaves us together.

Sweet Dreams

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Hi Shannon,

I wonder if you find your 5 year-old a little more challenging than the older son? Perhaps he reminds you of someone you have had conflicts with—mother or father or sibling?

I ask because sometimes when we have some unconscious anger (normal and natural as it might be) it can find expression in a dream where something “bad” happens to the person who has hurt or frustrated us.

Another thing to consider is what your own life was like when you were five; particularly if you felt somehow left out of the family, or if there were separations or losses in the family when you were that age. This would make particular sense if you happen to be a younger sibling.

Yet another possibility is that the boat is a symbol of either/both your full Self or the family as a whole. “Going down fast” would make sense if there has been recent trouble for the family (i.e. economic difficulties).

The water itself, the ocean, could symbolize the mother or perhaps the collective unconscious. The sense that you are moving deeper into the unconscious would fit with the notion that you are trying to work out some sort of pain from the past, uncertainties or feelings of loneliness or being left out or left behind when you were little—perhaps a time when you felt like “no one was worried but me.”

Maybe you can “return to the dream” in your active imagination, striving to dialogue with everyone and everything in your dream as aspects of yourself, searching for your “lost self” in the ocean of your Great Mother Self.

Symbolically, sometimes the child self (or our identification with the child self) has to perish and disappear in order for us to become fully grown-up.

Obviously you adore your children and your family. Now that you are in a safe and loving family you are safe enough to heal whatever pain harks back to early childhood or other losses along the way. By contemplating many possibilities (and I hope my ideas spark ideas of your own that I might not be able to come up with) you become more conscious, and being more aware and compassionate about your own self and feelings can help free you of bad dreams and melancholy too.

Hope you have better dreams ahead.

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Hi Lalah,

Thank you for sharing this, although I’m sorry the nightmare has such horrible imagery. And please keep in mind that I am chiefly interested in helping mothers and fathers feel calm and safe so that they can be their best Selves as parents, and not in being any sort of master interpreter of dreams.

That said, let’s look from a rational standpoint at a nightmare like this. Some sort of imagery from your day, from movies or TV or books or your own memory may have been sorting themselves out during your sleep when something disturbed you. Once upsetting imagery occurred, your body responded by feeling it was in danger—feeling in danger, your mind came up with something to “explain” the feeling (I can’t find my son) and then the dream of not finding your child felt bad and made the body feel even more scared, that then had to come up with an even worse explanation for why if felt so terrified until we arrive at our worst nightmare in our imagination, which could be seen as a way of understanding anxiety: when we fear something is happening, or is about to happen, when in fact we just imagine it.

The merit of this explanation is the fact that we wake up from a nightmare and our child is, thankfully, okay.

Of course if you suffer from anxiety or panic attacks, etc. or if you have frequent of recurring nightmares it could be a signal to seek help with that, or with any sorts of unresolved trauma (i.e. if you actually saw a kid hurt with a bat when you were little).

Nevertheless, I think we all find dreams mysterious and fascinating and so moving into the realm of art more than science I would offer some possible interpretations on the meaning of the dream.

You are in an “old mansion” which might symbolize the collective Self and all its rooms of memory, feelings, fears and desires. You are trying to “go to sleep” which could symbolize NOT wanting to be awake/aware about something (more likely your own agression, anger or hurt feelings, quite possibly about your child; as parents, and humans in general, we are sometimes uncomfortable feeling anger toward our kids, parents, bosses, spouses, etc. and this forbidden emotion has a way of turning into anxiety). Maybe your kid mouthed off that day, or was mean to a sibling? Maybe you are unconsciously feeling like your kid and ganged up on in the family?

You head “downstairs” looking for the kid, and this could symbolize a trip into the dark realm of the unconscious, which is the realm of whatever we are not aware of (i.e. our fear, our rage, our secret desire).

The cousin is “folded in half” which is an image more like a closed book than a human body; perhaps it symbolizes the part of you that feels dead and closed down, hidden away with hurt.

The crowd of boys is like the crowd in Lord of the Flies perhaps symbolic of the madness and violence of the group. In these days of Sandy Hook we are all probably wondering about how to deal with the threat to our children from the unpredictable rage that erupts from the most troubled amongst us and then kills the innocents.

Beyond the personal, perhaps it doesn’t take arcane dream interpretation for the mothers to wake up from the “old mansion” run by “old masters” who simply must have their guns. Taking the guns, as your dream shows, does not end the rage and the violence, for bats, sticks, stones and bare hands have sufficed throughout human history and myth since Cain couldn’t handle his feelings of rejection and frustration and took it out on Abel.

The shattered skull could be seen, symbolically, as an attack on thinking. For it is when we lose our reason that we project our fears and then need weapons and fences to protect us from, ironically, our own selves.

For this reason I would argue that consciousness, awareness of our own dark places, would likely breed increased calm, reason and social good.

I hope you have better dreams and that we might all wake up together and ask ourselves why anyone needs an old mansion in the first place (a symbol of someone with all the money which is only a mansion in comparison to the have nots lacking in a mansion).

Maybe the moms can guide us to a new idea about what a good life looks like? Where bats are for baseballs, guns are for hunting or for nothing at all, and mansions are multi-family mixed-use spaces with plenty of light.

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Hi Shamika,

I’m wondering if this dream is about your anxiety around having the next baby? We could imagine that you had some sensations in your sleep, such as the baby kicking, and this triggered you to try and explain this “hovering” feeling by dreaming as you did.

Symbolically, your 6 year old might symbolize your child self, one who
“loves his baby” which is, symbolically, his 3DS. He can hold his baby but not play with it. Could this represent how you, at 6 months pregnant, and anticipating the demands of a 6 year old when you have newborn, are trying to deal with your fear that your 6 year old might feel pained by the new baby’s arrival on the scene, and you too are torn since you will love the new baby just as much as the first one.

Love is abundant, but kids have not yet learned to trust this, not to mention us parents who can’t imagine loving anyone as much as we love our first baby… until another comes along and love expands.

It is good you wrote, for if we talk about our feelings we can at least not be so alone in them. We can also come to trust that our fears, exhaustion, guilt (i.e. you don’t want him to play too much DS but it also gives you a break when he is quiet and focused).

Childbirth is a big event, and perhaps the “Ouuuuuuuuuch” is also about remembering the first one (a birthday coming up is also a memory of giving birth, and an anticipation of another giving-birth day in 3 months or so).

Perhaps you can dialogue with your child self in your imagination and assure him/her that you are there with them, will keep them safe and will get through life’s natural pain together and share in life’s joys together as well.

All Best Wishes

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Hi mr,

One way to think about this first dream is as a Shadow (or dangerous figure who is both potentially destructive, but also who holds your power) in relationship to your symbolic child-self. The curious and fearless part of you is ready to head out the door into the world, but the darkly disturbe aspect waits with a gun.

In some sense it could symbolize how you disavow your power, and in rejecting it that power aspect turns destructive, angry BECAUSE it is out in the cold.

On the other hand the dream, and the second one as well, speak to our collective fears about shooters and public places. While it may point to the real societal issue, the dream is also possibly symbolic of how you relate to these themes.

In the first dream it is a personal house, more in line with a personal self (even with the characters of child and Shadow) while the movie theater could symbolize the collective psychology, as cinema itself is a bit like a realm of collective dreams.

Here you struggle with themes of reality and imagination. Batman himself is a character who saw his parents killed, and this is at the root of his psychology. Perhaps we all struggle with the important issue of feeling safe, and in your dream you are trying to get to a safe place when even far from the theater a man who is both cameraman (one who sees) and shooter (one who hurts) attack.

This makes me wonder about whether you felt like you got the wrong sort of attention as a child, or if you witnessed things that have disturbed you (and which sometimes feel unreal, or like movies or nightmares)?

While I cannot presume to know what your dreams mean, I encourage you to think about what the various elements might personally mean to you (Batman, gunmen, camcorders, etc.) to see what your awake creative mind might make of it if you trust your own instincts.

Certainly the dreams made you feel unsafe and scared, yet your child is fine when you wake up. It is possible that although you obviously love your children, there may be no room in your mind for anger and negative emotions. This could cause them to go underground and surface as bad guys in your dreams.

Finally, camcorders and our current culture of everyone being preoccupied with being seen and looked at (i.e. Facebook, youtube, etc.) could make you feel attacked by your children’s needs for lots of attention while you are left feeling scared, alone and in the dark. Thus being in a horrible shooting scene might be a way of dramatically depicting how you feel when you are overwhelmed by negative feelings as a parent.

The idea here is to be more conscious about all our feelings and hope that this decreases the bad dreams and also helps us be at our best as waking parents to our children.

All Best

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Hi Chris,

Indeed I am much indebted to C.G. Jung whom I like to think of as a kindred spirit in our collective situation. My old therapist trained in Zurich was fortunate to have actually met with Jung and thus his ideas have permeated my path.

And yet I would not say I am a “Jungian” as even Jung joked that he would not want to be such a thing!

If you want to explore how Jung’s ideas cross with your own by way of my strings of words you might search for “Jung” at the home page of my blog. Perhaps synchronicity strikes in the confluence of our virtual meeting :)

In any event, wishing you, Kellie and your family all the best on roads individual and collective.

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Hi Virginia,

I can lend some ideas but you will have to continue with the creative work of contemplating whatever meaning ends up most resonant for you.

The house might be s symbol of self, and the “wheel” driveway implies the circle of life in which you re-visit feelings of the past but from the perpective of a parent.

My suspicion is pain unresolved from your own childhood, perhaps a time you felt hurt by male insensitivity (father, uncle, brother?) and were not protected by mother.

Now you are the mother and you experience the emotional scene not from the kid hurt by the male authority figures, but from the perspective of helpless mother (perhaps the way you saw your own mother?).

You are “going upstairs” which could symbolize moving to higher consciousness, maturity or perspective, yet you are inside, “blocked” by “walls” (symbol of denial, or inhibition from your own true feelings such as anger or aggression) and by “roof” the current upper limit on your consciousness, what separates your mother level from some even higher, Great Mother or grandmother/ancestor wisdom?

The various versions might echo the way so-called “memory” works; in other words we do not actually record events in our brains, and what we think of as memory is actually a reconstruction of images and sensations, an attempt to make a story that holds together. Vivid as things may seem, we are notoriously unreliable in matching memory to so-called “fact.”

That said, emotional reality certainly shows that your dream scared you terribly and connects to the general feeling of terror, loss, helplessness and overwhelm in the face of trauma.

Did you suffer losses in the past? Was there a car accident? Or a bike accident?

Let your associations flow, looking not for facts but for feelings and your need to heal whatever haunts you in the past (or perhaps nothing does). On the other hand there may be tension in your marriage and the unconscious feeling of rage and your inhibition from knowing your rage.

Then you may cast your rage as the insensitive husband, who is prevented from breaking up the family through the tragedy of destroying the family.

Keep in mind that your husband didn’t “do this,” rather your unconscious blames him for the mayhem and you are scared because it becomes unclear if your terrible dream might create some terrible outcome. We are not so powerful, and our deep fears about it drive our anxiety.

Better to realize you feel angry, hurt, abandoned, whatever and then talk it through. If you are having conflicts in your family it would be best to talk those through, without blame, as so often people soften when they feel understood (i.e. you as well as your husband).

If you are not in an outer conflict with husband, perhaps you need to realize the husband within who abandons is the hurt and angry part of you, the part that causes the inner children within you to be smashed in the head (i.e. rendered unable to think, crying out for help).

I hope these ideas help you feel less anxious and confused. If you spend some time dialoguing with the parts of yourself, as found in the dream, perhaps you will get a new, less terrible dream, to guide you beyond the false split of power that hurts others or weak kindness that cannot protect self or others.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Tiffany,

As you may see from reading other dreams in the thread, it may be useful to reconsider this dream in terms of your Self divided into characters and situation.

The “home” might be a symbol of all of the parts of you together: the Self (as opposed to your conscious identity, the self).

Your “kids” are “upstairs” symbolizing your innocence and your treasures are at a higher level of consciousness than your ego-self, and that they are “opening the window” to a new level of understanding, which, unfortunately, might be about realizing how hurt you have been in the past.

Your 3 year old self falls out the window and you, as you are now, are “unable to catch her” (i.e. to fully grasp, protect, understand and heal her). Thus your nightmare prompts you to action, to seeking understanding (and I am honored to meet you in this circumstance, but even I would be your symbolic helper person who you meet through me, but discover within your Self)

Your child self “falls” (i.e. regresses back in time) to six months (think about losses and injuries dating to when you were that age, grandparents deaths, parent quarrels, illness for yourself/hospitalization?).

She falls on “the winding walk way” (symbol of the path of life and learning? Your yellow brick road of trials and tribulations).

You “bring her in the house” now at a lower level, street level, but into your conscious Self. You witness the horror (i.e. move past denial into recognition, from which healing can begin), thus some unknown part of you “calls the ambulance” (i.e. is able to ask for help, unlike as a child when you could not).

She has a seizure, which could symbolize losing consciouness, perhaps meaning that you were “unaware about what was happening to you” when you were tiny.

Wondering “if you daughter is there yet” at the hospital could also relate to birthing her in the first instance, three years ago, but also to your own “psychological birth” as opposed to just physical birth.

My sense is that you are in a healing process, that you are fully here, now that you are a mom, and you are loved, loving and strong enough to have your inner baby come back to life (the difibulater) which could mean a “heart awakening” to your fullest love, to the realization that you are lovable (when we doubt this, and many of us do, we are unhappy and anxious).

Let the love of your children and husband and self in and see if you don’t have better dreams (and a happy waking life too, we hope).

All Best Wishes

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Hi Alanna,

I am sorry this was so disturbing, but it probably has more to do with the past than the future—suggesting the need for healing more than fear.

If we consider the house where you grew up to be a possible symbol of your childhood self, then the “man in your sister’s room” could be a morphed version of your sister.

I’m wondering if you felt that your sister was cruel to you? This would make sense, since the “stranger” is no longer a man or an “other” but the Shadow or destructive aspect of your own personality. Still this could reflect an internalized image of some dark figure you encountered when you were small.

The bloody infant would then be a symbol of you as an infant, metaphorically killed by the Shadow… and yet the Shadow holding the hurt or dead infant shows a sort of loving destructive bond between the two aspects.

My guess would be that you are overtly gentle, but have often been attracted to unpredictable and volatile partners. But perhaps I have it all wrong.

Your ego self witnesses the death, calls for help (symbolically new response, since when you were very small you could not call for help) and when you return both are missing, symbolic that when you witness (i.e. allow into consciousness) and call for help the danger evaporates like scary shadows when you turn on the lights.

What’s important here is to realize that your child is not in danger based on what you share here, but you may have ghosts of the past that need to be put to bed through compassionate awareness of past pain.

What I say is totally speculative, but in the spirit of helping you feel less afraid and more empowered. The Shadow holds your power (and it holds in its arms what is “closest to you in your heart”). Realize that you are all these figures, tell the Shadow that you will hold the baby now and protect it, and perhaps you will have much better dreams ahead.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Allyson,

My intuition is that you are a bit overwhelmed by parenting twin 4 year old boys and a third child, but your feelings of overwhelm, wish for a break and need for support are not being allowed into waking consciousness so your unconscious becomes a stern teacher, but a wise and loving one all the same.

If you consider all the elements and situations in your dream as aspects of your own Self with all its complex and interconnected parts, you “drop your kids off at daycare” which is you drop your “twin aspect” (good/evil; male/female; parent/child) at the part of you that “cares” by “day” (shows compassion in waking consciousness).

Alas, the Shadow shows up—a kidnapper (the kid part of you that needs a nap/the shadow part of you that loves your kids so much she would eat them up, as in “Where the Wild Things Are,” or the witch in “Hansel and Gretel”).

You go looking at the video store (already an old-school place to get movies, as now we Netflix and stream), a place where you are looking for a new movie, a new story that you would like better than the horror story of the overwhelmed and secretly angry parent.

You hear about “Mrs. Smith” which might be code for the interchangeable aspect, mother as robot, laundress, driver, cook, etc. (mom as Cinderella).

You are told “you can touch, but not hold” which might symbolize that you love and are touched by all the needs of all you love, but it’s simply too much for you to contain (hold) on your own.

Now comes your inner Mother (looking a lot like your actual mother) who tells you to buck up and deal, but she doesn’t comfort or validate or step up and help parent the other two while you just try not to jump off a bridge because you lost a child (in the dream, and in your own early childhood perhaps, but not in “real life” thankfully).

Tell your real mom you are overwhelmed and need more help and a big enormous hug. If that doesn’t bring more tears, but good ones, and better dreams… then write me again and we’ll go from there.

All Best

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Hi Lu,

My first question would be about if you had any sort of trauma, or witnessed trauma (accidents, car crashes, fires, etc.) when you were 4 or 5? Perhaps nothing so obvious but rather an emotional disaster around that age, such as parent divorce or death of a beloved grandparent?

Sometimes our children trigger us to re-experience events of the past as they take us through our own childhoods through their turning each different age.

Symbolically, I would see these dying children as a part of yourself. One way to think about it is that the child must die for the grown-up to be born, thus you may be facing a new stage of emotional or psychological development.

The symbols include “boys you do not know” which could be the masculine, and/or the child part of you that you are not yet conscious of. On top of a building could symbolize higher consciousness, but it could also symbolize going too high up as a defense against the bad feelings on the ground (symbolic of some sort of melancholy you may be experiencing, and an attempt to get up above them, rather than hug and love and understand them, which heals better than going too high, which could also, for some people, symbolize “getting high” or using drugs to deal.).

A water tower could symbolize a container, or ability to hold a lot of emotion—tears, symbol of mother, ability to wash away things, ability to refresh and re-hydrate… the stuff of life. Attempting to “jump over” it could symbolize trying to get over your feelings of sadness, or over your feelings about your mom, or about being a mom, or all of it.

You swerve to avoid a boy (i.e. try not to hurt, but also avoid dealing with) and you get a call that the kid is hurt nonetheless, which you have to see/find him, as the person who calls to say he’s missing is the part of you who denies/doesn’t see the part of you who is hurt.

A child falls 8 stories (could relate to a trauma at age 8, or again just going high to get away, this time from fire, which could symbolize your anger, and your attempts to keep the child self, and your own child, clear of your sadness, your anger, your ups and downs).

The kid is hurt but not dead, symbolizing perhaps that your exactly this. My hope is that being more aware of your own emotions and need for healing will help you get whatever love, compassion or healing you need. This would be an act of love for your actual child, and it is often our love for our children that can finally motivate us to seek whatever help and healing we need and reach our fuller potential for happiness.

Hope this helps

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Hi Kirstie,

I am sorry you have been disturbed by these dreams but at least the point in talking about them is to try and learn from the dreams and thus allow them to stop, and a more happy time of it in sleep as well as awake to be more probable.

The themes here are about separation in the first instance and direct harm in the second. This shows two ways we are hurt, as babies and as grown-ups: abandonment (leading to loneliness) and attack (which can feel like nature/”God” coming down from above in a terrifying way; or some “bad guy” chasing, abducting, abusing).

It is worth noting that to me, as a psychologist, it seems that we first feel lonely (abandoned) and then we panic and either are hurt when we ask for help or cry out (a bad early learning that sets us up for such bad dreams later when we become parents) or continue to be neglected (and then imagine attack as a defense against abandonment).

In simple terms, I’m wondering if when you were a baby your parents’ limited ability to attune with you (or even refrain from getting too upset with you about your needs) is not imagined as you the mother separated from the baby self… able to both wish to be with the child and also imagine how the baby could feel abandoned and terrified even though that is not your intention.

The abandoned dreams/separation dreams then give rise to persecutory dreams.

Here the “storm” (perhaps a symbol of your own stormy anger, fear and fierce nature that can be dark as well as all-loving and soft) crushes the “roof” a symbol of that protection over your head, which could also mean your way of thinking about things.

Again we see the situation as symbolic: you are separated from your baby, but now a train becomes a single house and a mere wall the divide. This is a symbol of increasing closeness (between your grown-self and your baby self or the past hurts).

The “Massive Storm” could symbolize the way your childhood felt, or perhaps a singular event (i.e. if parents spilt up and separated after fighting on a stormy night).

Then you and baby-self are “struggling” to get to each other (to unify and become one complete person) and the “door was stuck” (the boundary that can help you connect the rooms and parts within yourself, but which can also serve as a protection or appropriate boundary (i.e. between your actual baby and your unresolved pain/fear about the past).

You bundle up your baby (excellent, you hold your baby-Self even if no one could in the past) and you run to the “nearest undamaged house” (a symbol of a non-damaged self, thus a symbol of a new Self quite nicely arriving on Easter which, whatever your spirituality, is a time of Spring and re-birth in the northern hemisphere).

You couldn’t yet tell if the child self is “hurt, or just WET and scared”. This is also a nod to parenting; when the baby cries is she hungry, wet, scared? But also “wet” suggests emotion. You have a lot of tears inside and perhaps if you cry a little river of love you will find yourself softly holding your new Self and clear that you did survive and you are blessed with a child in your life and another one inside your psyche.

My guess is that with more understanding and compassion, you will not need to have a dream like this again.

Please let me know if this turns out to help, or if more nightmares come let’s see if they are the same or different.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Desiree,

While I’d invite you to look through other dreams and comments for different ways to think about your dream and symbols in general.

A few thoughts, however, might be to look at your child in the dream as a symbol of your Self as a child (particularly when you were 4). The “corner of the store being fixed” could mean the area of yourself that is under renovation (as you continue to develop). “Playing with tools” could mean trying out new ways of thinking, parenting, relating, etc.

“Being fixed” implies idea that “store” as place that sells things, contain things, and changes (construction) is a symbol of the total Self, and that you see some need for improvement in yourself, perhaps in your relationship to the past or past hurts?

A “ruler on his head” could symbolize the measuring of ideas, intelligence, but also the oppression of a ruler/king lording over… a past voice of father, or of husband when you feel he’s too stern?

You drag the child, but “he drops” which could symbolize regression (i.e. toward crawling). The blood from the ears could symbolize the pain caused by harsh words, by not “measuring up,” according to the “ruler.”

The symbolism of death can relate to the need for your old self, or your identification with the hurt child, to die so that your new self, as a a human being empowered and free of oppression (rulers/measuring). The “deflating” is a literal symbolism of becoming devalued, small, rendered insignificant.

Perhaps you felt this way as a child for some reason? Perhaps as you love your real child you also re-think yourself, your past and pain, and set the psychological stage for a better present and future compared to some sort of past that diminished you, at least in your own mind’s eye.

Whatever I say, these are just guesses. Hopefully they will spark your creative process of understanding yourself, trusting that your child is safe, and growing into your own best Self.

All Best

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Hi Darran,

I must admit I felt a strange feeling of what Jung called “synchronicity” when I read your dream… because just yesterday I was thinking about my son, now finishing freshman year in college, but I had been remember him just starting at his preschool for that little one-hour step toward school when he was 2… and I was remembering the climbing structure and how he loved to hang on it, back when he could best express himself with his big muscles and not with words, or feelings, or fine motor skills… and then I had a flashing image of imagining myself hanging facing my child… and then a monkey–my ancestral evolutionary “father and mother”

I was thinking because time goes so fast, because in some ways the child is father to the man, etc.

Thus it informs my response to your dream.

In any event, and with or without my journey across the developmental structure of parenting, I would guess at some meanings for your dream:

The children could be the child aspects of Self—you at 2 and you at 9.

The climbing structure or “frame” could symbolize development and growth; it could symbolize a way of looking at life and the world, at meaning and purpose, a way of “framing” it; it could represent the rat-race, the ladders to success and our deep questions about what is truly of value, about earning and achieving vs. being and loving; it could also represent a metaphor about consciousness… the child, that which is pure, in us that wants to climb to higher consciousness, but which also wants to “fit in” and “stay safe” (i.e. conservative vs. risk-taking).

Our kids grow fast (days take forever, years fly by) and this is shown by the suddenly growing height (it’s our kids who grow, the monkey bars stay the same, but seem smaller later).

This sudden height also is neurological: we sense dropping, we make up a story in our brain (hence flying dreams, or children falling from heights).

Your wife is the “good mother” (perhaps your own mother was not a reliable to “catch you when you fell”)

Your 2 year-old Self “lost his grip” (perhaps you had some emotional struggles around that age, things you would not remember but carry with you in terms of trusting love and the world or not so easily.

Your wife symbolizes your inner Great Mother in the dream (the ocean, the ancestors, the earth, the bear… the uber-symbol of “you can handle it” for it is the loving and safe you inside, the one that makes it okay for the child you to reach for the stars… and your ego self is the dad who loves, who does his best, who must struggle to integrate all these pieces into a coherent Self… and then we all have to integrate our selves together into a world—one that catches all our children if they lose their grip, so they can learn to climb to a higher consciousness: Love

All Best!

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Hi Regina,

I cannot be too definitive here, as your symbols are personal and would make most sense to you. Still, I can suggest some ideas and perhaps you will come up with deeper understanding through shared process.

It starts where you can’t hear anything. Perhaps this is your unconscious wish not to hear something painful about your past or your feelings? It could also symbolize a current state of unconsciousness about something, alerting you to the need to “hear” something, to “listen up” to your own unconscious.

Riding a bike through traffic could suggest a kid mode of transport where you feel less powerful or empowered than the people in cars (more adult transport). Suddenly you are “fixing your shoe while “Sitting in the middle of the street.” For a kid, the middle of the street could symbolize danger—the last place we want our children to be. Fixing the shoe could imply that your point of view (i.e. put yourself in someone else’s shoes) is “broken” (needs repair).

You walk the bike to an “island” in the middle of the road, suggesting the need for a safe harbor in the midst of hurt and danger.

I’m wondering if this is all some sort of view backward to what it was like when you were the age your daughter is currently?

You trade the bike for your daughter; this could symbolize how the bike was your childhood, and now your daughter reminds you of that childhood… a link in the symbol of your girl as your child self now and the bike as your child self in the past?

You walk toward your house, with your daughter, perhaps symbolizing that no place like home feeling, with house symbolizing the larger Self and your aim being to protect and integrate the child self into your full personality.

Now a man falls down in front of you. A “fallen” person could symbolize hurt, or some sort of “fall from grace.” Perhaps there was a man you trusted who “fell” in front of your eyes (in your estimation)? He says he’s okay, but he might symbolize the male part of your personality, and the falling could suggest your need to cultivate your power or your masculine aspect (i.e. do you struggle to set firm limits as a parent, do you hate to be the “bad guy?”).

Teens argue with older guys… did you find it hard to deal with older, perhaps less than honorable, men when you were a vulnerable teen? You find yourself “walking the wrong way”—did you make choices in your past that you feel were wrong for you? Are you still trying to heal some sort of hurt or shame?

Finally, there is the nightmare moment where your child is hurt. If we take this as your own child self, we get the sense of everyone running away from danger (this could be your own unconscious aggression and anger, that which perhaps never got fully or safely expressed when you were a kid). Certainly no one is protecting the child, but you finally do hear, even if it is a faint pop. You hear the hurt, but not the screams of your child aspect, yet you do SEE the hurt, and that is the same as becoming conscious and not denying hurt.

That this child aspect is “shot in the neck” could be as simple as a pun: your childhood was painful and felt like a pain in the neck. The neck is also the place in between heart and mind, between thinking and feeling. This place of hurt may have blocked you from fully integrating your thinking with your feeling.

Sometimes when parents or caregivers disappoint or hurt us, because we depend on them nonetheless, we develop shame and guilt, we repress our feelings and with it our anger. Then kids come along and remind us that we too were once innocent and no child “deserves” to be hurt.

So begins consciousness, which offers us opportunity to heal; and also to “wake up” and see that our kid, thankfully, is safe. Maybe now it’s time for you to join your daughter in trusting in yourself and in your love as a mother BEING the safe place now.

Hope these ideas help. Sweet dreams!

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Hi Tabitha,

While I cannot be definitive on what this means to you personally, I can share some ideas and hope it proves useful.

An overpass suggests a bridge over trees and over whatever is below, and it wouldn’t be unlikely that either a road or a stream or some natural aspect of the land inspires the building of an overpass.

By word play, it also suggests a “pass-over” which might imply the wish to be spared harm to a child.

Trees are very spiritual, symbols of soul at the human level; in ancient times trees were worshiped and the cross, being wood, is a symbol of man nailed to wood. Study of anthropology gives much evidence for connecting trees and sacrifice; perhaps this connects with some sort of collective memory or horror about human behavior in the past—and our wish to protect our children against our own dark impulses born of our lower minds.

Up on the overpass you are with your child, but symbolically I would encourage you to see her as your own 1 year old self: vulnerable, small, playful and curious.

Your niece would symbolize your 20 year old self: coming of age, not yet responsible, not very protective of/or connected with the little baby. Here we have the contrast of the helpless and the self-involved young adult. You, as parent, are in the position your own mother may have been in when you were one (which is also a sort of pun: when you were not yet divided into parts such as girl, woman, mother, bridge, trees, etc. as the entire tableau of the dream might symbolize you in your own entirety).

A 4 or 5 year old shows up, suggesting that perhaps when you were this age something hurt you and caused you to fall, or regress in your development. Consider loss or trauma that might have affected you when you were 1, 4/5 or even 20. (i.e. did you get pregnant at 20 and not keep the pregnancy? this would then make sense in the dream; or was your mom 20 when she had you and she was too young to protect you?; or was HER mom 20 when she had your mom, and your mom was a bit traumatized herself when you were 1?).

Dreams of falling are the second most common that I receive, with drowning being first. Our brains naturally produce sinking and floating sensations and this may be the ultimate origin of such dreams; still our minds try to make sense of the sensations.

Your thinking about bad things happening because you think them is classic anxiety. Many of us suffer this, but it is illogical and irrational (much like primitive religion based on sacrifice, magic and superstition).

The overpass suggests a higher consciousness. In this way perhaps your dream hints at both a need to heal from the past when children have been hurt (by oppression, poverty, war, hunger, lack of compassion, etc.) and a need to help move forward together along this overpass, this higher level of consciousness?

Perhaps this dream, at a personal level, invites you to be conscious of some pain in your past (more likely feeling lonely and abandoned than overtly hurt; thus you fall from neglect, not from “sin”). At a collective level, given how many of us struggle to protect our children and provide a good life in the midst of economic, social and other societal problems, perhaps we may begin to wake up to some higher level, some overpass where, unlike your dream where all disappear in your moment of need, we might watch each other’s backs, and each other’s kids, a little better.

Guard rails might echo life in the crib, but also the idea that safety barriers protect us, rather than lock us into the road. Parenting calls for limits as well as love, and sometimes it’s hard to be “the bad guy” and set them (and we need not set too many limits with a 1 year old, but many more with a 4 or 5 year old).

By extended analogy, as our society matures, we are debating limits at a collective level (i.e. issues of fairness, privacy, health care, freedom to marry who we like, freedom from discrimination, poverty, inequalities of opportunity… if we truly want to leave no child behind we have to build the guardrail of our culture a little more thoughtfully).

Finally, on a personal note, your dream struck me as uncanny because one of my own personal saddest moments was on an overpass—a restaurant overpass my family stopped at on the way back from my best friend’s funeral when I was fourteen. The world was zooming by around and below me, but I felt like everything had changed and my innocence was over. That was right around this season, 39 years ago.

Thankfully your child is fine and you are fine. Our thinking things is not so powerful that it makes them happen just by thinking; yet our actual loving kindness and compassion is a sort of thinking that might help us move toward loving kindness and compassion in action. Then it’s not just good enough that our child doesn’t fall, it matters to us that no children fall.

Ultimately the best place to put our attention, our compassion and our resources as a society would be in support of new moms and babies in the first year or two of life. This is how to make people safe, secure, kind and thoughtful as they grow up.

Perhaps the overpass is a good place, so long as we engineer it to be safe for the smallest amongst us. Maybe we’re all building it in our collective unconscious—a place of higher consciousness that, like in a dream, is a play space, where we can think about things, but when we wake up no one has died?

Carl Jung said that God is like an island and religions are like bridges that all lead to the same island. Perhaps your overpass is your personal way forward. Go back into the dream, hold your baby safe and keep venturing to where the overpass takes you. Feel free to let us know what it looks like.

If I’m fortunate I’ll meet you there. Maybe we’ll all meet up there :)

Sweet Dreams

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Hi Cheryl,

If you read through the other dreams you’ll see many related to drowning. What I might add here would be taking the dream as a map of your own Self, parts, feelings and inner conflicts.

The beach could symbolize that place where the conscious mind (land) meets the unconscious (sea). The dream is set at night, suggesting a situation in which no one can see clearly due to darkness.

Your daughter might represent the child part of you, and at 13 she is challenging you and this might also be bringing to mind life when you were this age. Perhaps you thought you knew better back then and got into some difficult situations that were “over your head” so to speak.

Now you want to protect your kid from your own pain, and in waking life she may be in conflict with you because she wants to live her own life and doesn’t see the relevance of your life, even if you see it as wisdom. This situation is very “Little Red Riding Hood” where the girl emerging into sexual age gets into danger by thinking she knows what she’s doing when she doesn’t.

The drowning part could represent how you feel in parenting a teen, and/or how you felt AS a teen. The man who saves your girl would represent the brave and powerful part of you, although you currently identify with a weak position (“I stood there screaming and crying for help”).

This male aspect has the power to save, revive and awaken your “girl” self; perhaps to help integrate the mother, the rescuer and the child who needs help into one coherent person.

That your girl was “very sick” from this experience might reveal your fear for yourself and the idea that “something might be “wrong” (sick, unwell, traumatized, etc.) with the child part of yourself.

My hope is that by thinking consciously about this dream, and being compassionate to all aspects of yourself, you may find that your unconscious is guiding you to heal and grow.

Hope this helps—here’s to good dreams and smooth safe sailing ahead

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Hi Jessica,

Please see other dreams I have commented on involving neglect: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-running-away-or-being-neglected-or-abandoned/

And also water: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/that-sinking-feeling%E2%80%94dreams-about-children-drowning/

I think these will help, or at least I hope so. Sweet Dreams

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Hi Jeni,

This could be a deep philosophical question on the nature of reality, but on that count I’ve no greater certainty than you or anyone else.

Movies like “Inception” and “Matrix” love to explore this uncanny feeling, but maybe it comes down to striving for compassion, kindness, courage and love at all times. If we are dreaming, maybe the dreams will teach us new things or at least be fun. And if we are awake, maybe this will help us make the most of our reality.

All Best Wishes

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Hi Meagan,

While I too wished that your dreams were not about your actual abuse, it seems to make sense that you have grown strong enough, perhaps through parenting, to be able to now face and heal your traumatic past.

Perhaps the “Big Dream” idea actually comes together with your actual abuse to point us in a direction of healing both personal and collective? Given that abuse happens in cycles across generations, any time a victim heals it helps stop the cycle.

Those who abuse, very likely have been themselves abused. For this reason it would seem that we need to heal ourselves as best we can, in the service of our children, and to the extent we can manage we need to take an interest in other parents and other people’s children.

I so admire your courage while feeling heartbroken to hear your terrible suffering of the past—and there are so many who have suffered and who suffer still.

Perhaps the deepest healing of all is of the shame we carry when we are abused, coming (quite mistakenly) to see not our actions as wrong but our very selves as wrong and even deserving of mistreatment. Sometimes trusting that we are loved by others, family and friends, proves to be enough love that even if we can’t quite completely heal (and these wounds become scars, but they never go away completely) we can let in the love, give the love we miraculously have despite it all and find some sort of transformation or liberation out of the power of love over even the darkest deeds humans do (when their own pain provokes them to hurt others the way they have been hurt).

Perhaps by loving your children the way you needed to be treasured, understood and protected you re-make yourself and triumph over your nightmare past?

Certainly wishing you, and all who suffer, healing, courage, insight and love.

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Hi Courtney,

Not sure if you read the original post, but I wanted to offer the courtesy of responding:

Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams

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Hi Cassie,

I am sorry you are so upset by your dream, but it seems you might not have been able to read the post or any of the other dreams (being so disturbed by your own dream), however I re-state the words from above:

Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

You may particularly want to read the comments and dreams under the category about abuse in dreams. If you take a deep breath and truly read through some of the dreams you will find that you are not alone, and you will find that I’ve already done my best to respond to many dreams (and since they repeat, and I’m pressed for time to be able to keep saying more or less the same thing to parents who have these nightmares, I’ve tried my very best to find a compromise between my wish to help and my need to not be swamped by all these nightmares).

If you really read through everything (and you might also consider my book, available at Amazon under “Privilege of Parenting”) I trust that you will find calming ideas and guidance on how to heal if you’ve been hurt and how to deal with your dream.

All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams

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Hi James,

It seems you just wrote the dream, not reading the blog post…:

Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

A few hints however: “back in school” could mean it’s time for some new learning.

the “high school kids” might symbolize the more advanced, compared to your elementary school, self (and in relationship with each other)

The school collapsing could symbolize old ways of thinking, but also a feeling you might have had as a child, of things coming apart

You then experience your own child as a symbolic self, and perhaps one way to think about this is how the child aspect of our self (or our identification with that part) has to “die” for the more fully grown-up aspect to come into being.

Painful stuff, but sometimes it’s how we are growing (first inside, then in life itself, and maybe then as community).

Read some of the other dreams too and you’ll see you’re not alone, and you may get your own creative juices going and get new insights only you can “see” as with those particular shade of blue eyes (blue as clear, as sad…? you must contemplate).

Sweet Dreams

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Hi Keri,

As I wrote above: Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

A few hints however: hill might be view of things, higher consciousness; river below might be emotions, tears flowing; pig might be the greedy/hungry part of ourselves; the fact it is a baby might symbolize yourself as a hungry baby; crocodiles would be reptile part of self, the part that doesn’t form bonds like mammals do—also hungry, but in a more ancient way (maybe symbolizing your own pain from early infancy).

Please do read around at dreams about drowning and about animals an you will get some more ideas on how to think about your dream.

All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams

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Hi Tammy,

As you can see from the many attempts I have made to help make sense of parents’ nightmares I have put a lot of effort in. Still, when people are upset they do not necessarily read the post but rather just leave a comment.

I’m sorry these dreams are so upsetting, but as I note above:

Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

Why don’t you read through some of the other dreams and see if you might get some clues about how to think about your own dream.

Just a hint in the meantime… if the child in the dream might represent the “wounded child” part of you, it might show more how YOU feel to have to separate from your child than how your child feels or any particular danger they are in. After all, it is “just a dream,” and thus something your own unconscious created. It leaves me wondering if you didn’t somehow feel a bit abandoned as a child? And the smell of alcohol raised the natural question about your own relationship with alcohol and/or drinking in those you love or have loved/depended on? In general you want to think about what it is that hurts you (blocks your trust) and find what you need to heal. If you imagine that dreams are imaginary, perhaps you can imagine the wounded child healing. Also, the feeling that nobody is doing anything to help is something to look at. You may have not felt supported in the past, but part of the dream’s wisdom might be not just asking for help, but taking responsibility for your own healing (as it can be a real gift and blessing for a child to actually be a secure and happy parent).

All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams

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Hi Kristy,

As noted above: Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

You may want to look at dreams about drowning/water.

In the meantime a hint: four kids is a lot, and you have stopped the tide so to speak (with the tying of tubes) but you still probably feel overwhelmed with so much parenting responsibility, and so a “flood” may be a way you are feeling—overwhelmed. Also you were “changing” in the locker room and maybe that is symbolic of how your life, your body, your feelings are changing.

More than interpretation, I would just hope that you get lots of love and support so you can be your best Self for all four of your kids (particularly the oldest as that’s the one your unconscious worries is suffering, thus at the nurses office getting attention).

Good luck and sweet dreams ahead

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Hi Edna,

As written above: Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

Still, Edna, I see that you are scared (too scared to really read carefully much less think logically about your dream). It’s possibly time for you to trust your own intelligence and let go of superstitious thinking—after all, a nightmare is not just something that “happens” to you (like being “possessed”) even if it feels that way; it’s actually something your own mind makes up. And, when you wake up, you can realize that it’s not exactly “real.”

That doesn’t mean that it’s not important, because it’s a window into how you feel, and maybe also into how you think.

Please go and read other peoples dreams, following the links, that resemble your own dream. In the meantime a couple of hints: The house might be a symbol of your total self with all your feelings. The back door might be a symbol for going back in time to consider your own childhood. Your daughter might symbolize yourself when you were that age. Perhaps some sort of trauma occurred when you were around 13? Maybe the loss of sexual innocence (your unconscious linking sex and “possession”) or something that “haunts” you by being unresolved pain, loss or hurt?

Pregnancy involves a lot of hormones that might be adding to the vividness of your dreams. The main thing is for you not to suffer, and not to come to conclusions about your own dreams that make you more scared or superstitious.

No matter your psychology or spirituality, love is generally stronger than hate and your wish to heal and keep your children safe is a loving thing to do. That is why you are asking for help here, and I want to encourage you to truly take some time, read, think, learn and allow yourself to become empowered. If this goes well your dreams will get better and so will your waking life.

BTW, it sounds like you might have some resentment toward your parents, and this can be talked about, they can relate to you as a parent and you can relate to your parents as fellow-parents. Then you can all work together for the good of the grandchildren, and that is a lot like healing the family and benefiting from being part of a loving and conscious family. From healthy families we might find ourselves living in a healthier community—that’s when “I have a dream” becomes “I have a waking life that was once but a dream.”

All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams

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Hi Anonymous,

As noted above: Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

Still, I might venture a few thoughts about your dream. It strikes me that perhaps you are having a mixture of personal imagery but also collective imagery.

Jung called these sorts of dreams “big dreams” (I think that’s what he called them), meaning that it might be about all of our situation, but that doesn’t mean you are personally in danger (like your 9/11 dream, you didn’t get hurt personally). In any event, if you have a history of bad dreams coming true I could see why you would get frightened when you dream about your child in this way. Nevertheless, who is to say our waking “reality” isn’t as much like a bad dream sometime as is our personal nightmares. That said, let’s try to have better dreams and better lives.

The human brain is instinctively competitive, nervous and unhappy. This is not a moral judgement, it is an observation based on evolutionary biology: we have evolved to be “fittest” and thus we are relentless. We have no animals left on earth to compete with so we compete with each other. The lower brain doesn’t care if we’re happy, just that we further the DNA. In this sense we are worse than all the animals because we alone lie, make up stories to trick each other, create wars and act like “terrorists” (perhaps because we are all so terrified).

I say this as context for your dream: your child self is hurt, but upstairs (higher consciousness) but eyes swollen shut (hurt to point of not seeing/wish not to see the horror of the world right now?). Taking care of handicapped people might be code for the way we humans are emotionally handicapped from being compassionate. The zoo is about animals being locked up for our observation.

I would encourage you to read other dreams for many lenses into personal symbolic ways to interpret, but the main message is that your dream is just that, not an indicator of danger to you kid. I wouldn’t confuse physical handicap in waking life with the symbolic idea of handicap (limitation) in the dream.

Perhaps the limited part of you is failing to protect the child part of you (innocence) and maybe realizing that you are not alone, and that we all need to care about our kids together (and become less selfish, blind and handicapped in this regard) might actually help us so-called grown-ups feel safer, happier and better about ourselves and our world.

Certainly wishing you Better Dreams ahead and a safe and happy waking life

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Hi Rachel,

for this dream see the thread:

http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-running-away-or-being-neglected-or-abandoned/

A hint: maybe the dream is about the collective Self (hotel) and escaping reality (children) for a movie (fantasy, untruth) that leads to disaster (terrorists—symbolically your own inner rage and destructive capacity, along with your inner guilt and shame). I might be about how you felt hurt when you were a kid (abandoned, neglected), then again it might be a depiction of our culture at large… not the prettiest picture. But maybe if we can get our dreams going better (learn from them and not just be terrified) we can wake up and have a better time of things.

All Best Wishes asleep and awake :)

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Hi Sheryl,

I’m not sure if you read the post above but please note:

Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

A couple of hints to get you started:

shot in the head could symbolize an attack on thinking (with the child representing your own self as a child and how you may have felt overwhelmed when you were her age).

Another way to interpret is unconscious frustration or anger, as parenting is very demanding and having negative feelings is fairly forbidden by our conscious mind toward our children. Perhaps dreams like this help us remember to treasure and protect our kids.

Please read some of the other dreams and comments. You will see that you are not alone, that the dream does not mean your child is in actual danger and that there are many ways to think about dreams.

Certainly wishing you Sweet Dreams

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Hi Robyn,

As written above in the original post: Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

A couple of hints to get you started: I’m very sorry for your loss, and grieving the passing of a parent is no easy task. Maybe your unconscious is thinking about the passage of time… feeling like it’s always running out when we think about our mortality?

Please read some of the other dreams for ideas, but it could be that you have some unconscious aggression/jealousy about your sister. Your unconscious mind has your mom kill her, and then you get to have mom to yourself… is she a younger sister and you remain jealous that she unthroned you as the baby?

The “back” where your sister is stabbed could symbolize betrayal (do you feel betrayed in some way by your mom or sister, or even your dad for dying and thus leaving you?).

It makes sense that on his birthday you are trying to make sense of his death. If it’s just down to you and your mom, it’s maybe a wish to regress, to go back to the very start rather than imagine an end when you separate. Anxiety about your mom passing would be natural, and also could be something that stirred up the dream.

For all we know life itself is like a dream, a state that isn’t fully “real” or at least not “fully awake” which, again for all we know, might be about love and happiness as much as about nothingness and aloneness.

If you have another bad dream, try to ask yourself if you might be dreaming, and then maybe try to learn from the dream, change the dream… then you can wake up happy. Who knows, maybe this is also a way we might live happier lives and “wake up” to some sort of peace rather than all the anxiety and strife that seems to define too much of the human condition.

Wishing you Sweet Dreams and a sweet waking life

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Hi Noelle,

As written above: Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/

from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.

If you really make the effort to read other dreams and comments and want to make some interpretations of your own, and then have specific questions you can post another message.

A couple of hints to start: sounds like you have anger toward your dad, feelings of being hurt and left behind.

Driving off a bridge suggests trouble connecting (bridges connect, going off of it is like your relationship going off the rails; drowning is like tears, the unconscious; you pull the kids out… perhaps meaning you pull your child self and her pain out of the unconscious)

A wolf could represent sexuality, hunger, desire, power… and at an amusement park might be about your confusion between the little girl part of you and the woman part of you.

Again abandonment seems an issue, as you have this dream after your fiance leaves for work, and leaving is separating and this may be a place of hurt for you (not to mention the implicit missing father of your children, unless your fiance is the father of them… if not, the biological father could be the “wolf”)

Hope this helps, you must do more work if you really want to learn from your dreams.

All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams

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As written above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]

start here and read the thread if you are interested in my ideas about other dreams like yours

http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-running-away-or-being-neglected-or-abandoned/

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Hi Brittany,

As noted above I cannot keep responding to individual dreams at this time.

Try reading the dreams and comments here:

If kidnappers or scary animals, bad guys or monsters are the subject go here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-of-children-being-kidnapped-or-chased/

And good luck (hint: the mysterious force in the dream is a symbol of your own anger and so it is being projected out and doing harm, but it is afterall just a dream—realize you are angry, this is human and and the “bad things” that happen in the dream will be realized as just feelings you think you are not allowed to have. Have the feelings and the dream will likely not return for it will no longer have the need to tell you what you feel as you will be conscious rather than unconscious about it.)

Sweet Dreams

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Hi Fernanda,

Please read the post above or any of the recent comments to understand why I cannot interpret this dream for you. Nevertheless wishing you well and sweet dreams :)

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Hi Maggie,

If you read the post above and recent comments you will understand why I cannot interpret your dream at this time. Just to get you started, however, (and please read other dreams and comments if you want to put the effort into understanding your own dream/self) you might consider your child as a symbol of your “child-self” and thus your unconscious feeling that your husband is wonderful, but your inner masculine self (perhaps a tracing of father or other male authorities) makes you feel trapped and unable to communicate/have a voice.

Dreaming it, writing to me… those are a start. Maybe write a poem, a story, self-express, accept that you can have anger and still be a “good person.”

Hope this helps. Sweet Dreams :)

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Hi Lorraine,

I’m sorry that was a scary dream. While I’m not interpreting individual dreams at this time, please do read other dreams and comments for ideas about your own. Hint: maybe your son is symbolizing your own younger self and how hurt you feel (both in the “front” or present time, and in the past “the hole” in the “back”/or past). He comes at Christmas (i.e. when the Divine child is “born” or shows up in consciousness, symbol of the sun reaching the darkest time and beginning the longer days toward summer). Sounds like you are in line for a little healing and I hope you find it with the “lots of people” that might be in your life now, and that love is what makes it a “festive time.”

Certainly wishing you Sweet Dreams and a Great Waking Life too :)

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Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/

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