For many years I was unable to commit a violent act in my dreams. If I wanted to shoot someone I would find I couldn’t pull the trigger. If I were trying to throw some one down, it would end up a very gentle push. Same thing for punches - they always ended up a very gentle push.
About a year ago I started having violence in my dreams. I am curious what changed and if it means anything, but wouldn’t know who to ask - and pretty much don’t think dreams mean anything.
Resolution and use of power to resolve problems we’re unable to solve in real life, or an illustration of how hard and how much emotion is being stirred up (that we may not be consciously aware of), manifesting in our dreams.
In the OP, I’d say it was a fear of violence or internal emotions that was rendering it difficult for that person to solve real life problems.
For Hi, Neighbor!, it’s a sense that extreme measures to resolve problems aren’t working.
Yes, that used to happen to me too. Since my new-found “ability” to commit violence in dreams I haven’t shot anyone yet though. Mostly I pick them up and slam them to the ground.
I often have dreams where I get in fights, but I move really, really slowly. I always win, but I feel like there’s rubber bands holding me back. It’s quite distressing.
Whenever I’m driving in my dreams, I have a great deal of trouble controlling my car. I’ll fishtail around and swerve to avoid curbs, people, and street signs. The breaks hardly work, and the gas pedal is usually very sensitive. I hate driving in my dreams!
I dreamed last night that a man broke into my house and then shot the female police officer who responded to my phone call. (she also arrived on a bicycle). It was a rather scary dream overall.
As to committing violence myself, I don’t recall that coming up much.
I, too, am unable to commit violence in my dreams, even if I want to.
Running is almost impossible, I can’t get moving. It’s like my brain tells me to go, and my legs won’t move properly. I get really frustrated with that, actually.
With me, it’s raising my voice. In dreams, whenever my voice should be raised to a shout, I can only scream in an exaggerated whisper! In fact, that’s one of the ways my brain informs me ‘this is a dream’, by the fact that I cannot yell, only whisper.
But, speaking of violence in dreams, my hubby once punched me in the face while deep in a dream of decking someone he truly despised!
I’ve had an experience kinda like that in a dream before – I had a gun, and I could fire it, but every time I did, the trigger pull became heavier, until I basically had to get two fingers on the trigger and squeeze as hard as I could with both hands.
I have shot people in my dreams, though, several occasions that I can remember. Sometimes justifiably, but sometimes under circumstances that alarmed me upon reflection. Probably the most striking example, though, was one dream many years ago in which I killed a guy with a lethal injection from a syringe. I remember feeling horrified about it even as I was doing it in the dream. That one freaked me out.
Augh, I have this too! I always feel bizarrely uncomfortable and frustrated by my complete inability to control the vehicle; I feel terrified of what other people must think of my coordination, even as I’m careening off the road and running them over. It’s strange, because in waking life I’m a pretty good driver and feel quite confident about my grasp of vehicle space; I’ve never once so much as bumped another car or any other object.
Occasionally in such dreams I’ll get out of the car, survey the chaos and destruction, hope that nobody noticed, and then decide to proceed the rest of the way (to wherever I was going) on foot.
Hm. I often have trouble killing people in that they sometimes don’t die and stay dead, but I have no problem with the mechanics of killing them. In fact, I often get into jams because I kill people so capriciously and really don’t feel bad about doing so. Luckily, I can also miraculously heal people and bring them back to life, and I can also rewind my dreams and get a do-over. The only redeeming feature is that I rarely kill people with anything more than pointing my finger at them and going “pow”. In other words, it’s like we’re all playing make-believe, but because it’s my dream*, I get to decide who dies or not. Sometimes I end up yelling at people about how I shot them and that means they’re dead, damnit!
What really gets to me in dreams is that I often have poor control over my body. Sometimes, I can’t move my fingers or arms or legs at all or only very clumsily, and I tremor something awful. I’m pretty sure it’s because my waking self has similar (much more mild) problems, and I worry about not being able to function adequately.
*This also means that the plot is often under my control, and when it gets really stupid and melodramatic, I often make fun of myself for coming up with it. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
I’m surprised by the vividness with which the people in this thread are recalling their dreams. I had no idea it was that way for so many people. When I do remember my dreams, it’s only the barest fragments; in fact, I couldn’t really tell you what any of them have been recently. The only dream I’ve ever had that I can recall with any detail was a very strange one I had about ten years ago, when I was six: there was a singer on a very highly elevated platform, and her thread of life was about to be cut (I had just watched the animated Disney Hercules movie), which would have made her plummet to the floor below, and I was with someone else, trying to save her.
It’s been some time since I recalled my dreams upon waking. When I did, though, I was occasionally violent in them, but it was always the “fling energy blasts” sort of violence. People got smashed around, and large holes punched in buildings, but no blood.
Plenty of violence by OTHER people though; I used to have dreams of schools where they had machine gun nests on the roof corners, rooms filled with steel tables equipped with straps and torture devices, and many of the the girls were strapped into X-racks so they could be raped.
