Ugh, this.
I had a dream recently that felt so real: I woke up because of a noise and went into the hall and a man was silhouetted, and so I shouted to warn my husband, or tried to but nothing came out but air and I couldn’t get any air back in. I was smothering in panic and adrenaline and when he rushed down the hall and I tried to fight him, I had no strength to do so, my blows were not even weak slaps and felt so slow. Thankfully this was it, my brain snapped me out of it and I woke up, just flooded in frustrated fear.
I once dreamt my retainer exploded, and I spat out bits of tooth and bone and great gobs of salty blood and that burned tooth grit you get in your mouth from drilling. Blergh.
Violence in my dreams is relatively rare: I generally have tv or book type dreams, where I’m conscious of just moving along a story line that might be random, but is entertaining, sometimes it’s visual and sometimes I’m in it, and sometimes I’m just reading a book.
I once bit a burglar’s thumb off in a dream. He had been chasing me around the house, grabbing at me. There was someone else in the house, but he was ignoring it all. I tried to get him to help, but he just looked off into the distance.
I forget if I stopped running and turned around, or if the burglar just caught up with me. But he grabbed at my face and I bit off his thumb. I woke up feeling the pressure of it lingering on my teeth. The first thing I thought was 'can you get more Freudian?"
Oh, the burglar ran off screaming and clutching his hand. That bit was satisfying.
I’m guessing violence is rare in my husband’s dreams, also. However. . .once, about 20 years ago, I awoke to him punching me in the eye! He was sound asleep, and apparently dreaming about beating the crap out of someone! He felt so bad about the incident that I actually felt bad for him!
As the self appointed king of really vivid dreams I can relate to A LOT in this thread.
The whisper thing annoys the hell out of me, it happens all the time. I also have the problem of not being able to run when I want to. Whether it is out of fear or something else, I can never seem to run whenever I want to, it is always really really slow.
Kind of the opposite to a lot of you I never commit violence in my dreams, but I am always getting hit/stabbed/shot/killed. I have been killed by everything from a car accident (the first time I remember dying), being shot in the neck by an arrow, being shot with a gun, the whole nine yards.
The best one was I was in a bank while it was being robbed. The robber was a friend of mine and he put the gun into my chest cuz he threatened to shoot me. I grabbed the barrel and pushed it away and said…
“What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”
(Bang!)
You…did
Then I fell and died. It was like a scene in a movie. I felt my face contort and had the slight break between “you” and “did”…it was awesome. So Chimera what do those dreams mean?
Yes, I get violent in my dreams – one really gory dream has stuck with me for years. I dreamt that I was back in the neighborhood in which I grew up, and there were zombies everywhere (actually a common theme of my dreams). Most of the people in the area were zombies, and the rest of us banded together to protect ourselves. My house was invaded, and I ran out onto the balcony to escape. I thought that if I kept still I might be able to fool them into thinking I was one of them, but they saw right through me. A zombie woman came out onto the balcony with me and we started struggling. I got very angry or full of adrenaline, and I pinned her against the railing and stabbed her in the throat with a little pair of sewing scissors I had on me. She – though these zombies were supposed to be emotionless – radiated sorrow and fear and regret as I twisted the scissors in her throat and she bled to death in my arms. shudder
That’s pretty unusual, though. Usually my violence takes the form of wrestling someone or something (like an animal) that’s trying to hurt me and pinning them to the ground. Occasionally, I beat things (like zombies) over the head with objects. I’ve dreamt I’ve been shot, but I’ve never shot someone.
Unfortunately enough for my, and my REM cycle… When violent dreams occur, it is generally very awful things being done to me or someone very close to me.
I have had reoccurring dreams where I am forced to sit and watch people I don’t know kill of my closest friends… its so awkward and I’m never sure what it means… Surely I would never mean any harm to anyone I love, and if it came down to it I would obviously choose myself over them, but I never get that choice…
…I don’t have a really deep insight into what your dreams could mean for you, but if I think about it more logically it seems to be a number of things are possible… Like for instance, maybe you’re experiencing a lot of stress? I feel sure that you would have posted this information along with the said dreams…
Is there anything you can think of that perhaps you maybe thought was not pertinent to the dreams your having? Maybe you should start there…
Sometimes I have an experience in which I try to speak in a dream, but my voice comes out sounding muffled and far away; then I think that perhaps I spoke it out loud (as in, I actually said it, in my sleep), and suddenly I’m aware of the strange dichotomy between the dream world and the real world outside my head. I try, but I can’t seem to “speak” to the dream world anymore; it feels like everything I’m saying is coming out of my physical mouth instead of floating into the world in my mind, which is why it sounds so strange and distant.
I usually wake up shortly thereafter, but it’s a weird experience while it lasts.
Well of course the hamsters ate my post. I had a nice one last night and the database appeared to crash when I hit submit.
Vehicles (cars, bikes) are symbols of control of movement and direction. Having difficulty in controlling the movement of a car or bike in the dream is about having difficulty controlling the direction and movement in our lives.
Weapons are indicative of solutions, as fighting is indicative of struggling with issues or wrestling with problems. Notice the words: struggle, wrestle = conflict. No small wonder we have dreams of conflict when we’re struggling with problems. So the weapons are indicative of forceful solutions, and when we dream of the weapons failing, it is indicative of our attempted solutions not working. When you shoot someone and it has no effect, this is a solution that did not work. In the dreams where you shoot them and they go down, but come back later, it’s indicative of a solution that maybe appeared to work, but the problem keeps coming back.
You don’t mean you think I actually killed someone, do you?
I do have personal experience learning a frightening secret about someone well-respected in my family, and not being able to let on to that person or to anyone that I know that secret for fear of the consequences. I had to keep up this charade and play dumb for years. (This, in turn, has always made me believe that you can’t trust anyone, in general, to be what they appear to be.) I think the recurring theme of zombies/pod people is directly tied to this. The zombies in my dreams look like normal people, but are inwardly evil and corrupt, and they’ll hurt me if they know I know what they really are. Killing zombies in my dream, I think, is my way of attacking this “fact” about humanity, and about my family member in particular (who is male, FWIW).
I used to be incapable of defending myself in dreams. Which means I did a lot of running. I hated those dreams. Then a few years ago, things began to change. Now I will stop and fight whatever is chasing me. I’ll punch, kick, stab, and shoot. The problem is that my fighting is ineffective. So I will work myself into this crazy berserker frenzy, getting more and more creative in my attempt to bring the monster/bad guy down, and it doesn’t do any good. They will not die.
I find that, overall, my dreams are much less vivid than they used to be. Sometimes, I regret that. Even when they were frightening and horrible, they were like free movies. On the other hand, I’m not plagued all day with really awful images and feelings of helplessness, so I guess it’s a fair trade-off.
Huh, I never thought about it before, but I don’t recall ever being physically violent in a dream, or even attempting physical violence. I’ve yelled at people, but that’s about it. There generally isn’t fighting in my dreams, and I’m not usually physically attacked. If I am, I’m either frozen with fear, or I run or fly away.
One dream I really hate is when I’m someplace that’s supposed to be my house, and strangers keep walking in. I’ll tell them to leave, that they’ve invaded my home, but more and more people keep coming in, and I’ll start yelling at them to get out, but they just keep coming in. Trying to lock the doors never helps, either. There’s always a door I forgot about.
No, but you had some issues with people, being unable to communicate with them or make them understand, or being able to understand their motives. (Zombies) Stabbing in the throat would seem to indicate some harsh communication meant to hurt someone or silence them, and you were surprised that they reacted in a human fashion.
But that’s a surface level analysis and it would take a bit more to get to the heart of it.
It depends on the context. If I’m supposed to look competent and answer highly complex questions that could come from nowhere on topics I’m not entirely familiar with, they terrify me. I’m very analytical, and I need to mull things over, so I’m not a good front-line person when it comes to dealing with clients at work, for example.
But if it comes to just talking to people, I’m one of those folks who can strike up conversations with random strangers, and I’m often approached by random strangers for convesation. I’m an introvert, but people fascinate me, so this type of meeting new people is something I enjoy. I can go to a party where I don’t know anybody but the hosts, and get into all kinds of interesting conversations with people I’ve never met in my life.
I don’t think the dreams really have to do with that, though. I think they have more to do with feeling that someone is repeatedly challenging my boundaries, or I’m feeling that my space or privacy is being invaded, and I haven’t quite figured out how to draw the line.
That would make sense. Our home is our intimate area, our closest life. And the people in dreams are most often not the people they appear to be, but a symbolic representation of an idea, behavior or thing. So it could be that a lot of stuff is being pushed off on you that you’re not ready for or willing to take on; or that someone in particular is constantly pushing your boundaries with this sort of thing.
Well that would explain a lot for me. I intermittently dream of having weapons, I can’t remember much beyond the fact that the weapons never work, ever. It’s always guns, and when I try to fire them I pull the trigger and find myself yelling ‘bang!’, I realise I’m saying it so I stop speaking and pull the trigger again, only to yell ‘bang!’ again. It’s embarrassing, frustrating and scary because at the time I’m in great danger and merely trying to protect myself.
If I have a violent dream it means I’m getting a migraine. I’ve learned to wake myself up. If I’m having a claustrophobic dream it means I’m having problems breathing through my nose… and I’ve learned to wake myself up. Otherwise dreams consist of my hobbies/desire or a rehash of anything problematic.
Acid reflux is different. If it starts to slosh up my esophagus I will bolt straight up in bed. You only have to inhale acid once to figure that one out.
Last night, I had the first dream that I could remember where I committed a violent act. I dreamt that I was in the Army, and I was in an Army base that looked a lot like a building on my campus (it’s old and gothic-looking). Then, the enemy attacked the base. I clearly remember that we were fighting Cambodians, for whatever reason. I took cover behind a trash can and killed two with my rifle (no blood, oddly enough), then spent the rest of the time trying to dodge shells and grenades. When I finally got back inside the base, I learned that the Cambodians had surrendered and the war was over.
I’ve never had a dream where I couldn’t do something, like run or shout. There are dreams where I can’t find something, or can’t find a safe place to hide, but that’s different from being physically incapable of doing something.
Though I’ve never shot anyone in a dream that I recall, in my dreams I’m handy with a knife. I killed the abusive husband of my Mom’s close friend, a serial killer, a zombie and the zombie’s dog with all with a knife. I also chucked the zombie’s other dog down a stairwell headfirst. None of these dreams with deliberate violence bothered me, but when I dreamed that I was too rough with a young animal and accidentally killed it, I woke up devestated.
