I keep dreaming about bears. Bears in the woods behind the house. They break in. I run. I hear them moving down the hallway.
One reaches out a gargantuan snout and bites my hand. Not off, just a vicious puncture wound.
Several go after the kids.
Bears. Real ones. Not flying ones, or bright blue ones. Angry lumbering carnivorous bears. Last night I had maybe the 4th bear dream since Labor Day.
What the hell??
Cartooniverse
Bears are omnivores. 
It means you are in love with your mother/father.
Sorry, I only went to a couple of psych classes.
Took me awhile to put 2 and 2 together but repetitive dreams are usually a way of communicating with myself. If I’m getting a bad headache my dreams become very violent and I recognize this and wake myself up. If my nose gets stuffed up then I will not breath right and my dreams become very chlostrophobic. Again, I learned to recognize this while I’m sleeping and wake up.
The repeating dream I couldn’t explain happened for about 10 years prior to 9/11. I kept dreaming that we were at war on US soil and I was doing courier flights in a small plane (not likely since I only carry a private pilot’s license). My company also went out of business. Damn if I didn’t end up on a courier flight the night of 9/11 and my company, ironically, went out of business.
Not recurring, but your bear dream(s) remind me of my recent cow dream. I was alone in my grandmother’s living room with a very large and very realistic cow. Nice cow! How are you doing today? I started to pet it’s head like a big, mooing puppy, and it turned and started licking my face. Like a puppy! Aww. Then it started chewing at my neck a little. I gently tried to push it away, but, being a cow, it was a lot bigger and stronger than me and didn’t budge. It kept chewing, and then bit down on my neck. Hard. Not at all like a puppy. Bad cow! I coudln’t breathe, and woke up gasping for air.
Sadly, that was one of my more normal dreams.
Dreams are a message you’re sending to yourself. Usually. [Not applicable in cases where you dream of eating a 5-pound marshmallow and when you wake up your pillow’s gone.] I think that when you get a vivid, memorable and repeating dream, there is something very important to you that you need to pay attention to.
Obviously, I know nothing about you or your life, so I’m going to suggest a couple of trains of thought that might or might not be pertinent.
A bear is scary, dangerous. In your dream, they keep coming around and you are afraid, and they hurt you, and they threaten children. You used the words angry and carnivorous. There may be something in your life that you are afraid of, and it won’t go away. The bears are coming out of where they are supposed to be (the dark woods) and coming into your territory (the house).
Only you, however, can figure out what this is about. Try to think about what you might have in your life that is a danger to your intellectual, vocational or emotional “territory.” Or that part of you is anxious might be a danger. What is persistently or potentially intruding on previously safe areas of your life?
Another possibility is that the bears are a part of yourself. Is there part of yourself that is angry? Dangerous? Dreams sometimes work in puns or in metaphors. Are you trying to escape a part of yourself that is “eating you up?” Or perhaps something that was previously only potentially dangerous or scary (hidden in the dark woods) now becoming a problem because it’s getting out into the open and invading your space?
A woman I once knew told me about a persistent dream in which her house was deteriorating; the roof was leaking, and it was very cold. She either couldn’t find her warm coat or it had been taken away. We talked about it for a while, and then she realized that it was realated to her husband’s retirement plans. She was anxious about their financial security, and this was playing out in her dreams as losing the roof over her head, being out in the cold, etc.
[Superfans]da bears[/superfans]
The next time time you have the dream, ask the bear who he is.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Some people have what’s called lucid dreams, in which they know they are dreaming and can learn to control them.
Well I did crib the idea from Jung.
In his book Man and his Symbols he relates a story of a patient that had a recurring dream of being chased by a large jungle cat. Jung told the man to, if he could, to ask the cat who he was. The man was able to do this and the cat stood up, and transformed to a more familar person and said, “I’m your father.”
MSL, I like what you are saying. Everyone has major buried stressors. There are parts of me that are angry. Perhaps this is what the bear represents? And it’s coming after me to make me … be more aware of anger? Face what angers me? Support Jungian Thieves? ( Hi, Zebra )
How does one learn to be proactive in dreams? I have never spoken to anyone in a dream where I was aware at the moment that I was controlling the dialogue. Nor, now that I think of it, can I remember speaking to anyone in a dream. ( Well, a frightening dream. Lawdy, I can talk a blue streak in a sex dream but that’s for another thread.)
Magiver, I’ve never cottonned to prescience. Your story is wildly coinkydental but then again, maybe prescience is real and I should be a believer.
I don’t have a definitive answer. First, I think, one has to *really * want to do so. Also, before going to sleep, think or meditate on the possible dream and concentrate on taking control of it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I disagree on the prescience of dreams. Just about everyone has multiple dreams every night. We don’t remember most of them because they happen in the middle of our sleep and we just forget. We’re more likely to remember those that happen just before waking, or if we are wakened in the middle of one, or if it is especially vivid. Many dreams are just pointless and boring, IMHO, and mean nothing. Given the large number of dreams we have, it would be surprising if an occasional event triggers a latent dream memory. Looking at it another way, if you could somehow capture and record the content of every dream you have in a year, you could well have a list of a thousand or more dreams. You have an unmeasurable number of experiences every day. The chances would be fairly high that eventually these two sets will intersect.
Also, your dreams are drawn from actual experience, although sometimes recombined in weird ways. In your recurring dream, for example, all of the pieces (the bear, the children, the house, the woods) are part of real life. Even if you’ve never had a bear invade your home, you’ve seen bears.
If this dream happened just one time, IMHO it would mean very little. Maybe you just saw a news report about a bear-related incident and were thinking how frightening that would be. It’s the repetitive nature of the dream that makes me think you are trying to tell yourself something.
When you are having the dream, do you find yourself thinking, “It’s the bear dream, AGAIN!”?
If you think frequently during the day and as you are going to bed, “Talk to the bears, talk to the bears, talk to the bears” then maybe it will happen organically.
I had a weird dream I was hanging out my friend in Washington DC. We saw the Washington Monument and we all ran up to the top together. Then we shot out the top and landed in the pond. Then we frolicked like dolphins in the water.
I guess I like dolphins.
Distract them with picnic baskets, make good your escape.
You want to talk weird dreams? Try a parody of The Rocky Horror Show in which Brad and Janet crash a Fursuit party.
I have no idea what brought that on.
You keep wanting me to talk to the bears. Gee man, that’d involve becoming Bear Grub. Sheesh. Next time, I’ll pick up the check at The Algonquin, honest !! 
Actually, yes. The last time I had a bear dream, or as I am coming to see them, A Bear Dream ™, I was aware that I was thinking, oh god another bear dream. Then I got bitten on the hand by one and woke up. Skeeved me right the hell out, I tell ya.
Lute? :eek: :eek: :eek: That is one frightening image, my friend.
I’d have to side with the non-prescience side of that. I’ve kept one eye on terrorism for better than 20 years so I can see it showing up in dreams. The only strange part about it is that it was a “given” that we were at war. There were no scenes or reference to war. My company lost money for quite some time so that could easily get into a dream. The courier run was a little weird since I have no direct military connections or skills that would warrant it. Almost made the news when I radioed the wrong center and had to explain why I was in the air.
I did once perceive a car accident (no injuries) that my parents were going to have while on vacation. Not sure how to explain it other than it felt more like an old memory than a premonition. One of the few times I hugged and kissed my dad as a teenager. Should have hugged the car too (1972 Olds 88). The last of the Detroit land yachts. But again, there’s precedent behind the thought. They were visiting my uncle who was a notoriously bad driver. He elected to drive my dad’s car and promptly introduced it to the front of an RV.
Personally, I’ve always felt that dreams were the subconscious trying to work things out. Often the dream comes from the “right” side of the brain which isn’t specifically logical so the images don’t always spill out in recognizable fashion. I often have dreams that have no spatial relation to the real world and the laws of physics don’t apply. Things seem logical in the dream but are weird when reconstructed with the conscious side of the brain. But that’s purely a SWAG on my part.
I don’t know if there’s a problem with dreams about bears.
If you were sleeping with them, then you might seek help.
When my life is tumultuous and chaotic, I have dreams about tornadoes all around me, for miles in every direction. Hundreds of them.
Perhaps something is going on in your life right now that is frightening and that you feel you have no control over? Or maybe something has happened recently that made you feel more protective of your family? Or less able to protect them from harm?
It’s interesting, too, that there is a physical aspect: you getting attacked, bitten and killed (it bit your head off once, didn’t it?). Do you have an upcoming surgery? Were you recently in a car accident? Were you a victim of a crime, such as a home invasion?
It could be something less abstract, too. Have you had any recent experiences with an animal that was frightening? Or a scary experience in the wilderness?
Whatever it is, it’s usually your subconscious trying to tell you something.
From a dream dictionary
Or, from a different one
So, since you’re being pursued and attacked in your dreams, it sounds like you need to worry about the IRS hounding you 
Conversely, if you dream you’re swallowing a bull, it’s a sign you’ll experience some financial success.
Either that, or you just tend to swallow a lot of bull.