Dreams to Remember

So in my “waking life” I’m all blessed out from my period of grounding. Miranda is cool, calm, and collected once again. And yet my “non-waking life” still seems to be in turmoil.

Everyone has about 100 dreams on average a night. Some people can remember whole dreams, some remember only bits and pieces, and then there are people like me who remember nothing of the dream from the night before. I used to be one of the people who dream and remember my dreams every night. I could wake up with almost crystal clear recall of them. Incidentally I also used to dream stuff all the time and then have déjà vu days, weeks, and months later when the very thing I dreamed actually happened. Weird! I digress though…

So after my dad committed suicide, I stopped dreaming. I know they say you always dream it’s just a matter of whether or not you remember it but to me it felt like I stopped dreaming. When I was going to counseling after he died, my therapist told me that going through something like the suicide of a loved one is like being a life altering car crash. Your body physically, mentally, and emotionally feels that much trauma. That your brain can actually be “damaged” from the trauma and that oftentimes you develop symptoms of PTSD. Obviously adding on the separation and divorce in the months after his death didn’t do much to give my body/mind/soul any relief.

For like the first two years, I never had a dream I remembered. It’s like when I went to sleep my mind completely shut off. I still sleep like that in large part. I have only had a handful of dreams in the last six or so months that I can remember even. And only one of my dad. Yeah that entire movie BS they try to sell us about our loved ones coming back in our dreams apparently doesn’t apply to me. Side note – My mom has only had one dream about my dad too. Side-side note – I pray all the time for him to be in my dreams.

Again I digress. So about two weeks ago I was telling the girls here at work how I never dream anymore and then randomly I’ve had about 5-6 nights where I’ve dreamed and I remember bits and pieces. They are always weirdly violent and angry lol. I guess while the anger is seeping out of my conscious my subconscious is still an angry bitch.

I’ve dreamed about getting in screaming arguments with people I don’t know (one was about how their daughter treated my daughter), seeing other people fist fighting while I just watched, people breaking into my home and me screaming my head off at them to scare them, and most recently a very vivid dream about seeing a tornado headed towards my house while I ran around frantically in a 1950s nightie trying to prepare a survival kit. Weird!

Because I used to dream so much and remember them, I’ve always loved playing around with dream interpretation. So here’s what these dreams mean – some I agree with and am like “duh of course that’s what it means” and some I’m not so sure about.

• Generally seeing fighting in a dream indicates inner turmoil and that some aspect of you is in conflict with another aspect of yourself. Perhaps an unresolved or unacknowledged part is fighting for its right to be heard.
• To see others fighting in your dream suggests that you are unwilling to acknowledge your own problems and turmoil. You are not taking any responsibility or initiative in trying to resolve issues in your waking life.
• To dream that you are arguing suggests that you are trying to resolve some internal conflict or some unsettled issue in your waking life. Consider the symbolism of whom you are arguing with and what you are arguing about.
• To see a tornado in your dream suggests that you are experiencing some extreme emotional outbursts and temper tantrums. That you are feeling overwhelmed and out of control and that you may be facing a situation or relationship in your life that may be potentially destructive.

Your subconscious mind and your unconscious mind collaborate to generate dreams. When a dream gains enough momentum it will become vivid enough to impress the dormant consciousness enough that you will remember it. Sometimes the everyday experiences we have are so dominant they cancel out our dreams in our memory. Maybe for so long I was suppressing so much emotion and just struggling with the day to day reality of my life that my mind simply didn’t have the capacity to dream or remember the dreams as it were.

Just another interesting side effect of my grounding.

Miranda