repetitive dreams

[lysergia]

i've had repetitive dreams all my life. they ALWAYS have meaning, always. and when i figure out the meaning and incorporate it into my conscious thoughts, the dream never happens again.

example:

from childhood until adulthood i dreamed i was trapped underwater, unable to get through because the surface was frozen. i would bang on the ice and scream and yell and i knew nobody would ever see me down there. after figuring out and accepting the DID diagnosis, the dream stopped forever (it was my fear of dissociating and unable to get back into the "real world").

my subconscious is a very cryptic therapist, heh.

so the repetitive dream these past months (or the most mysterious one to me) involves having taken a job as a nanny.

in my dream, i am responsible for several small children who live in a very large house (usually one of the small children is my own, who is 16 in real life). the house is atrociously filthy - like anything beyond what i could imagine having children live in. there are usually adults who either live there or visit, coming and going, interrupting me every time i start to get something done. i recognize these adults as people i do know for real that i've kinda kicked out of my life for quite some time now.

the adults don't seem to care about the condition of the house or the well-being of the children. they just stomp in and out, doing what they want, and leaving again (leaving more crap for me to clean, usually). i clean and clean and clean in the dreams, and never get finished - or even close - not EVER. sometimes one of the kids is crying and i can't get to them for being interrupted or lost amongst the chaos.

in short, i wake up SOOOOO frustrated and panicked because this house is STILL unacceptable for children - not only that, i'm not getting the job done i've been hired to do. i also wake up very angry.... super pissed at those adults in my life i knew (and ditched for good reasons). i mean, how could they let those kids live like that? don't they care about their house?

it wouldn't be such a big deal to me if dreams didn't follow me around all damned day. i will remember feeling frustrated and guilty and angry about this and relive it at least a dozen times today.... i can't control that part (about any dream, not just the repetitive ones). consequently i wander around feeling uptight and depressed for no good reason other than that i can't figure out what this freakin dream means.

anyone else live like this?

anyone else have any clues what this dream might be pointing me towards (highly subjective, i know)?

thanks for listening. i've been up for an hour and i can't stop thinking about it (again).

-lysergia

[Sophia]

Lysergia,

I too have had dreams that repeated until I figured them out; I had one from the time I was a preschooler until I was in college...don't want to go into it, but when I realized I'd been abused by my best friend's grandfather, it stopped, and I never had it again.

Just a thought, I'm no pro at dream interpretation, but from reading your other posts, I get a sense of how aggravating you find other people's attitudes toward DID, I wonder if the other adults who come in, make a mess, keep you from getting things in order...are people who deny your diagnosis, minimize it.... You've got a household to contend with all the time, don't need others coming in and minimizing the work that is your life. Keeping everything in order for your selves and those for whom you're responsible is work enough without others coming in and encouring you to simply by denying, dirtying up the good work you've done on coming to accept yourself. I'm guessing the house wouldn't be unacceptable to live in if others weren't always making a mess in there.

Just a thought,

Sophia

[SunshineOutside]

I've had repetitive dreams for about eighteen years of my sons dying somehow. They are always little. They are infrequent now. The last one I had was about a year ago. Have you ever done any dream work? I've done some that will sound a little kooky to you.....but....

As you are under the ice, beating the ice, what would you say to the ice? Take a minute and think about that......

And, what would the ice say back to you? Seriously, think about that for a moment.

Did you have an "a Ha" moment? Very interesting stuff, those dreams.

[resonance]

Just a thought... Have you ever been able to recognize that dreams are dreams while they're happening? I tried training myself to do that in high school so I could fly in my dreams, and had some success. If you can consciously interact with your dreams, you may be able to alter them favorably and/or make meaning clearer to you by interacting with them in a different way.

[dangergirl]

Hi Lys,

I've had recurrent dreams for as long as I can remember - the oldest one is from when I was 4 (yes, I know, my whole family insists that I can't have memories from when I was 4 until I tell them things that happened and they give me that shocked look - the bastards - always think I'm lying - anyway....lol). My dreams are similar to your ice dream - terrifying - some of them are just weird. I've done lots of dream work in the past - what Resonance mentioned (which is highly impressive, can't remember the name of it right now but tdoc was uber impressed with that) and now w/tdoc, who's really good at the dream interpretations.

So, now I'm going to put tdoc hat on (and laugh at that...lol) and give a go at your dream, but it's based on the little knowledge I've gleened from hanging out here at CB and the stuff that y'all have taught me (so I could be COMPLETELY wrong):

The house is your DID - the way you and Abi have explained it to me, it's like your brain is this house that keeps all your personalities inside. All of the children and adults that you are seeing in this dream are you other personalities. The fact that the house is filthy is your attitude towards your DID...meaning: these bad adults who are no longer in your life caused you to dissasociate, which created this filthy house - and they don't care about it and now YOU are left with the mess to clean up...and you are frantically trying to clean, but can't get ahead of the curve bc these people just keep coming back and messing it up.

You wake up angry at those adults bc you feel abandoned by them and that they don't care about what they did to hurt you...they've left you with this mess (your DID) to clean up...you have no help, screaming children (you & your alters), and no way of dealing with these adults bc they do whatever they want (as they did in your real life). Even though you say that YOU kicked them out, I imagine that deep down inside, you felt abandonned by them before you cut them loose bc you were so hurt by them which is the filth (the pain and hurt) that has been created in this house. You can't believe they could or would do this to you (you are the children that have to live in the filth - the crap that they've left behind - and continue to do so with unresolved issues). The constant cleaning is the work you're doing in therapy - have you been doing a lot of work on trying to integrate some of your alters? resolve some of the issues of the past surrounding these "bad adults"? That could be part of the frustration of not being able to get the job done - you're working hard in therapy and feeling like you're not making any progress.

I don't know if I wrote this very clearly, but it's what jumped out at me when I read it...but the thing about dream interpretation is that it has to have meaning for YOU. Those dream symbol books rarely mean anything - I mean, water means isolation, but then you have to put it into context of yourself...other than that, no one can interpret your dreams w/o talking to you. I hope you figure it out, bc just like you, I live with the anxiety of dreams for days and weeks until it goes away - it's your subconscious trying to figure out what your conscious brain ain't really ready for yet...but it is and it's trying to force it's way out. I imagine you're going to cry a lot on this one (that's me switching from tdoc to fortune teller and looking into my crystal ball...lol). Good Luck!

Oh - and I apologize if my terminology wasn't exactly politically correct - I'm still learning what to call everyone and everything in DID land...so hopefully I didn't offend.

[reddog]

i got a different take on the dream than Dangergirl. you say you kicked those adults out of your life? i'm wondering if you have unresolved feelings (good or bad) about them, or the decision to cut off contact. the unresolved feelings are the connection that lets them back into your life (back into the house) and because you had good reason to kick them out (the messes they made). but because it's not sorted out, they come back and make more messes.

i have repititve dreams too, only mine rarely mean anything. my mind is like a computer driven projector. it actually gives me serial dreams, or recycles dreams, like watching old tv shows. but rarely does anything have meaning. and when it does, i can tell.

[lysergia]

wow.... what all of you said put together somehow makes it make more sense. thank you!

my suspicion was that "the house" and the children represented our own affairs as a multiple, yeah.

but it being that dirty? i was confused about that part.... but i guess maybe deep down i do think our "house" is still not nearly in order (too influenced by the yuckiness of the past).

it also confused me having real life jerks in my house - it made me think maybe this wasn't really a DID dream thingy. but i think that the unresolved feelings thing makes sense. every one of those people make my blood pressure rise as soon as i think of them. they weren't the ones that abused me, but rather people from my adulthood who did things that caused me great pain.

i don't do abandonment well - i'm the one that's always cutting and running. don't like being dependent on people emotionally.

interesting... some of these adults actually did get dumped because they refused to accept/acknowledge the DID. yeah that did hurt, and there's nothing i can do about it but try and forget it (i'll never change their minds). i think that part's important, too. i do get hurt daily by all the little ways my real life is invalidated (having to say "i" all the time when it's lying, hiding the depression by smiling, masking the panic and confusion by looking busy, lying about why i don't remember things sometimes).

i guess i didn't realize these particular things were eating at me that much. i've lapsed in my usual stubbornness about being authentic... for the last few years, it's just seemed more important to pretend for the sake of other's needs. i guess i had better start acting like "me" again, DID and all, and quit lying so much about how we feel. maybe then i can finally get some of those rooms cleaned

i think i should look into those dream techniques, too. i think it would help.

thank you all again. i feel a little relieved now, like i've "almost" got it (almost is a lot closer than clueless!).

- lysergia

[lysergia]

argh. this is what happens when you try to do stuff on your own without decent research.

went to bed an hour early, relaxed, closed my eyes and went back to that filthy mental house. picked one room and said "i am going to clean this no matter what. only this room."

for some reason my brain went right to the bathroom (huh?)

i imagined a hose that had some kind of magical non-toxic bleach spraying out, so i sprayed every inch of the bathroom until it sparkled like new. i was very pleased.

then suddenly there was a child in the bathroom with me, also very dirty. then i knew why i needed to clean the bathroom - i needed to clean the children. apparently, this one got in line first or something.

i poured her a bubble bath and watched her play and then washed her hair. i was feeling weird the whole time, but i thought hey, maybe i'm actually falling asleep or something.

then she got out of the tub and i started freaking for absolutely no reason except that the water in the tub was so brown, i would have to clean it again, and how could she be clean bathing in that, and now i have to -

stop meditation and enter extreme anxiety. went from almost asleep to wide awake. had to get out of bed, try to distract myself. too late. panic attack. can't breathe, terror that wants to cry but is totally stuck, all of it totally irrational.

take clonazepam. come to crazyboards and start clicking to see if something someone says somewhere will pull me out of this. can't shake it. decide to write it down and see if it helps it go away.

i just did a bad thing, didn't i? trying to do this guided meditation thing without knowing what the hell i am doing.

i am shaking so bad it is all i can do to pray that this pill stays down and i dont barf before it works.

please move this or something if its too weird for here. i feel really outside myself right now and i'm not sure what i'm doing. typing is so hard.

thank you for giving me safe space to do this.

[lysergia]

ugh i am sorry and embarrassed about that

i'm okay. fell asleep by three and woke up at six thirty without any dream-memory of that house stuff. just more mundane shit, thank god. have a gp appointment this morning, i'm sure if i look/sound strange we'll address it. no worries.

back to regularly scheduled programming. again, i'm sorry to pour my crazy all over you.

-lysergia

[resonance]

Glad to hear you're feeling better. Sorry about suggesting that...In retrospect, since it was dealing with altered states, I probably should have flagged my recommendation with a "since you have DID probably you should read up on..." I will next time I suggest something similar.

[dangergirl]

No worries on spilling crazy on us - that's what we're here for....that's kinda what guided meditations and dream work do though (and thus my crystal ball prediction) - it brings up a LOT of shit...I'm guessing you were processing stuff....you tried to do the work but again, felt like you couldn't get ahead of the curve. I'm sorry that you had such a strong reaction to it - I would bring all of this up at your next tdoc session as I imagine you might be on the verge of a major breakthrough...my tdoc always says that when it hurts that much you're doing the really serious stuff.

On another note, it's odd, the only room in my house that NEEDS to be clean is my bathroom...(danger hears weird twilight zone music)...and is glad that you're feeling better today!

[lysergia]

No worries on spilling crazy on us - that's what we're here for....that's kinda what guided meditations and dream work do though (and thus my crystal ball prediction) - it brings up a LOT of shit...I'm guessing you were processing stuff....you tried to do the work but again, felt like you couldn't get ahead of the curve. I'm sorry that you had such a strong reaction to it - I would bring all of this up at your next tdoc session as I imagine you might be on the verge of a major breakthrough...my tdoc always says that when it hurts that much you're doing the really serious stuff.

On another note, it's odd, the only room in my house that NEEDS to be clean is my bathroom...(danger hears weird twilight zone music)...and is glad that you're feeling better today!

thanks dangergirl hmmm, maybe i psychically KNEW your bathroom needed cleaning and tried doing it for you. too bad that didn't work (makes note to work on astral projection skills).

yeah whatever that was was majorly heavy therapy shit that i am not doing alone. that was too scary.

and i am feeling better, thanks... i always do after coming here

[mrsloony]

Usually DID starts in childhood as a result of bad trauma. It looks like you were doing a really good job taking care of this young girl. you wern't just bathing for the sake of bathing, but makeing it fun for her with a bubble bath with splashing wich sounds fun. You were being nurturing and caring to wash her hair and make sure she was safe. (perhaps you were taking care of a very young alter) the water is still dirty because no matter how much you wash, you can't wash the dirt of the things that happened to you. With the filth you see in the bathroom and on the child- maybe the filth represents some of the traumas you experienced. maybe even some you were too young to remember.

Do you remember ever taking a fun bubble bath with a grownup playing with you?

little kids often wet the bed- i had a friend who had a little one who did it frequently and so kept didposable pads on her bed to care for that little one.

( initially when i was reading your post I was thinking of what to write to you as to what i saw from it. then i read dangergirl's and it couldn't have been more word for word what i'd been thinking.

( i will just reiterate just because- i am not a professional just a friend offerring ideas. usually when someone asks me about their dreams (for some reason everyone in my family always comes to me but--- the first thing i always ask is what does the dreamer think it means. ultimately they always know best.

i admire you for sharing and hope some responses and your own thinking lead to some better night's sleep.

[lysergia]

little kids often wet the bed- i had a friend who had a little one who did it frequently and so kept didposable pads on her bed to care for that little one.

that part of your post really struck me (and thank you for the rest, too!).

there's been a kid around lately who does wet the bed - really often these last few weeks. it's extremely embarrasing as an adult , but thankfully our partner understands what's up when that happens.

what a random coincidence that one was - you coming forth with that idea and it's actually been happening.

damn that happens a lot at CB i wonder why?

thanks mrsloony

[reddog]

combined with your other post about an alter that you don't like to be around, i'm gonna say your mind is gearing up for a 'big clean': you're getting ready internally to deal with a big ugly nasty smelly shitpile of an issue and your mind is trying to prepare you for the job of standing in a big shit pile shoveling for a while.

maybe the brown water upset you because it was 'real' evidence of how bad (dirty) your traumas have been, and you were upset by seeing that represented so graphically?

i think you may be on to something with needing to give the children baths. i also think you did something very very right, by nurturing her with a bubble bath and washing her hair and all. i think you were just shocked at how 'dirty' the traumas were.

so that's my take on the dream.

[dangergirl]

I think Red's on to something there....as for the wetting the bed...I had someone slip me a "mickey" in a bar and amongst other things that night, I wet the bed - in my boss's guest room no less ! Talk about embarassing . Since then, I've urinated in some really weird places whilst drunk and asleep (I sleep walk...lol). If you're staying in bed, you can protect your matress with a rubber sheet - they go under your regular sheets and will keep your matress dry and smell free (it's hard to get that smell out)...or you could wear depends to bed or a large maxi pad (depending on how much your wetting)...not sexy, but I guess it's a matter of which is LESS sexy - waking up in a puddle of pee or going to bed with someone in a diaper (and on that note, I dated a guy who liked to wear diapers to bed...so...yeah never know what might turn someone on...lol...and no, I didn't WANT him to wear the diapers, HE liked it...LOL).

Nothing more than a funny story and a little practical advice this time....LOL.

[YorkshireRose]

LMAO@Danger!!!!!

You was his MUMMY!!!!!

Oh I peed the bed at my friends wedding,stayed at the hotel woke up doing back stroke around the bed!!!!! It happens nevermind!!!!

You can get these fab disposable sheets to pop on the bed,theyre good but not if you travel around the bed during the night!!!!

Dreams are a tough one Im undecided as to weither theyre a crock of shite or if your conscience is trying to tell you something!!!

[lysergia]

reddog and dangergirl, you gals are amazing.

thank you for telling me it's happened to others, too.

we do take "protective" measures when this comes up.

too tired to think hard about this right now :/

[LikeMinded]

I am, just like my father, a major control freak.

Therefore, it follows that my most salient dreams are about losing control of myself and the things around me.

I have a lot of dreams about flying somewhere and the pilot deciding to do something "fun" with the aircraft. I'll just leave it at that. (Though, I have experienced one of those steep 'noise-abatement' takeoffs in a rear-engined aircraft... you know, the kind where you climb steeply for just a few seconds and then suddenly the engines get cut and the plane levels off, and you get this brief sense of weightlessness...)

Oh yeah, then there are the dreams of going up stairs and my legs weakening to the point I have to stop in mid-stream, unable to keep on, at which point I become paralyzed.*** I already have leg weakness as it already is, as well as some issues with using my proprioceptive skills (or lack thereof) whilst going up stairs, and yes, it's safe to conclude that stairs aren't exactly my best friend (in real life, as well!). However, I'm still happy I'm capable of climbing stairs whilst awake, though again, I do think that my "walking" dreams are just my mind panicking about my existing walking disabilities.

***This is also part of the sleep paralysis I get every so often, as after such dreams, I find my own real-life body paralyzed for a few seconds after I wake up. Comes with the territory of narcolepsy.

...oh yeah, forgot to mention my mom's repetitive dreams... her dream recollections generally start with "I dreamt you were only four years old..." Sometimes I have to inform her that she's awake and in the real world now, that I'm no longer 4, and haven't been since late 1987.

[lysergia]

herrfous, i wonder if there's a connection between the repetitive (intrustive) dreaming and the narcolepsy/sleep paralysis?

i've never been formally diagnosed, but i have often experienced sleep paralysis and cataplexy.

thanks for sharing that!

[LikeMinded]

herrfous, i wonder if there's a connection between the repetitive (intrustive) dreaming and the narcolepsy/sleep paralysis?

i've never been formally diagnosed, but i have often experienced sleep paralysis and cataplexy.

thanks for sharing that!

Sorry about the delayed response...

Not sure if you're referring to "intrusive" as "intrusive into the physical realm". In that case, there definitely is a correlation, since sleep paralysis (IMO a huge misnomer, they should call it "REM paralysis intrusion" instead) by definition is a feature of narcolepsy - and by my personal experience, oh yeah, it happens. Somehow, Remeron has helped me with that (I read one paper, God help me if I ever find it again, stating that Remeron increased time spent in deep sleep while decreasing REM periods -- of course, this won't obviate dreams, given that we have dreams during deep sleep as well).

Now as for the repetitive dreaming, I haven't the foggiest idea. My mother has certain narcoleptic symptoms (really only the sleep paralysis, and my father can tell it's happening when she's laying in bed in the morning with her eyes wide open and none of her body moving (save for her eyes). That said, she feels that the episodes are a period of timeless peace and has asked Dad not to interrupt them (the primary way of interrupting sleep paralysis, from what I've heard and experienced, is being to touch someone, often by holding their hand). Though, her repetitive dreaming basically has just one common element, that being that I'm in her dream and am no older than 5 years.

Then again, no generalizations apply to her, as she often has this "dream" thought whilst awake.