How to deal with bad dreams?

[Preety_India]

So I regularly get this same dream and I'm looking for ways to deal with this problem of bad dreams, also I don't know the significance of this dream. 

 

In this dream, I felt like my family had abandoned me. They have put me in a building at the edge of the forest away from the city. And there's nobody in that building except a cook and a bodyguard, the cook delivers food. And I'm living on the top floor. But absolutely nobody to talk to. 

The family comes back to check on me after a week and I repeatedly beg them to take me home and that I feel totally isolated and alone. 

They give me the reason that I need to stay at that place to overcome my anxiety and that's the suggestion the family physician gave them. I tell them that my anxiety is actually getting worse. They don't listen and leave. 

And I feel trapped far away in this place. The realization sinks in that this is how the rest of my life is going to be - alone and isolated. 

 

I wake up from the dream feeling drained

[Preety_India]

1 minute ago, Benton said:

Are you lonely due to anxiety related to your family? It seems to me that you feel stuck in a certain situation with your mother. And you get a roof, and food out of the deal. So it’s hard to leave, despite the abusive relationship.

Do you feel you push people away often? For fear of being hurt?

Thats just my interpretation. I don’t understand your situation fully. But ultimately that’s what it is. An interpretation. 

Learn through your dreams. And gain a higher understanding of yourself. Learn from what you fear

Right now my relationship with my mother is healing although there are occasional fights, but it's not that bad like it used to be when I was a kid. 

The house belongs to me so I don't push her out because she is a widow and I'm the only one who can care for her so I tend to generally forgive her after a fight although I have a lot of anger against her for how she treated my dad before he died. 

My family is very tiny, only me and my mom. My dad died when I was a teen and it's only me and my mom. 

In the dream I see a big family of many siblings, aunts and uncles and they all are trying to push me out or isolate or abandon me which feels awful. 

I suffered a lot of abandonment anxiety as a child because of constant emotional neglect from my mom. 

 

 

[Preety_India]

7 minutes ago, Benton said:

Are you lonely due to anxiety related to your family? 

Yes this is the Crux of the whole issue. I feel lonely because I never truly received family love. This often manifests in my dreams as fear and anxiety of abandonment. 

Maybe that's what the dream means? 

 

[Preety_India]

7 minutes ago, Benton said:

It’s your dream. Your meaning.

What will you do with it?

It will help me unlock my psyche and probably see how can I work on these fears 

 

[Tristan12]

The thing about your family making you stay in that building to overcome your anxiety but actually its making it worse but they won't listen gives me the impression that you feel like your family doesn't care about your emotions and is never willing to deal with them, and you feel like you have to deal with your emotions on your own, and there is no hope of getting any kind of love or support from your family when you feel a negative emotion, making you feel completely trapped and alone in your suffering.

Not sure if that resonates with you but that's what that dream makes me think.

[Osaid]

Work on your fears and relationships in the waking state, then the dreams will dissipate. The dreams are simply acting out your psychological and physiological state in the waking state, similar to how when you have a full bladder during sleep you might get a dream about having to pee.

[puporing]

I recommend a therapist if you can afford that. If not... Yeah it's a tough one coz I didn't get out of it on my own. It is hard to find a healing relationship outside of therapy relationship because therapy is about giving you the healing from a trained professional (as opposed to two way in most other relationships), and in this case a very specific kind of healing you need. 

Sorry if that's not much help but this really helped me go beyond it and I no longer have panic attacks and nightmares about my mom, it's why I keep saying. ?

Maybe there's a way to do all this through journaling and introspection/meditation. But I still feel like therapy in combination with those things made it more efficient.

Spirituality alone I found was not enough (unless you're really gifted and just able to zoom out of your whole history and the story of you), maybe if you had access to psychedelics that could work similar to therapy, but right now seems to me you need something more specific to you and your past for this.. 

Finding a good therapist was also a kind of a process in and of itself (not encouraging) but I did eventually find a Jungian psychologist who interpreted my dreams.

Edited April 12, 2022 by puporing

[Preety_India]

34 minutes ago, Tristan12 said:

The thing about your family making you stay in that building to overcome your anxiety but actually its making it worse but they won't listen gives me the impression that you feel like your family doesn't care about your emotions and is never willing to deal with them, and you feel like you have to deal with your emotions on your own, and there is no hope of getting any kind of love or support from your family when you feel a negative emotion, making you feel completely trapped and alone in your suffering.

Not sure if that resonates with you but that's what that dream makes me think.

This is how I exactly feel.