Posts from — February 2007

(Male, early thirties) This recurrent dream has changed somewhat over the years. The first time I must have been just starting high school. A ghostly old woman appeared floating outside my second story bedroom window pushing a ghostly baby carriage. She looked in the window at me and said, “I’ve come for you.”

I ran away from her and she followed, screaming at me. In this dream, it’s this chase that is repeated. She chases me through houses that I’ve never lived in, decrepit old gothic mansions, filled will scattered debris and coated in dust.

Then at some point, I turned the dream around and I fired a silver gun at the ghostly woman. Now, I’m the one who’s chasing her. All the while I’m trying to scream at her but even though I open my mouth wide and push with all my might, no sound comes out.

(Female, 80’s) I was in a small room, maybe in a dormitory or an apartment and this immense dog was there sitting on top of me. It was brown and had a droopy jowly face. It was overwhelming me, smothering me. It held me down and made it impossible for me to breathe. I was suffocating and found that I couldn’t even call for help.

When I woke, I discovered that a pillow had fallen over my face. Maybe that’s what it all was.

In nightmares, we dreamers are afraid, truly afraid. Our hearts race, sometimes our limbs thrash and we wake disturbed as if presented with the same terrifying situations in waking life.

But sometimes the fear we experience is unique to a dream state.

For instance, I have had a recurrent dream image for years, probably decades where I suffer from claustrophobia. Sometimes I’ll be forced to go into a small space or travel through a narrow corridor and I will be struck with panic. What is particularly interesting about these dreams is that in waking life, I don’t noticeably suffer from claustrophobia. Elevators, even tiny elevators pose no particular terror in everyday life but in the context of these dreams, I would be beside myself.

My initial interpretation is that claustrophobia must itself be a dream figure. For some reason, my dreaming self wants to make believe that it is afraid of small confined spaces. To use a computer metaphor, my brain is running another kind of brain in “emulation mode,” the fear that it is exhibiting is truly fearful but it also is “virtual.”

I am still processing what this kind of layered dream life might mean. Ideas?

For that matter, does anyone else experience a similar kind of “make believe” terror either occasionally or recurrently in their dreams?

(Male, early 20’s) You ask about strange fears, well, I can’t eat the ends of things. Like hot dogs, I have to chop the ends off. They just look weird. Or eggrolls. I can eat most of one, but as soon as I get through half of it, it starts to look like it’s something else, like it’s a creature that’s excreting something and I just can’t finish. And I can’t eat egg whites, only the yolks maybe because they stay warm longer.

Sometimes, if I’m eating some and I don’t totally dig it, I’ll make it into an end. By imagining it. Like with a breast of a chicken or something. I feel strange when I eat at people’s houses and they make a wonderful meal and i can’t eat the ends of things.

But I love the crusts on bread. Pizza crusts too.

(Female, 44) I had ordered contact lens in the mail and I was very excited to receive them because I haven’t worn them in years. Opening the box, I was surprised at their design: there was a clear lens with this sort of appendage that went into the corner of your eye. It looked sort of “steampunk,” sort of Jules Verne. I knew I should probably read the directions first and buy some supplies, but I was anxious to try them out. I stood in front of a mirror and just lifted one lens up near my eye, just so I could look through it and sort of imagine what it would be like to wear them.

All of a sudden, something slipped off the lens and sealed over my iris. My vision immediately went blurry in that eye and I could feel my eye drying out like the moisture was getting sucked out of it. I looked at myself in the mirror and I could see something on my eye. There was something stuck to my eye. I figured maybe that the lens had some kind coating on it to protect it during shipping.

I touched the edge of the film but it wouldn’t come off. Then I tried scraping my eyeball gently with my fingernail, but all I did was chip a little bit out of the corner of my eye, out of the white part of my eye. It felt a little bit like a bit of candy-coating coming off a chocolate. I knew that this couldn’t be good.

I stopped tugging at the film on my lens and began to look for some saline solution. I thought maybe I could float it off. All the while I could feel my eye tightening and my vision blurring more. There were lots of old friends at this meeting but I didn’t remember who wore contacts.I tried not to interrupt the meeting too much as I went around asking everyone if they had any saline solution. No one did.

Finally I found a bottle of something on the concession table and I was so desperate I squirted the liquid into my eye. Slowly, the film peeled off and I could see normally again.

(Female, a dream from childhood) I dreamt I was in the basement of my family’s house in the laundry room. There was a big pantry cupboard and a spare kitchen set up there, and I was down there with my mom, my sister who was older, and my younger brother.

…We were trapped and we were scared…

My older brother was there too, but he was being unusually mean and cruel. He knocked my younger brother down and yelled at all of us. We were trapped and we were scared. Suddenly, my older brother walked into the room. We were startled because we thought he was already there with us. Then we realized that the other older brother was a fake.

But now my real brother had to fight this fake brother to save us. He violently attacked the fake brother and wrestled him down to the tile floor right at our feet and they thrashed around in that small space until one of them beat the other one bloody and senseless while the whole family watched.