For a while I have been paying attention to the recurring symbols in my dreams.
Recent interpretation has indicated to me how much they revolve around transition, confinement, hiding, and being trapped.
Common themes all suggest to me my feeling of needing to hide my true self from others, the problems I experience in relating to others, of always being on edge in case something terrible should come out.
My concern is, if I don’t break through this, I will be stuck with these same dream images forever. Even if I begin to utilise certain practice, perhaps to experience the hypnagogic state for example, will I ever get past the symbols of confinement? What if I am missing out on so much because I have yet managed to break out of my shell?
Using Jungian concepts more and more to try and understand why my dreams are stuck on these images and whether there might (might!) be a change coming. I’m evening considering entering Jungian Analysis. I think it would be fascinating. I am unsure at this point as I feel like I just need to be held and secure. Analysis might be too confronting at this stage, I don’t know.
My animus appears to me often, usually as one person, someone I know in real life. Currently he is S, who is tall, dark and handsome, as well as reserved, aloof, inaccessible. In my dreams I long to be close to him.
In the last week I have seen my animus in different forms – one man I know of (H) but not personally, and one man I did not recognise from waking life (W). For other men to appear is unusual as S has dominated for a year or more now, appearing most nights.
H is an intellectual, someone with whom I would love to have a discussion if I only believed I might have anything to contribute, and the ability to deliver it. Like S, he is tall, dark, handsome, and inaccessible in his intellect and the fact I don’t know him personally. Only W offered closeness but I was apprehensive as didn’t know him that well.
According to Jung the Animus has multiplicity and represents masculine aspects of the psyche that are trying to integrate. I am encouraged by this multiplicity. It could be signifying a change.
One thing from a recent dream is particularly intriguing.
Dream 16th July 2024
Going out for a work do, getting changed in front of two people I don’t know – one man, one woman. The feeling is friendly and I don’t know much else about them. I try on a white dress that turns out to be lingerie. Embarrassed, I try another and another but I’m running out of time. I go for a green dress. I use the bathroom before going out but there is menstrual blood on the toilet rim and in the sink. I am afraid people will think it’s mine.
We get on a minibus to the pub. S is there along with a lady from work (another regular feature, one I am not ready to look at yet). She asks me if I can name characters from the Twelfth Night, and what I think about The X Files as a show. I don’t know much about Twelfth Night so I focus on The X Files and how I admired Dana Scully growing up. She and S don’t pay any attention. They don’t seem to care.
Off the mini bus and into the pub, which has three bar areas. I want a G&T but no one is serving me. I get annoyed at the bar staff, try a different bar. The staff all stop serving to change barrels and optics and to deal with leaks down the wall. I have been there 45 mins and yet to be served. I begin to shout at them that I have been there an hour while thinking it’s more like 45 mins.
Symbols and meaning:
Bathrooms – ‘come clean’, ‘release’ something, face the truth, transition.
Menstrual blood – creating, loss, renewal, letting go, transition.
Pub – a place to relax, alcohol helps to be myself.
Brief interpretation: I need to let something go but I can’t, the bathroom already a mess so I can’t use it. And I can’t get a drink at the bar. Other people can let go and express themselves, why can’t I? I result to shouting, I am angry.
What’s intriguing is the Twelfth Night refence. The day before the dream I would not have been able to tell you the plot or characters of this play, a play about a woman pretending to be a man, its themes of sexuality, gender and attraction, at a time when I am exploring the Animus in my dreams and experiencing recurring symbols of transition and hiding, love, longing and acceptance. Knowledge of the play must have been in my mind somewhere, but I find it fascinating that it popped up like that in my dream, and so clearly. The X Files reference is easier to explain – I recall seeing something about it online the evening before.
I wish I had more time for exploration. My dreams come thick and fast, it is difficult to keep up and find the time!
I began to pay increased attention a few weeks ago when declaring myself an artist with a day job. I wanted to access dreams as material for painting inspiration. I’m concerned that my symbols have changed very little over the last few years, which is why I am excited by the appearance my Animus in different forms.
I am worried that I am stuck and these images might change only I could unstick myself. I can’t help but think I am missing out on richer images and a broader landscape if only I could get out of my default feelings of isolation and self- hate and insecurity, something indicated in a recent dream:
Dream 15th July 2024
W was with me under the covers of H’s bed. I remember the closeness as well as envy that he was talking to S and I wasn’t. On surfacing from the bed I kissed W, expecting him to pull away. But he reciprocated. Next we were looking out the window into an expanse of hills and wilderness. He wrapped his arms around me and told me he was going to take me on an adventure for a couple of days. I was excited but nervous, almost wanting to ask him his credentials for taking me into the wilderness and keeping me safe. Would we get lost? There were woods to the left of the window and he said he didn’t like that area, that it was creepy and dangerous. There was a moment where he teased me when I asked about campsites we would stay at and he said that campsites weren’t allowed.
Next, I am outside with W and others, heading for a funfair. It’s a sunny warm day and I’m wearing a t-shirt. Suddenly I am preoccupied with where my hoodie is – where did I leave it? I can’t relax so I head back to the hotel just to check where it is. I head towards the stairs and run into someone from work. She’s heading to the lift and I decide to follow. The lift is the size of a small cupboard, very old. As the door slowly closes I regret my decision to use the lift and I’m afraid. We should be moving up but I don’t feel anything.
I was out in the sun, heading for a funfair, and I ended in an old lift to check on a hoodie I didn’t need.
Brief interpretation: continuing to go back for the baggage and unavailable will keep me stuck. There’s a landscape out there I want to see. Perhaps I need help to go there.
I nearly didn’t write any of this as I was laid low for a couple of hours due due to the flare up of ‘I am terrible and people hate me’ feelings. I felt I would never move again, that I could never focus again. Fuck those feelings! My time is my own and who are those people anyway? Imagine this material going unexamined because of such a thing. I could be missing out on so much in my dreams as well as in waking life.
Being around people is always so painful for me. Being without them is terribly lonely. And I’m getting tired of S and the lady from the minibus featuring so regularly in my dreams.
