Trying to figure out my childhood nightmares *Warning: gruesome imagery*

Hafy

New member
Hello! I'm new to this forum. Throughout my childhood I had numerous strange experiences regarding my dreams, some more sinister than others. I've tried to make sense of them, but to no avail. I hope someone can make sense of this.


Anyway here is one of my recurring childhood nightmares that I find myself coming back to occasionally and that I really want to understand and let go. It goes like this:

-Scene description-
I see a room, not physically present in there. I am just an invisible, immaterial spectator floating around at will.
In this room there are a door, a window and a bed with a person sleeping in it.
The room itself is brightly lit white.
First strange thing I notice in the dream is that the glass of the window is somehow non transparent or soapy. I can barely see silhouettes of buildings, roads, people walking down the street and in fact I hear the sounds of a busy city (mainly car horns).
Then I shift to the bed. Its a large dark oak bed with an unknown guy sleeping in it. He is fully covered by a thick blue blanket.

-Action-
The guy is not moving, fully knocked out. He starts to move his head, mumble or groan a bit. He progressively gets more uncomfortable. Movement increases and I start to notice something. Stains start to appear on the blanket where his arms would be. I think to myself "Is that blood?" and then a severed finger falls from under the blanket and onto the white floor. It spirals from there. In span of what felt like 4 hours his fingers, arms, legs are slowly cut away by an unknown force. All the while he is whaling in pain powerless, unable to wake up as he is cut apart piece by piece underneath the sickly blue blanket. The fibers of that blanket rub against his wounds and exposed flesh, soaking in blood and tangling him. Closer to the end of this he is no longer whaling but screaming his lungs out, still asleep. His screaming is futile as it is drowned out by city noises from the window. All that is left is a torso with a head. The head is cut off. Screaming ends. I wake up.

P.S.
Seen this every night when I was in first grade. I've had more strange dreams I want to share and understand but, I'll start with this one and see how it does.
P.P.S.
Not a native speaker, word misuse is possible.
 
Hi Hafy, Dreams are often in the here and now and they simply reflect our thoughts about the day that has just gone or the day ahead. The part of your dream that really stands out is the "invisible, immaterial spectator". So this dream could be linked to thoughts such as "I keep witnessing some really gruesome things at school. I sense something really bad is going on". Blood is often symbolic of emotional pains so you are probably witnessing emotional pains of people as they have to suffer being bullied and harassed by other children. Was there someone in particular who was suffering emotional turmoil? Were you witnessing someone who was suffering in silence in the first grade?

Try this page Blood in dreams
 
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Hafy

New member
Hi Hafy, Dreams are often in the here and now and they simply reflect our thoughts about the day that has just gone or the day ahead. The part of your dream that really stands out is the "invisible, immaterial spectator". So this dream could be linked to thoughts such as "I keep witnessing some really gruesome things at school. I sense something really bad is going on". Blood is often symbolic of emotional pains so you are probably witnessing emotional pains of people as they have to suffer being bullied and harassed by other children. Was there someone in particular who was suffering emotional turmoil? Were you witnessing someone who was suffering in silence in the first grade?

Try this page Blood in dreams
Thank you for your reply! I've read the page and given it some thought. I'd say that the dream had to do with the fact that I was rather sensitive and perceptive as a child. Seen some harsh truths about live surrounding me (the kind that a kid normally should not) at that time I couldn't articulate or voice my concern so I just stuffed it in, hence the recurring nightmare.
 

Lyn Holley

Active member
There's a real sense of powerlessness in the dream. Harm is being done to you (you are all characters in a dream) and you are harmless to stop it. On the surface at least, this dream represents real trauma. I wonder if you have ever explored this in therapy?
 

Hafy

New member
There's a real sense of powerlessness in the dream. Harm is being done to you (you are all characters in a dream) and you are harmless to stop it. On the surface at least, this dream represents real trauma. I wonder if you have ever explored this in therapy?
Thank you for your reply. Therapy is not something that is available to me, but at that point in time when I had the dream described above I started to self reflect and explore. I guess its like self-therapy. I wasn't able to point down the source of disturbance, but made peace with it none the less. I will make another post describing a different series of nightmares that may hold more answers.
 

Al1ce

Member
The first thing that came to me is that you feel disconnected from yourself, referred to the falling limbs, secondly the murky window obscured your vision, you tried to look outside of yourself but the main focus was the inner, your subconscious is drawing you to look inwards for the answers, there is nothing outside, what you are looking for is within you, an inner journey of self discover is in need to repair the parts that have been neglected. I don’t know much about you but if you are determined you can go through a process of self psychology through an inner spiritual journey, but I do agree with the others, therapy is the first call.
 
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Lyn Holley

Active member
Seeing what a child should not see and being powerless to stop it or change it. Maybe a sort of cumulative trauma. These things really hurt you; you were sensitive and they hurt so much that it felt you were being torn to pieces. At the same time, you felt invisible, perhaps not nurtured. Or really seen.
 
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