I've had the same disturbing, recurring dream for fifteen years.

[Ladyhawk]

It varies as different things happen in my life, but it's basically the same goddamn dream. I can't get rid of it.

I just woke up from a nap and I can't stop crying because that damn dream won't leave me alone.

[undergroundpanther]

1. what is the dream?

Sometimes dreams that repeat are telling you something.
I'd be willing to give it a thought. People have asked me before to pick at thier dreams and they say it helps.

[Ladyhawk]

2. My recurring dream...

Usually I'm back in school--not a college, but the small fundy school that I attended from 2nd grade through high school. Strangely, the teachers are usually professors I had in college, some of which were close friends at the time.

Often, I run across my old choir director, but he won't say anything to me because I won't come back to Jesus. In many of the dreams, he's physically unrecognizable. For many years, the dream was always that he had shaved off his beard.

Obviously, the lesson is he's changed so much internally that he's unrecognizable externally--and I can never, ever go back. Yet I continue to dream about him over and over and over.

In real life, my old choir director basically told me he never wanted to see me again. We went our separate ways, but I've dreamed about him at least once a week for over ten years.

Sometimes I dream about my current choral director, but the feelings are the same: I am not accepted as I am. In order to be accepted by my family and the majority of folk in this mostly red county you have to be a fundy Christian who loves Bush. If you're a woman, you'd better have kids (I don't) and if you don't have kids, you'd better have tons of money (I don't).

America is purple, like a bruise. I feel too wounded to find friends I can love and who could love me. Is everyone else as wounded as I am?

Usually in my dreams, there is this overwhelming sense of work left undone. I've been out of school for many years--except for some individual classes--yet there's always this horrible sensation of being behind...I'll never get finished in time...I won't get an A.

I know in my heart that I chose the wrong major and that I still have work to do...but I have no clue what it is. At this point, I may never be able to contribute to society in some meaningful way and it haunts me nightly. (If the shrub cuts disability, I'll die or be under the thumb of my family forever.)

Then I dream of family. I dream of being able to sit in my mom's living room and be accepted for who I am. When I wake up, I realize this is impossible, that I am totally emotionally alone in life and that things will never change. I can't change others and it's becoming more and more difficult to change myself enough to find my own way through this crazy world.

I sometimes dream of my father who died several years ago. In my dreams, he never speaks. He just stands there. In one dream he started strangling me because I dared voice the thought, "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

I dream of old friends who said, "Don't come back until you trust Jesus to solve your problems." I could never go back because I decided fundamentalism is not for me. They were the last "friends" I ever had, friends I had known since grade school, people to just "hang around with" and have fun. I haven't had someone to just "hang around with" for 15 years. I've been alone for 15 years, having these recurring dreams about a time that can never come again. I was deeply betrayed, yet I keep hoping that I can find someone else who will be my friend. No matter how hard I look it doesn't happen. I want to love and be loved, but the harder I look, the more convinced I become that Homo sapiens is not to be trusted.

My family are untrustworthy and I lost all my friends when I dared to question their religion. Nothing has come along to take the place of feeling accepted and loved. I am no longer accepted and loved, but I can't go back. It's impossible. I can't find anyone who accepts me the way I am NOW. I've tried hard to reach out, but I either come across someone who isn't willing to be a friend, or worse, someone who hasn't figured out that someone the size of Jesus won't fit down my throat.

For several months, I've been waking up feeling displaced. I don't know where "home" is in my dreams, but it certainly isn't this one-bedroom apartment. Last night, it was a simple cottage in the woods.

In rejecting fundamentalism and extreme right-wing politics, I've created a hermitage for myself. My family and friends rejected me and most of the new people I meet also reject me for the same reasons my family and "friends" did. I've tried to find people who don't think like my parents and ex-friends, but they haven't accepted me, either.

The only thing that feels good is being in nature AWAY from Homo sapiens. The truth is, I like nature and animals better than I like people. People aren't reliable. Neither is nature, but at least it makes no pretense of being something it isn't.

I am utterly alone. Simply acknowledging that fact nearly drives me mad. Letting my family back into my life has been excruciating because I know they don't accept me for who I am. I can't even accept them anymore...they really have bought into this theofascist agenda. It hurts like hell to love my mother the fascist, but I do. I also hate her and it's ripping me apart. It was easier emotionally to just be alone. At least then I had no unrealistic dreams that she would miraculously change.

Yesterday I expressed a worry to my mother that the surgery isn't going to work and that I'll end up crippled for the rest of my life. She wouldn't even acknowledge that worry. I mentioned it several times, including some of the strange symptoms I've been experiencing. She won't listen to my needs. I should have known better than to try.

I'm tired of feeling so alone. People weren't meant to live this way, yet I don't trust people, can't let them in lest they hurt me the way I've been hurt so many times before. Oh, yes, I've tried to let folks in and I ALWAYS get hurt. Either they reject me or try to convert me. Isn't there a place I could go where the bruise is more blue than red? Isn't there a country where 50% of the populace don't think like fascists?

I'm sick of the whole thing...sick of the goddamn dreams, sick of waking up in the morning so depressed I want to just fling myself in front of the nearest truck...sick of existing in this trapped emotional state.

[Ladyhawk]

3. No one wants to touch my dream, huh?

Now you know how I feel every night.

[Lorien]

7. I had a very similar dream for over a decade

it started off when I'm in college, but I find out that a class that I thought I had dropped was not removed from my schedule, and I'm horribly behind on my papers. Then I find that I've missed several other deadlines for papers in several other classes (it's always the same classes, too-sociology, psychology, philosophy...I went to an art college, but I took many of these classes for the 5 1/2 years I was in school). The whole thing is spinning out of control. Then I'm at Disney, in the feature animation department. There's ten times as many employees as before, and I have about 20 working under me-but I'm only given the title of breakdown artist (not Character Key-my title for most of my career there). I have huge scenes to complete and they are progressing well, but the studio brass keeps saying that I'm overdoing it-that I'm working beyond what was asked of me. If I don't work as I do and keep my artists organized, I'll miss the deadlines for my scenes, but if I keep working as I am, the brass will fire me.....then my mom and sister always come into the scene, planning vacations together and complementing one another, but always ignoring me. That was pretty much my childhood; my mom went so far as to refer to me as "that retarded ape" when she was alone with my sister. My mom and I have a better relationship now, but I have no relationship with my sister. She and my mother have both become fundies, and well, you know how that goes.

Yes, I think that moving to a better area would help a lot. I find much of California culture to be toxic-there are too many temporary and superficial relationships there. People are disposable, as they are here, in much of the South. There ARE places like much of Vermont, Asheville, NC, Boston, Yellow Springs, OH, and other communities-both large and small-across America where people like us can feel more at home. I'm planning on moving to one of them soon. You can do a search at www.findyourspot.com for list of areas that might suit you.

I've also felt much less "bruised" since I started using the Alpha-stim (as mentioned in the other thread). It's been nearly a month since I posted about it and I still feel pretty much "cured" of my depression.I hope that you can find a doctor in your area who will give you a free trail. :hug:

[Maraya1969]

9. Wait - I'll touch it!

I think it is pretty obvious, (and I did not read the whole thing) that you are feeling guilty and rejected by people who feel THREATENED by your courageous choice to decide for yourself what your religion or lack of is going to be. (wow check out my post - "does anyone have a problem pissing people off?)

You are a strong person but it seems as if the people around you can't accept it. I'd say find different friends - people more like you. I'm having the same problem right now but I do know that the Unitarian Universalist Church is open to everyone, including atheists. They are mostly a humanitarian organization.

Your family sounds pretty dysfunctional and you are the one getting out. And the ones getting out are the ones that are tortured by the others.

My brother never even asks me how I am doing. His family won't stay at my mother's house because she has not married her boyfriend, (he is 76 and she is 72 and she does not want to marry him because of financial reasons). My brother, (a Presbyterian minister) has basically rejected me for years since I stopped being a born again Christian. But I finally come to the conclusion that HE is the ass. He is the one that is so rigid and judgmental. I would never want to be like him. But I used to feel so guilty because I was not like him.

I don't know what your religion is but for me it is more Eastern Buddhist type and I study the Course in Miracles. I'm only saying this because they way I got over bad dreams is to listen to a positive tape at night before I go to sleep. Actually it doesn't even have to be spiritual, there are plenty of good tapes out there to help with your self-esteem, feeling safe, all sorts of things. I'll look for you.

Anyway I have found that if I don't want to have bad dreams I have to go to sleep with a positive thought in my head so that is why I listen to the tapes.

And even though I shouldn't give you advise I will. I would write out affirmations - like, "I am a good person" "I love myself" "I have a right to be in this world" and repeat them several times a day. I've read research that if you do this for 3 weeks you can change the way your thoughts go.

Also, Recovery Inc. - they have a website has the greatest technique - It is called endorsing yourself. Especially if you are feeling real low you are supposed to endorse yourself, (give yourself a pat on the back) for everything you do. Even getting out of bed when you don't feel like it or brushing your teeth or not screaming at someone who pisses you off. It really does work to make you feel better about yourself.

God I should listen to my own advise!

[EFerrari]

4. Ladyhawk, your dream feels powerful and scary to me.

And I'm no dream interpretor, so I'll just tell you what it made me think.

I've struggled for a good deal of my life trying to feel place, located, where I'm supposed to be and doing what I "should" be doing. (You can hear the Vatican in that sentence, lol!)

Two things, I guess. One, I love what I do now and it took this really strange, crooked and unbelievable path to get here. I couldn't draw a map. But I only got here because things got so bad, so life threateningly bad, that I just had to stand up for myself because the other options were not good.

Second, you know who your family is? Your family are the people who are in your corner. You can't chose your mother or your blood kin. You can't chose your neighbors always or the community you live in. But, you can chose to love and be loved by people who have your back. Like we do.

I had to disconnect from my family and friends for a few years when they didn't get what Doug and I were moving through. I thought that, all by itself, would just pulverize my heart. But, I just did every day, and when Doug was well enough, he tried to do every day with me. And out of the sheer naked honesty of that situation, I found out something that has been invaluable to me.

I'm the world's expert on who I am and what I need. I get to make my own choices. If people can be deal with that, cool. If not, that's fine, too.

I don't know if this makes any sense at all. But somehow, that whole, "I want to be approved of" thing just fell away from me like layers of skin cells.

And now, the special bonus, many of those people that I just cut loose with love or without love, are wandering back and checking in. Go figure.

:grouphug:

[undergroundpanther]

5. I don'yt know what to make of it

Except on one level your family is dying to you.

It's like they are not seeing you anymore.. like you are dead to them.. and this kind of rejection hurts when you get it. It hurts so bad when it's from loved ones it gets put into the unconsious where it kicks up pain everytime you begin to relax,Maybe you want them dead too.

I didn't know what to say to your dream without being there to support you.I wish I could talk in person I'd feel safer talking about it buyt you are on the other coast...I wanted to be straightforward but I know what I might say might be off or it may be painful to hear.Sometimes the limits of the net really interfere.

[mopinko]

6. have you ever had a sleep study?

sleep and mood- like hand and glove.

[Princess Turandot]

8. I had one for years..it occurred so often that it feels like a real memory

not a dream.

In it, I am in a green room. There is a table in an alcove of sorts in the room, and under the table there is a locked trunk.

I know that there is a dead person in the trunk, someone whom I stabbed to death. I do not know who the person is. I worry about being caught.

I have not had this particular dream in several years but wonder what would happen if I ever took a lie detector test and was asked if I ever killed anyone. It seems so real.

[Maraya1969]

11. Forget about the dream a minute and ask yourself these questions

1. What does the color green mean to you?

2. What do you think of when you visualize a table in an alcove?

3. What does a locked trunk mean to you?

4. What would it mean to you if you killed someone?

5. What do you usually put underneath a table?

I heard a woman explain how to interpret dreams and this is how she said to do it. Take everything out of the dream and find out what it means to you in everyday life. I've done this and most times I can figure out what the dream means.

[Maraya1969]

10. Here's an affirmation I just found

and I learned how to post pictures so I'm posting it! It is from luise(?) Hay's website - she is great.