posted March 24, 2008 07:03 PM         

Sometimes they can be a bit frustrating, too. Like once I dreamt I was back in high school, and I kept trying to leave, but every time I opened the door to outside, I ended up walking into another classroom. It got so bad that I took off my shirt in front of my principal just so he'd expelled me (he just ignored me).

I see no point to these dreams. Especially when I have them several times in a row. They're actually starting to mess with my sleep as if they were nightmares, just because they're so depressing upon waking up that I don't want to dream anymore, so I refuse to go back to sleep. A couple of nights, fine, but this is getting to be a bit much. I'm happy because I focus on the positive and not the negative (though not to the point I endanger myself by ignoring the negative, and by acknowledging it a LITTLE, as opposed to ruminating over it, it helps me to value the good), and this is making it hard for me.

IDK if it's relevant, but I'm reading a book I first read when I was 16...is that the reason why? It's not like that book shows up at all in my dreams, nor does the book make me consciously think of life back then, either.

So I was wondering...how long did many of you have dreams where you're a teen again? I'm 25 now, how many more years need to pass before such dreams become ultra rare?

posted March 24, 2008 10:47 PM         

These dreams are not meaningless or sheer annoyances, repetitive dreams are indications of karmic manifestations. Pay close attention to them.

Taking your shirt off in front of the principal indicates a time when you felt vulnerable and powerless, exposed, weak to someoen who had power over you, who could confine you and do whatever they wished to you.

Going out of the school indicates you feeling trapped, spinning your wheels, is your life not moving forward how you want right now?

The book could trigger events that occure at age 16 to occur in your dream, but more likely your psyche is seeking integration.

Whatever traumatic events that are surfacing in your dreams, are still a guiding factor in your current life, and your dreams are seeking union....the dark repressed is dangerous, the dark brought into the light deepens understanding and clarity. Do not try to repress or avoid these dreams, but reflect on them. Write down how you felt and compare them to how you may have felt in the past, and how you feel now. What is similar, what is different?

Just because something happened at 16 doesn't mean it isn't still present. Time is not linear and events in the past can effect us strongly. Events in the future effect the present strongly as well, which sounds bizarre but I believe to be true. Seek integration. Seek union. Once the integration your subconscious is seeking occurs, the dreams will cease and change.

School is a common representation of anxiety. High school for many people is a painful time of growing, changing, and feeling like they don't belong. Does the situation of being a high school student stimulate anything you are going through now?

Also the presence of the principal could indicate a power immobile force in your life now to whom you feel vulnerable or exposed.

I guess what I'm wondering is if these dreams are a reflection of your current situation, the past, or are they both intimately related?

posted March 27, 2008 05:57 AM         

First...

The other night was better. At least I was 17-18 there (and no longer living at home). And while I may look back on those days and cringe a little, they also make me smile, sometimes even laugh. They were very interesting times (in the GOOD way). At least, it was never boring (even when it got really bad or trying).

And beautiful countryside, too. I'd forgotten how beautiful, but I walked through it again.

And last night was completely normal...well, for me. As an example, my home and surrounding area got turned into a live safari zoo, and I'd posted a sign about being careful, and that if anyone got killed, I was sending in the details to the Darwin Awards, no exceptions. Buffy guest starred in it later, too (I even became her for a short while).

Second...

The school dream was a couple of years ago or so...and right after the night I became a goddess, too. If I had more energy (ie, had I waited until tomorrow to respond), I'd look it up in my dream journal to try to recall what was going on in my life then (and the date)--besides, even if I dug out that old journal, I might wake my roomie. But as it is, all I can do is shrug. But kinda strange to have a dream of helplessness after having a dream of being a goddess...

To reflect on the traumatic things that happened makes me angry and upset and sad. I can't even talk about one in particular in detail without sweating, shaking, and crying. I can go into rage fits. At the time, I gave serious thought of becoming a vigilante and tracking down people responsible (as best I could, since circumstances would've made that difficult) and done vigilante justice on them. Not only to satisfy my own rage, but also to protect others from being harmed, since the law was going to protect them.

When I was 18, I had a dream that one of the main people came to me and fed off my hatred for him. I'm too tired to give the details of it. But I felt it was a milestone to overcoming my hatred of it, and its power over me. Nevertheless, it can be a downer, and it's best for me to not dwell on it. Understand, I don't block it out. As I said in my OP, I keep it mind to help avoid such a sitch happening again. Also, to appreciate what I have now in contrast.

sitch = situation.

The other is the killing of my best friend by a pimp who were trying to break her in. I can still get really sad over that. I learned in that to fight, because they'd tried grabbing me first, but I resisted. She didn't, and died a horrid, agonizing death for her passivity and faith in goodness triumphing over evil.

Perhaps the most poignant moment was when I came back home from being a runaway, shortly after turning 16 (I'd runaway with my best friend, and she was dead by now). Mom never asked me what happened. I was gone for 6 months and she never reported me gone for fear of losing her child support that she spent on her addictions. My birthday had passed, and Dad never realized that I was gone. And now my best friend was dead. Who was there to care deeply for me? No one. Not even my own mom could find it in her to care, so why expect anyone else to? That's why it's so poignant to me.

In school, an insane counselor made me take a bunch of tests and then placed me in a behavior class program (ABC). I made new friends there, though nothing so intimate as to replace the close bond I'd had with the one who was dead. And in order to eat regularly, I had to take some of the brandy and such that Mom got with the child support and steal it (which I reasoned was mine since she got it with the money for me) and give it to others in exchange for goodwill and being able to stay at their homes at the end of the month when food and addictives got low, and Mom got really bad. Also, Mom did that in spite that I was under doctor's orders to gain weight as I had delayed puberty because my body didn't have enough fat to go into puberty (I'm too tired to recall what the doc said exactly on that). And being a 16-year-old that was still a little girl did NOT get me treated well at school. I'm glad I was in ABC for that reason as it kept me out of the locker room.

After Columbine went down, the school was determined to have me locked back up in that same place that traumatized me the first time by the time school was out. They tried getting Mom to do it, but I said, "I bet Dad wouldn't make me go," which made Mom come out on my side (as if I moved in with Dad, she lost child support, and thus her brandy and Virginia Slims). But more importantly, it again made me realize how I only had myself to depend on.

Granny, too, but the courts made sure that wasn't an option. Mom wanted child support, so she wanted me, and I had to leave Granny. My so-called "court advocate" tried to make me think I wanted to move in with Mom, but after I was adamant, I was told Granny wasn't a choice. It was Mom or Dad. I almost chose Dad just to spite her (court advocate), but then Dad had some 19-year-old move into his home, and that creeped me out too much. Thing was, I feared that to go to Granny's would've gotten the cops to drag me back, so that left me alone, especially after my best friend died. The world was a hostile place, too. (Also, when fighting over me--ie, child support--Mom and Dad both brought up that horrid place that traumatized me, and they knew it given the shrieking nightmares I had after coming out among other things, just to accuse the other of having sent me, despite that I recalled they were both in agreement I should go--which made it convenient for them to begin their divorce while I was there, as I was shocked to come out to find Mom had a restraining order against Dad, and not long after, Dad tried to kill Mom by destroying the brakes to his car that she'd won, which incidentally almost killed me, too. Not that the cops did anything about THAT. That would be something useful. Overall, the system sucks, the cops suck, the courts suck. People can argue over who suffers more in a divorce, the mom or dad, but the answer is the children. Not that Mom or Dad either one knows that, they just know how to fake concern so they can their benefits/get out of paying benefits.)

Which was repeated all my life to some extent or another. To go back to the beginning, I was taken from Granny at almost 5 when Mom and Dad moved and Mom and Granny had gotten into some sort of fight (which is why Mom took me). They were both alcoholics and dysfunctional and weren't prepared to deal with a child. After they both slept in hungover and I tried to wake them up to feed me, Dad knocked me across the room, and as I cried, he asked with contempt, "Why are you so whiney?" (Probably a good thing I didn't think to say, "Because I'm 5, [expetive]!") So the next time it happened, I went into the kitchen and thought about it. I used a chair, along with spatula and wooden spoon to get a box of Cheerios out of the cabinet, and a bowl (that I just used my hands for). The rest was easy. And as I ate my own cereal, such a feeling of accomplishment overcame me, that I did it myself. Since then, I've learned over and over that for the most part, I can take care of myself, but I had to be wary of the world around me. In short, I could only depend on me.

And while living at home at 16, the time of my dream, I was pretty much alone despite people being around me, that was made very clear. It's why I consider it a dreary time for the most part. It was just sad. School sucked, yes, but until they got all hysterical over Columbine, they weren't particularly bad. They were just one more manifestation of government that eventually drove me to think anarchism would be way better.

This is what I was reliving in my dreams, and do from time to time. I don't mind a single night of it, but I hate doing it many nights in a row.

I don't regret ultimately running away just before school shut down for summer that year. It was the best decision I ever made. I wouldn't return home until I was almost 22, and then I just talked to Mom and Dad briefly each, and I had confirmation that I did the best thing. Once again, the lesson was, those in authority were callous at best, malicious at worst, and the only one I could depend on is myself. By following my heart and defying the courts, I found happiness and personal fulfillment.

My life now isn't anything like that sad time in my life. So I can't see how it would relate to anything in that time that I dreamt about.

There's no real point in looking back, other than to learn from it. To endlessly ruminate on it is to drag that dreariness into this life now. No matter how much I'd like to renew connections with Mom & Dad, there's nothing there to be had, and they don't want a connection with me. That well is dry. I can ruminate on that and become bitter, or I can move on and deal.

It's like this guy who is blind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpBm4KoWsrY

Some just obsess over their disability & misfortune and let it define them and pull them into bitterness. And others move on. Yes, Ben Underwood has it rough. But look at what he's done. That's amazing.

I don't mean to compare myself to him, only that the choice I see (no pun intended there, just as I'm sure there was no pun intended putting Xavier--in a wheelchair--in a movie called The Last Stand) is to dwell on, and become bitter, about things in my past, or do what Ben did and move on. IMO, his is an example many people should follow to the best of their ability. I'm certainly trying.

I might put it in the dreams section, but I'm not really interested in what it means so much as to make it stop when it happens, because what's the point of knowing I've had some tough breaks?

Gods, I'm so tired. Why did you need this NOW? Why the rush? Why couldn't you give me a few days to answer when I could think more clearly and not feel so drained in responding?

At least this should be long enough for you. If I'd waited, I'd surely condense this, and probably be more clear with my thoughts.

posted March 27, 2008 01:05 PM         

I admire your forthrightness and the fact that you have not pushed all of this very difficult stuff into the realm of your subconscious. Be that as it may, the reason for the dreams is probably due to unresolved emotional business.

I can't believe how strong you are. I think I would have lost my mind. I respect you more now than ever before. It may help to have a look at the EFT string in the Health and Healing forum.