[whatbeanbelieved]

Posting here because although I woke up like 5 hours back, the dream is still haunting me.

The dream is set in my childhood home, where I lived from 7 to 19 - where my dad still lives at that. There were two things that seemed to be happening - one, the festival of colours (or Holi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi) was on; and two, a group of people were trying to kill/harm me. I'm not sure about this setting, but I'm fairly sure I was responding to some external threat.

My friend had run away from home and come to live with me (this is pretty much a reflection of what's happening at the moment in real life). And I think everything was pretty much fine until I snapped at her or something in the dream. I got *****y and snappy, because I felt threatened and whatnot, and she got... silent, like really silent. Then she mentioned that my ex had once asked her out - which just... I think I ended up snapping more - she got really offended that I snapped so much, and then I started crying because she decided that the one way to deal with me snapping was to shut me out and whatnot. It got messier and more vindictive - I snapped at her and I think to punish me she threatened to call my ex. At which point I threw her out of the house and she did call my ex and he came and picked her up, through this whole process I was crying and telling her that's not what friends do, and how could she do this to me and what not.

I CANNOT get this out of my head. It's not helping that she is here, living with me, in my room. Am I just needing some space? >_< Help.

[medkev13]

It's haunting you because the person in the dream is there in real life. Kind of a which came first, the chicken or the egg, scenario.

On one level, Freud sees dreams as an expression of either desires or fears. So this could on the surface simply be you facing a fear of conflict between you and your friend.

On a deeper level, everyone in the dream is a projection of yourself. Your friend is a personification of traits you feel you and her share, if only subconsciously. When you see her and you fighting, you effectively are also fighting with yourself. Then your ex gets involved. I have to ask - the traits you see in your friend in the dream, did you express these traits in yourself when you were with your ex? Perhaps this is you facing an old part of yourself that's been put away and repressed since the breakup? Just throwing a guess out there.

I'm not sure how much the festival means or the people hunting for you, alothough it may be the mixing of emotions with you and your friend - joy in that this person is living WITH you, but conflict over things because this person is LIVING with you. See where I'm going with that?

[whatbeanbelieved]

Thanks again medkev... I have to confess, I did post hoping you'd interpret this one for me. >>;;

The traits my friend inhabited... helplessness, a certain unwillingness/inability to help herself, a sort of desire to be noticed (attention seeking after a point), vindictiveness when that desire isn't met... I'd say I definitely did these things too. On the other hand, the bit where in the dream it felt like she was "punishing me" because of my snapping by shutting me out, being silent, doing things I didn't want -- I think I connect that with my ex a LOT more.

And I think I do see the conflict there -- between the joy and the anguish of those two things. I'm disturbed also because there have been dreams before in which I have screamed at her to the point that she hung herself (major mess in my mind over that) and others in which we've fought to the point that when I woke in the morning my throat was hurting. I love her and I care for her; she's my oldest friend and I really am glad she could come and stay without thinking over it too much. Conversely this also made it difficult to say, today, that I need some space... so really, I'm distressed. But what you're suggesting is that these are traits that exist in me, to an extent?

[medkev13]

First, don't get too distressed. Remember, according to Freud dreams that express fears are done so that we do NOT have to deal with their negative consequences in the waking world. In the dream you scream and snap at your friend, because you don't wan't to do it in real life. If you choose to talk to this person in the waking world, you have the freedom to speak gently with the knowledge that your subconscious has already released the stress pent up behind whatever issues you may hold.

I'm suggesting in the part about you that having her living with you is allowing you to see traits within you that you might not have seen before. As I said, every person in your dream is an expression of you. There are NO exceptions in that rule. It has to do with projection in how we perceive the world - we react negatively to some people because we see traits in others that we dislike within our-self, and we react well because we see in the other person traits we praise within our-self. You saw your friend in the dream. That means there is something you see in her that you also see in yourself. That you want space causes this internal distress where your subconscious holds the connection between these traits in you and seeing your friend and it asks "If you want space from your friend, you must also want space from this part of yourself." (( The subconscious is big on generalizing things.))

[whatbeanbelieved]

Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

Today's messed up dream had me missing my exam because I was spending time at my ex's while he wasn't actually around, waiting for him and panicking about ... everything BUT the exam. So I'm wondering, just to clarify if I've got this right, if that part of him -- the part that isn't around, in the dream -- is also something I'd be seeing as a part of me? And ... how do I then make sense of that?

[medkev13]

You simply ask yourself "What traits in him did I see as strong? Did I have them in myself? DO I want them in myself now?" This is basically building up your character from what you share(d) with him.

The other thing to consider is :: "What positive traits did I have when I was with my ex? What of those have changed since we broke up? How can I create these traits within me again?"