Dana's Recurring Dreams - of Staircases, Corridors, Elevators

All feedback is welcome and appreciated.

I have decided to document these dreams because they are too surreal. I dont have then nightly but very often, remembered twice in the pass week.

(Another recurring theme is of the military - not always modern or human... either I am a soldier, or I am being pursue by them. That theme is also present in this mornings dream)

Dream fact: There is a floating mass of land in Earths atmosphere, in the dream

Dream fact: this dream picked up from another dream.. a bit muddled now, but the end of which a whole people were massacred because they did not accept the world leaders laws. Prior to this massacre hundreds of families were lined up to cross some kind of border.. these families were accepting the laws and were escaping before the inevitable.

I am at a huge press conference, the president and world leaders are there (the world leaders are of one race, though I wont bother to mention which). They all take turns to explain in essense that they will be harvesting energy from cigarette smoke and car exhaust... With no regard for human health.

I am a little girl, maybe 14 years max. I remember coming to the conclusion that the floating mass is nothing more than the home continent of the world leaders. I think I was eavesdropping on the president as he exitted an elevator, my foot got stuck in the elevator and I was carried away to the basement level (off limits to me). I remember panicking, deciding to press an upper level button the moment the elevator stopped.

The door opened and there were tonnes of caged dogs in there, and soldiers. As the door was about to close again a mangey looking skinny guard dog sniffed me out and alerted the soldiers and an alarm was sounded...

Thus began my "running up stairs, in and out of elevators, along corridors" recurring theme in my dreams.. though I am rarely ever being chased (usually just going somewhere, late for flight, lost in a building).

Near the end of the dream I ditched the elevator for a staircase and remember being semiconscious, willing myself to fly, telling myself I am able to fly in my dreams. I tried but couldn't fly, but I found that I could jump. So I was jumping and climbing from rail to staircase away from the pursuer.

At the end of the dream I ran onto a quiet corridor, a sleeping soldier at the side of the elevator. he was a giant. I crept inside the elevator but he awoke right as the door was closing and I remembered being afraid he was a jumper too. Up the next level I ran out as soon as the door opened... in open air.. freefalling down a massive building (as big as a city). The giant jumped from the lower level and caught me, and we landed back onto the level I fell from. Before I woke up he was tell me that not all have lost their hearts. I also lost my dog on the basement level (though I dont remember having a dog in the dream). I woke up and thought of it as far back as I could.

This all, might relate how you feeling in real life, and you did not lose heart after it all. This might relate to some thing that happened to you recently, and how you dealt with it.

Can I ask how old you are and how recently you were living with your family?

It seems to me that the dream is talking about the "power structure" of your psyche... answering questions like "Where do you get your ideas from?" "How do you make decisions?" "How do you take action?" that kind of thing.

It seems to indicate that your mind is heavily influenced by ideas, feelings, and actions that don't feel genuine to you and that you spend a lot of your energy on trying to escape them and find some safe place.

I asked about your family because this could be something left over from your formative years or if you are living with your family now, could be your relationship with your parents etc.

Thank you for reading, for interpreting and for asking. Never saw that... never had a real permanent living situation with my mother since I was 2. 4 months maximum (summer holidays). Father died in the same year, 1991, I am 25 now. No true family situation since I have known my self. Nannies then boarding school.

Where do I get my ideas from? How do I make decisions? My value system, what influenced it? I honestly am not sure. I think books I've read have played a major role. Movies. Intuition? Do people actually know where these things come from? If so, I have some deep thinking to do. Problem is, I have almost no childhood memories. Bits and pieces... Thanks again.

It could be that the nannies and boarding school tried to a large extent to control you and prevent you from finding your true personality. The dream is exploring how you can free yourself from this structure and find a genuine self. If it's possible to work with a therapist, that could be helpful.

I dunno. If anything I have found a stubborn personality. Something to think about though.

Can you say more about the ways in which you are stubborn?

I do what I want. I live by my values, wherever they came from they werent forced onto me by anyone. Live and let live. I speak the truth, my truth, with little regard for who hears... either that or silence. all or nothing. I have a somewhat overbearing personality but such os life. Even in my silence people feel some effect coming from me. I accept it and roll with it. Not always beneficial but, so it goes.

Thanks for that explanation.

Let me explain where I'm coming from with dreams. I believe that dreams are communications from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Your conscious mind, or "ego" as psychologists call it, contains your conscious ideas about yourself, your conscious identity. Your ego consists of your conscious beliefs about how you should act, what you like or dislike, and basically who you are.

But there is more to us than the ego. There is the unconscious, which can contain perspectives almost diametrically opposed to the ego. It can contain ideas and feelings that need to be integrated into your ego for the highest degree of health.

Let me also explain my beliefs about formative years. It seems like your formative years were chaotic and inconsistent, which must have affected you deeply. My belief is that people develop defense mechanisms to survive and get through developmental stages when the necessary caretaking isn't there. For instance, you may have developed a really tough attitude of self-sufficiency because you were lacking any consistent mothering.

So now that you explain more about your personality, one possible interpretation of your dream is that these controlling leaders represent your ego which includes your defense mechanisms and your tough attitude. But some deeper part of your psyche feels that these attitudes are not genuine to yourself. Your dream is exploring how you can escape this controlling attitude.

Because the dream is coming from your unconscious, its perspective may seem unfamiliar to you. It's worth sitting with the dream for a while and seeing if anything resonates. Ultimately it is the dreamer who decides what interpretations fit.

You hit the nail on the head re: self sufficiency. Aggressively. Its my only real goal in life, like the one that is closest to core. Its a major complex of mine, and whats worse, I have this great big aversion to dependency... every single day I am battling this bitterness and even disgust toward anything thatnlooks like dependency.

Tough exterior, true, but I dontpretend that I am invulnerable. I just say it as it is, if I feel like crying I cry, if I am hurt I say it... so I dont even see it as tough. Its just me. I dont know what I'd be without this personality.

The dream interpretation I dont really understand but as you say, I have to sit with it a bit.

Why were the world leaders all asian though? That's struck me as weird.

You take valuable time and key strokes out of your day to analyze my dream. Just that is a major comfort. Thanks is not enough

If you're not Asian, then having all the world leaders be Asian makes them more remote, less connected to your life.

I'll tell you something. Before I started therapy I was very averse to taking help from anyone about emotional issues. When I did start therapy I liked how my therapist listened to me with good empathy, but I refused to take his advice. I now realize that's because I didn't want to feel dependent on him. Fortunately he understood that it was a phase I needed to pass through, and he tracked me. I eventually got through that.

I'm curious, are you in therapy or have you been?

Not asian. In my mind, not alarms ring when I think of them though...

The only time I've been to a therapist he asked who was in my corner and crying I said noone. He didnt seem to believe. was just my college's psychologist though, probably could wait to go have his lunch. don't think I'll be going to therapy again, for various reasons.

I'm sorry for that bone-headed reaction on the part of that therapist. I hope you can find what you need to heal, whatever it might be.