reoccuring tornados dream

[ktie]

This is really bothering me because i keep having dreams about tornadoes coming for me. I have literally had 6 or 7 of these dreams in the last month. It's never the same dream but it is always the same theme. It's always about me trying to convince people that there are tornadoes about to hit us, nobody believes it at first & i have to convince them. Here where i live, we don't get tornadoes, however, we had 2 minor ones recently which was bizarre to say the least, but was far from where we stay. I haven't been worrying about getting a tornado because it is just so unlikely here.

So the first part is always convincing people they are coming, then i show them what i see, the giant whirlwind tornadoes heading for us, then panick. The next part of the dream is making sure everyone i care about is at home or with me, my family. Then the last part of the dream is trying to find shelter in my home or whatever building i am in (usually my home) from the tornado & getting my family together there. I am always trying to figure out where would be the safest place to be when it hits. Generally my dreams end with seeking shelter or waiting for it in the shelter, i had one or two where it hit, but i generally wake up before.

I looked up the symbol of tornadoes in dreams, but still, it just doesn't make sense to me that i keep having these dreams & the general similar sequence in which they occur.

Anyone who can help?

[raphnix]

I'm afraid since dreams are more likely to happen opposite of the dream, I hope you won't be the one to be visited by those tornadoes.

[eight bits]

Hello, ktie

Let me begin with a disclaimer. I don't interpret other people's dreams. Only the dreamer can do that. This is not a slogan, but a fact.

In your case, I would like to suggest a framework for you to think about the dreams. First, this is a beautiful and life-affirming dream series. It is not unusual for such dreams to be disquieting, to involve a scary or threatening element. Often, it is that affective element that gets and holds your waking attention, but once it has succeeded in doing so, it is often best to look past the first emotional reaction.

Much the same might be said of the repetition, which is another device by which a dreamt thought can grab and hold your waking attention. OK, the dream has gotten your waking attention, now what?

I looked up the symbol of tornadoes in dreams

Symbols cannot be looked up in the sense you mean. Symbols are things that are meaningful in themselves, have additional meanings based on associations, and can serve as vehicles for the kind of thinking that occurs in art, poetry, dramatization, music, and other figurative expressions. Of which, dreams are one kind.

Symbols do not stand in one-to-one relationship with other things. Signs or coded messages do that. Signs can be looked up, symbols cannot.

Think about the role that the tornado plays in your dream. Usually, it is something first seen in the distance, a sudden and unusual disruption of the normal order of your life, and

Generally my dreams end with seeking shelter or waiting for it in the shelter, i had one or two where it hit, but i generally wake up before.

So, in general, your dreams are not "about" a tornado, they are about you taking steps to protect your loved ones and yourself. The approaching tornado is a specific, concrete, and immediate reason for you to do this, right here, right now. It is a plot device, not the plot itself.

The steps you take are conspicuously reasonable, systematic, thorough, and effective. You are capable of dealing with this threat, and you do in fact deal with it. This is wonderful.

That's about as far as I can or should go. The dream wants you to think about it, not me .

Given the world economic situation lately, I'll bet a lot of people have been having "unusual impersonal threat" dreams in the last few months. Is your tornado the world economic situation? Maybe, but probably not only that, if it is that at all. The way of life is that if it isn't one damned thing, it's another. Dreams may be triggrered by specific problems, but they tend to look at the big picture, the situation of living in a world where things like the global economic crisis can happen.

Again, that is not an interpretation of your dream, but a suggested direction for you to think about it.

Devoting waking thought to a dream sometimes extinguishes its repetition. Not always. You might also find yourselves, your waking and dreaming selves, entering into a dialog about the subjects of the dream.

I hope some of these ideas are helpful to you, and that you accept the invitation your dreaming self has extended to mull these dreams over. But, as I said, the take-home message, one way or the other, is that you have what it takes to deal with what life throws at you. Which is a wonderful thought, even if thinking it scares you a little.

Edited February 13, 2009 by eight bits

[Voyager10]

It's possible the tornado might represent some other aspect of your life where maybe something has gone wrong in the past ( maybe professionally, romantically? ) and you worry about it happening again in the future. Friends/family might be affected by those aspects of your life also, so its natural to be concerned for their welfare.

Then again ... you might be worried about tornados. Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[Sho_Sho]

A few years ago I had tornado dreams all the time. For me the tornado symbolized things happening to me out of my control, and hiding from them. The tornado would come, and then I would scramble around looking for places to hide.

When I started facing my problems head on in my awake state the tornado dreams died down drastically. I still have them every now and then, but they are not as frequent.

[The Silver Thong]

When I was younger I would have constant dreams of being cought in an avalanch. Pretty spooky stuff but I think it was just my teenage hormones and anxiety that caused them. I sleep like the dead now LOL I don't think the dreams about tornados actually mean tornado's but just something in the back of your mind thats bothering you.

[54321]

This is really bothering me because i keep having dreams about tornadoes coming for me. I have literally had 6 or 7 of these dreams in the last month. It's never the same dream but it is always the same theme. It's always about me trying to convince people that there are tornadoes about to hit us, nobody believes it at first & i have to convince them. Here where i live, we don't get tornadoes, however, we had 2 minor ones recently which was bizarre to say the least, but was far from where we stay. I haven't been worrying about getting a tornado because it is just so unlikely here.

So the first part is always convincing people they are coming, then i show them what i see, the giant whirlwind tornadoes heading for us, then panick. The next part of the dream is making sure everyone i care about is at home or with me, my family. Then the last part of the dream is trying to find shelter in my home or whatever building i am in (usually my home) from the tornado & getting my family together there. I am always trying to figure out where would be the safest place to be when it hits. Generally my dreams end with seeking shelter or waiting for it in the shelter, i had one or two where it hit, but i generally wake up before.

I looked up the symbol of tornadoes in dreams, but still, it just doesn't make sense to me that i keep having these dreams & the general similar sequence in which they occur.

Anyone who can help?

If this were my dream I would say, the tornado represents a crisis of sorts, something important, but the issue is the need to convince others. I take this to mean you are not, or you want to be taken more seriously. The rest of the dream signifies that you believe you can cope with more responsibility within the family context. Just immediate thoughts. Your recurring dream is telling you something needs addressing.

I once had an elaborate dream which seemed to last for days. I noticed a repetative sound which i realised had been there throughout the dream. It was such a realisation that I began to wake. As i came round i became aware of my 3 year old son hitting me on the head repeatedly with the alarm clock!

Seriously, your dream, your symbols, your context. You know the solution, not me. Good luck

[bLu3 de 3n3rgy]

I looked up the symbol of tornadoes in dreams, but still, it just doesn't make sense to me that i keep having these dreams & the general similar sequence in which they occur.

Anyone who can help?

I have recurring dreams with the same kinda theme that includes, tornadoes/multi tornadoes, severe colossal electrical storms, thunderstorms, tidal waves, flood damage, crashing planes. Wild eh, lol. And just to point out I am an avid storm lover, I love thunder and lighting and extreme weather. And in these dreams, although 'danger is being conveyed', I enjoy the lightning shows.

They all have the same theme in that I am the first to see them coming or develop and I spend all my time alerting anyone that is around me and making sure these people get shelter. In these dreams I am never hurt by these elements, but my priority in these dreams is that other people see and understand what is happening and what is potentially threatening to them.

I have come to work out explicitly what these dreams mean to me personally. Infact I had one of those multi spawn tornado dreams just the other night. To me they are not the average or normal kind of dream, so using 'normal symbolization' does not apply to my dreams at all. I have no idea if this may be the case for yours or not, but I do find the theme you describe interesting. It makes me want to ask if you've ever observed or noticed how people around you act/behave, following one of these kind of dreams?

Edited February 20, 2009 by Lady_Anvilabeel

[Vivid_Dreamer_12]

Generally my dreams end with seeking shelter or waiting for it in the shelter, i had one or two where it hit, but i generally wake up before.

I looked up the symbol of tornadoes in dreams, but still, it just doesn't make sense to me that i keep having these dreams & the general similar sequence in which they occur.

Anyone who can help?

I've had tornado dreams ever since I was a kid (I'm 40 now), and they occur no matter what time of year it is, so I doubt they're prophetic dreams concerning weather. Like you, I've asked the same question - why am I dreaming about tornadoes? I grew up in California where tornadoes are very rare (so rare that even the little ropesters make the news), but I was born in the midwest, so it's probaby linked to some long-forgotten childhood memory from around the time I was a toddler. I have at least one dream about them per week, if not more. A friend of mine suggested that the tornadoes might signify death or the fear of impending doom. In the last few years they've gotten really specific, though, which is sort of alarming. Here's one I had a couple of years ago that was so vivid/intense that I woke up and wrote the entire thing down because it seemed prophetic -

In the dream I was driving this little red car from South Carolina (where I lived for a couple years) to California, and I was alone. I know I was on Interstate 20 because I specifically recall seeing a sign that said so. Normally I don't 'feel' in dreams - no sensation of hot or cold, etc., but this time I 'felt' the humid air as I pulled off at a rest stop near a sign that said 'Jackson.' There was a truck stop there that was painted white with red trim, and there were a few people but not a lot. There was a diner beside the gas pumps and the dream was so realistic that I remember telling myself I'd like to go in and get a stack of pancakes after I finished putting gas in the car. I even watched the pump ring up $40.00 in gas. As I hung the gas hose-thingy back on the pump, I started walking toward the diner. That's when I noticed the wind really picking up.

Just as I got to the diner's front door, these huge hailstones began to fall, and I ran in through the door to avoid being hit. After I got inside, I looked around and saw a couple people sitting at the counter and a twentyish blonde girl with a ponytail and wearing a red and white uniform was working behind the counter, making coffee. I walked up to her and was going to tell her it was hailing outside, but before I could speak she said, "That's some storm brewin' outside." She had a southern accent - I remember that clearly, too. I turned around at looked at the window and saw that the sky had gone pitch black and the wind was really whipping outside. I turned back to the girl and asked if they had a basement nearby for people to get into because there was a tornado coming. She shook her head and said all they had to get into was a big meat freezer in the kitchen. I heard a loud crash behind me and saw that the awning over the gas pumps had fallen over and was being blown away by the wind. That's when I stared through the diner windows at this huge, roiling tornado coming towards the diner. I screamed something about a tornado on the way and jumped over the counter in an effort to find the freezer. The windows blew in right about then and I heard the tinkling of glass breaking all around me. I turned around and looked out through the broken windows just in time to see this huge oak tree get pulled out of the ground roots and all, and then it was slung straight at the diner. I screamed just as the tree flew through the window and that's when I woke up. That dream was so 'real' that I felt it was prophetic.

Now let me tell you what happened in real life this past August, 2008:

I was living in South Carolina and not one but two tornadoes went by within 200 yards of my house. I told my husband that I wanted to go back out west and that I could no longer handle living in the Southeast because the weather scared me almost every day. He finally agreed that we should leave. A week after the second tornado came by, we put everything we owned into the back of U-Haul and we left to go back out west - finally. I couldn't get out of there quick enough. Well, as we were driving through Mississippi - on Interstate 20 - I saw a sign very similar to the one in my dream from a couple years earlier, reading, "Jackson" along with the names of a couple of smaller cities beyond it. My husband said we needed to stop for gas and we pulled off the highway at this Flying J truck stop that was there. It wasn't exactly like the truck stop I'd seen in my dream, but it was close enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I wasn't driving a red car alone on the highway, either, as my family was with me. We were, however, towing my little red Chevy behind us on a car caddy (a car that I bought 6 months earlier without thinking). There were big, puffy clouds in the sky that afternoon and it was humid, so I was really freaking out while my husband was putting gas in the truck. I told him to hurry the hell up so we could get out of there. We got going and we managed to get out of town before any storms came along. That evening, though, we stopped in Louisiana because I didn't want to be anywhere near a sign that said 'Jackson' on it going in either direction. There was a tropical storm out in the Gulf while we were traveling and that evening as we stopped for the night, the outer rain bands caught up to us in Louisiana but nothing major. In Jackson, MS, though, which is further east, was hit by several small twisters that were spun off of the tropical system overnight. Thing is, if I'd never have had that dream, we would have more than likely stayed in Jackson for the night, as it was around 4:00PM when we stopped for gas and my husband was saying that he was tired of driving. We would have been in the middle of that storm system had we stayed.

I still have dreams about tornadoes, even out here in the desert southwest (which they do happen here from time to time), but like you, they're usually just out of view and I'm always looking for a basement or a strong building to get into. I've seen several tornadoes in my lifetime, three of them were up close & personal, but never have been injured by one. I would think your tornado dreams are similar to mine - they're signs of extreme anxiety or else something you don't want to deal with but you know is inevitable and can't be stopped.

Edited February 22, 2009 by Vivid_Dreamer_12