30+ year recurring dream

[jezebel1975]

Hello, all, i'm hoping someone can help me. For as long as i can remember, i've had the same recurring nightmare. When i was very young, say between 4-7 or 8, i would have it quite often, perhaps even twice in a week. As i grew older, it became less frequent, but still noticeable. i'm now 33, and though i haven't had it in a while, i have it at least once a year now.

In my dream, i am a small child. It is dark, i am apparently outside, and i am walking. i become aware of something--something large--following behind me. Behind me as i walk is fire and smoke. i can see myself sillhouetted against the light. Something is still following me, and now i can hear a low single tribal drum, beating a steady rhythm. i begin to walk faster, because the thing following me feels "bad" and i am scared. The pounding drum increases its rhythm as i increase my speed. The thing gets closer to me as i walk faster and faster, and finally begin to run. It is now full out chasing me, and in my dream i am aware that it's a big bull. i can hear it breathing close to me, and i am getting tired....i do not know why, but i (the me in my dream) equate the bull with my father, they are connected somehow. All i know is i am very afraid. Right as the bull charges me and the drums are pounding relentlessly, i wake up.

When i was a young girl, i'd wake up screaming and crying, sometimes having even wet the bed. Now that i'm older, the reaction is not so severe (thankfully ), but it is still a very disconcerting dream. i don't know if this matters, but my father rode bulls in the rodeo. i didn't know him very well, my parents divorced when i was 5. He was a violent man when drunk, and i remember at times being afraid of him.

i'd appreciate any theories or ideas on this silly dream....Thanks in advance!

[Wickian]

Hello, all, i'm hoping someone can help me. For as long as i can remember, i've had the same recurring nightmare. When i was very young, say between 4-7 or 8, i would have it quite often, perhaps even twice in a week. As i grew older, it became less frequent, but still noticeable. i'm now 33, and though i haven't had it in a while, i have it at least once a year now.

In my dream, i am a small child. It is dark, i am apparently outside, and i am walking. i become aware of something--something large--following behind me. Behind me as i walk is fire and smoke. i can see myself sillhouetted against the light. Something is still following me, and now i can hear a low single tribal drum, beating a steady rhythm. i begin to walk faster, because the thing following me feels "bad" and i am scared. The pounding drum increases its rhythm as i increase my speed. The thing gets closer to me as i walk faster and faster, and finally begin to run. It is now full out chasing me, and in my dream i am aware that it's a big bull. i can hear it breathing close to me, and i am getting tired....i do not know why, but i (the me in my dream) equate the bull with my father, they are connected somehow. All i know is i am very afraid. Right as the bull charges me and the drums are pounding relentlessly, i wake up.

When i was a young girl, i'd wake up screaming and crying, sometimes having even wet the bed. Now that i'm older, the reaction is not so severe (thankfully ), but it is still a very disconcerting dream. i don't know if this matters, but my father rode bulls in the rodeo. i didn't know him very well, my parents divorced when i was 5. He was a violent man when drunk, and i remember at times being afraid of him.

i'd appreciate any theories or ideas on this silly dream....Thanks in advance!

I have a few dreams scenarios that come back every few months. I think they return because I enjoy the world so much so my brain automatically files it in the "recycle" area of wherever dreams come from. I don't remember ever having a nightmare so I can't say for sure, but it could just be some fear that your brain brings back from time to time to keep you on the ball(as in still fear it and if you encounter it, run).

Now that I think about it I almost had a nightmare once. I remember running from Chucky(I was terrified of him as a little kid), but then somewhere in the dream I gave him a cookie from a grocery store shelf and then it became a normal dream...

[eight bits]

Welcome aboard, jezebel.

Disclaimer Only the dreamer can interpret a dream. However, there are some stock dream characters and motifs which have been dreamt by many people in different times and places. I can point some of those out, and write about what they have meant to many others who have dreamt them. Only you can say whether they mean the same things to you.

What you are dreaming is a motif that might be called "Unseen Menace." Apart from the obvious-from-the-name plot (there is a menace, and at least at the beginning, the dreamer doesn't see it), the dream is typically accompanied by strong affect, and in the variation you dream, it is notorious as a recurring dream.

Three decades may be a record for recurrence, but you know that that is unusual already.

The motif comes in two variations. In both versions, the dreamer has the option of facing (and so seeing) Menace. In the version you dream, the dreaming you declines the option and runs away (successfully - even if you have to wake up to do it). That is the recurring version.

The other version is when the dreamer takes the option, and faces Menace.

As I write what follows, I feel like I am giving a "spoiler" for a movie or novel, but this has to be about the worst-kept secret there is or ever has been. When confronted, Menace resolves. Exactly what he resolves into, you'll have to find out for yourself. The range is nothing at all to an outrageously positive force for good, and anything in between.

So my advice is as follows. You currently conceive of your interpretive problem as identifying "Who's the bull?" As interesting a question as that is, you want to answer that after you have dreamt the other version of the motif.

If you do dream the "challenge accepted" variation, then it is a very good bet that the motif will cease recurring. You may have subsequent appearances of the elements of the dream (Bull had been in our dreams for a very long time when he showed up on the cave walls at Lascaux. He isn't going anywhere soon.), but in different, and typically very much more pleasant, dreams.

So how do you do that? Every fiber of your being (your dreaming being) says not to. Do it anyway. That's part of the point of this exercise. And as to the mechanics, this is not a matter of "dream control." Once you recognize that accepting the challenge is the only way to go, then you "just do it."

Many dreams which present themselves to us as nightmares are the best news we have ever had. Unseen Menace is like that, with the additional twist that we (literally) need only look, and we will see that that is so.

You have been given a great gift. Unwrap it. You'll be glad you did.

[John from Lowell]

When i was a young girl, i'd wake up screaming and crying, sometimes having even wet the bed. Now that i'm older, the reaction is not so severe (thankfully ), but it is still a very disconcerting dream. i don't know if this matters, but my father rode bulls in the rodeo. i didn't know him very well, my parents divorced when i was 5. He was a violent man when drunk, and i remember at times being afraid of him.

i'd appreciate any theories or ideas on this silly dream....Thanks in advance!

In a way you answered your own question. Some fear associations (father rode bull in the rodeo) are always being process in your subconscious. I suspect that this happens all the time with everyone. I have a few dreams that have followed me from my youth and I am currently 65 years old.

Dealing with the things that frighted us, is a good way to put some things like this to rest. It is ok to be frightened. That is a natural human experience. Dealing with it is accepting you humanity and planning with your intent to overcome as best you can the very things that have frightened you.

When you do this, the subconscious will have less trama to process. Your dreams will shift to a more pro-active manner of dealing with life.

John

[eight bits]

Well, John, we find ourselves in partial agreement, and partial disagreement.

Perhaps Jezebel's father is the source of the Bull image, of course. But even if that is so, what the Bull "represents" may never have been her father, and may have been different things over the many years she has dreamt this dream.

What Unseen Menace has taught many of its dreamers (my disclaimer continues in force) is something more affirmative than simply dealing with the things that frighten us, and overcoming our fear of them.

The dreamer's fear of dream-Menace is reasonable, but outrightly mistaken, in one or more of several possible senses. That may not be applicable to Jezebel's father. Not all of our real-life fears are mistakes, in any sense. Then again, maybe it is applicable.

The dream won't tell us anything about that. And neither of us knows the relationship between father and daughter.

Identifying the motif really is a long way from "interpreting" the dream. I tell no lie when I say I don't do dream interpretation, and say to whom that job falls.