It’s very frustrating for me that when I have bad dreams — and I often do, I’d say they’re at least 60% of my dreaming life — in which I am being attacked or about to be attacked that I never, ever fight back.
Here I am, 100% able to do this in my waking life; ever ready to do it if I have to, especially considering that with some of my younger life, I’ve long been at the point where I’ve felt that I will do whatever it takes to never be abused, attacked or assaulted again.
And yet, my subconscious, for whatever reason, won’t let me.
Last night, for instance, I had this dream that I was in New York (looked like the meatpacking district) with Audra and some other woman who was a friend of hers I didn’t know. The friend — foolishly — insisted on driving around, and in trying to find a place to park, of course had to park in this totally out of the way creepy back alley. By the time night came, I walked them both to where the car was, pretty wary of where we were, but neither of the other two seemed to recognize inherent dangers (which is totally out of charatcer for Audra). It was one of those scenarios where you were trying to watch your own back as well as everyone else’s, which is always a recipe for disaster. The car was — of course — unfindable, and there was a lot of blabbing about in this totally unsafe place for way too much time.
In no time at all, a few guys started grouping up and circling, playing the friendly game when the vibe was clearly predatory. I tried to make subtle gestures to the two other women to just effing run, but nobody got it. One of the guys started talking to me, way too close, and did that movement people who are about to mug or attack you face-on sometimes do where they look somewhere else really quickly while talking to you so you’ll look away too, and then you’re toast.
So, I kept my eyes right on him, trying to give him a look that said I knew what was about to go down here, and just said, “Don’t,” very firmly and low. He nodded, and while I got the impression that for some reason, he would step back, it was pretty clear his friends were not going to, and at that point I loudly turned to Audra and the mystery woman and told them to run. They both looked at me like they didn’t understand what I was saying, and they didn’t make any move to run, even though each of them had a guy attached right to them at that point.
So, I ran, but only half-hearted, because I felt very not okay about just leaving them there AND because I could not figure out why I was running when there were other things I could have done, but my body would just not let me do them.
Within a quarter block, some other guy came out of nowhere. I was half-awake at this point trying to coach my dream-self to drop to the damn ground and do an easy low spinning kick to wipe him out so I could get away, but I just stood there frozen until I woke up with a start. Everytime I wake up from one of these dreams, it’s with this huge intake of breath: I often feel like I was trapped underwater. It’s really quite odd.
This stuff freaks me out because it makes me very concerned that should someone ever earnestly attack me again in real life, I’ll freeze the hell up, just like I did when I was younger. Mind, this likely is a manifestation of exactly that fear, which clearly is still pervasive with me: obviously, to some degree, it probably always will be. I know full well that a big impetus for me leaving large cities to choose mid-sized ones over the last almost-decade has a lot to do with a greater peace I feel: I know I pay more in rent to live in safer neighborhoods and buildings because the benefits for me are huge. I spent way too many years of my life living in scenarios and locales where I often just couldn’t sleep at night because of valid fears about my safety. Leaving Chicago, the final straw was the stalker who sent me letters describing intimate details of my shitty basement hovel which I knew anyone could easily break into — and he clearly had, without my even knowing — since I’d had to do it several times myself (I’m terrible with keys). Point is, I know where this stuff comes from.
But dammit, I psychologically need my dream self to step it up for me, man. Just once would be really nice. Not sure what switch needs to be flicked in my brain to make that happen, but if anyone has any tips or clues I’d love to hear’em.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
My therapist usually suggests to me to communicate with my subconcious before I go to sleep, through prayer, meditation, a letter or whatever and ask for what you need. He has also suggested asking for the lesson to come in a different language to see if that helps by taking it out of the current context. Something like “Ok- I know you are trying to tell me something, but I don’t get the spider thing. Giveing me more spiders is not helping. Please tell me this in a different way so that I can understand”.
I recently had a horrible series of nightmares envolving baby animals being killed and my cat all sick with her eyes gouged out. They were awful. One night I realized reading “The Survivors Guide to Sex” right before bed may not be a good idea. They stopped right away. Now I try to be careful and allow myself more time to process things during waking hours so I can actually rest at night. Which is tough for me, but I need my rest.
I feel your pain on this. Nightmares suck. I hope something from this was useful.
xo
January 8th, 2007 at 3:47 am
FWIW, apparently one reason that’s been suggested as to why “freezing” is so common in dreams is that your subconscious is registering your sleep paralysis (a phenomenon which exists precisely to prevent your real-life body whacking innocent passers-by or bedmates during REM sleep) and incorporating it into the dream. So it may not be purely a psychological thing.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Mark’s best friend was over here yesterday just telling me about that, logic_grrl. I hadn’t even considered that, but it makes sense.
Maybe I just need to try and sleep standing up! On the other hand, I DO typically whack bedpartners around in my sleep, so while it may be working in my dreams, it doesn’t seem to have any effect with my actual body. Would that it did!
Shawn: that sounds helpful. Giving it a shot.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I only recently started to be able to fight back in my dreams, and I too have had these dreams over and over for years. I have a whole series of recurring dreams, in fact, and my suspicion is that a lot of them have been got rid of or changed because I’ve really started to address my emotional fears. Martial arts and some self-defense classes have helped, I am sure, but I really do think it’s the deeper emotional work I’ve done that’s helped. Most of that has to do with family/parents, and learning to forgive, accept, and draw firm boundaries around myself. With EVERYONE.
It is an ongoing process, fersure.
I am sure you could kick the ass of the average would-be attacker. I am not sure that I could, but I think these dreams reprsent–at least to me–more of the fear that I can’t stand up and care for myself, rather than being a manifestation of the fear of being physically attacked. Not that that’s gone away for me, but my conclusion was that it was more of a emotional safety I wasn’t having in the core of me.
But saying all that, when you really wanna clean someone’s clock in a dream, sometimes I think the frustration is that you physically cannot connect, not that you aren’t capable. Your flesh wants to hit flesh. Same with sex dreams, for me. They frustrate, because I can’t actually feel the connection of flesh. The latter is more easily solved–one can simply masturbate or jump on their bed mate. One can’t really punch the bed mate.
January 9th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
A bit of necessary sharing: having had what seemed like innumerable dreams where somebody/thing was bullying me but I just couldn’t respond so felt paralysed, thankfully I read about sleep paralysis. It transpires this is where the body registers it is asleep hence the non movement and feelings of non movement capability during dreams. I felt so relieved reading that article and, fingers crossed, have not had a similar dream since. Hopefully it will be the same for you.
January 9th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
RE: sleep paralysis
That is very interesting. For a long time, from say 12-16 all I ever had was nightmares, often of the can’t-protect-myself persuation. It’s sort of tapered off but I still have them occasionally, and most of my dreams are creepy-unpleasant.
Sounds fantastic that that helped you, but I think my process will be slower. (Bah, that doesn’t sound quite right but I have a terrible headache so it will do)