Door Doors
Freud felt that a door, a keyhole, a handle, a knocker, all depicted sex and sexual organs. The first example shows this clearly. Knocking refers to the sex act, the cul-de-sac is the woman’s legs.
But the image of a door has so many other ways of being expressed in dreams and is used very frequently. In the first example it represents the experience of discovering a new feeling state. For instance if one had always been apologetic and now became affirmative, ‘new doors’ of experience could well open.
Example: Dreamt I run away from police into a cul-de-sac. It is night and I cannot see a thing. I feel my way to a door, and knocked. An old woman of about 60 comes to the door. Although old she is healthy and well preserved. Without a word I grab her in my arms and embrace her sexually. Then she is naked and I feel her cold flesh against mine and I have intercourse with her. As I do so, she moans in apprehension and pleasure. I know that she has had no sexual life for 20 years, and I have now awoken her passions again. She takes me to an upstairs room, and I believe her husband comes back, but she gets rid of him somehow, I think for good. When she’s back upstairs, she notices the window is open, and a strong wind blows the curtains apart. This terrifies her into feelings of guilt and shame, and she makes me hide behind the bed while she tries to close the window. She leans out of the window to push her neighbour’s curtains back also, and falls to her death. I then wander in gardens outside.
This is a description of the whole Oedipus complex as stated by Freud.
General meanings depending on dream: Remember that context is everything in understanding your dream. So depending on context it can indicate a boundary; the difference between one feeling state and another, such as depression and feeling motivated. A barrier to change or growth or the passing from inside oneself to exterior life. The feelings or attitudes, such as aloofness, we use to shut others out of our life to remain independent or private and being open or inviting. See Context Theme
A sense of leaving an environment or relationship – or escape. A door can be an entering into a new work or relationship situation; entrance to a new life style, or a new phase of one’s life. Or conversely, an exit from one situation into another. The door can also show how you are open or inviting, or how you leave or enter an environment or relationship a life style, or a phase of your life. This is usually shown by the place, room or environment the door leads to or from.
In each of our lives there are initiations into new experiences or maturity. These are often shown as doors. So at puberty we are initiated into sexual development and a wider sympathy. At marriage we may face a door to parenthood and an initiation into motherhood. Do you enter those doors, and if so with what feelings? Why not walk beyond the door and see who, what, is on the other side.
An actual example of this is of a woman who wrote telling of a recurring dream in which she discovered a door in her house she had never seen before. Beyond it was a whole apartment she has never known or used. It was obviously an area of her life she had never lived in, but she had no idea what it was. So, the technique of exploring the dream while awake was explained, and she imagined walking into the new apartment and observing what she felt and what memories arose. A soon as she entered the apartment she began to remember and feel again things that had happened in her childhood. Her mother and father had separated when she was very young and her mother had constantly presented her father as weak and of no value. But the feelings that arose were of the love of beauty and art that her father had shared and helped unfold in her. But she had kept that part of her closed because of what her mother had said. Now it was open to her again and she could allow it to unfold further in her life. An important point here is that the woman did this working alone on her dream, not with professional help or supervision. See Dreams – Practical Techniques – Potential
I see that we have created a great screen of our mind onto which we have projected all these images. Out of our own need, out of our own hopes, out of our own fear we have played all these images onto the screen. What grabs us beyond the door is the power of the suppressed desires and fantasies, our fears, our hopes for love, a longing for beautiful sex. They seem to have a life of their own – which they have – because they have been denied so long that when one allows them they are full of suppressed energy. The more one has suppressed oneself the more power that image has – the more power it has in ones life.
Back door: Our private, family life; our more secret activities; the anus.
Black door: The barrier that ones fears or apprehensions set up; the unknown, but perhaps imagined in a way that does not relate to reality. Going through the black door may therefore lead to a freedom from the limiting fears.
To close a door: To be closed emotionally, or to end or shut something out. Often this requires a decision or strong feeling. Or it might be a response to protect yourself or someone/something else.
Door to strange landscape of world: Finding entrance into unconscious, a way into wonderland – in other words the infinite world of our mind or consciousness.
Doorknob – See: knob.
Front door: Public self; confidence; our relationship with people in general; a vagina.
Leaving door open: this can suggest that you remain ready and sympathetic to new ideas, a relationship, or to move in and out of a situation. It can also mean you are leaving the door open to a new relationship or sexual activity.
Glass doors: Invisible barriers in the way of your goals or possibilities; being able to see through to the possibility of change.
Opening a door: Is a very powerful thing in a dream and it depends what you are opening the door to – is it the unknown; is it a lover; a business opportunity; something frightening; a new experience and a new room; or is it an old room full of memories, associations, things long forgotten that you can reclaim? Is it someone else’s dwelling and you are unsure of a welcome. Whatever it is look it up in the rest of the dictionary, or explore for yourself using Techniques for Working your Dreams
Opening a door for me: If someone opens a door for you in a positive way, it suggests the person has, through meeting you, helped you to find or develop a very new experience, skill or method that is helpful to you.
Room with no doors: This can represent a feeling of being trapped with no way out of a situation. Or if you are outside the room a feeling of being excluded.
Shutting a door: Privacy; trying to find ‘space’ for oneself; the dismissing attitudes or tension we use to shut others out of intimate contact; repressing memories or feelings; decisively ending something.
Side door: Escaping from a situation or being indirect.
Someone at a door: Opportunity; the unexpected; new experience or relationship.
Waiting outside a door: Waiting outside the door – what a wonderful symbol that is. What a beautiful symbol. It represents all that we have as humanity placed behind the door. All of the gods, all of the images, all of the dreams, all opportunity, all of our fears, the devil, the angels. All that we place behind the door within ourselves. And they are only available to us if we walk through the door.
Car doors: Your way of letting other people share you life. The passenger door in particular refers to the people you let near you or push away if you do not let them in your car.
The car door can also suggest allowing something to be seen or as access to things you have ‘within you’. The door is a barrier, a protective shield against people trying to harm you, or against other influences. The lock on the door links with how confident you feel about your own strength. Not being able to open your car doors shows you feeling a loss, or at a loss. It is a loss of power to be able to go where you want, or to access what you have in the car. This is like being pushed right back onto your very personal resources.
Example: ‘I am being strangled from behind by a faceless man! I had gone down to lock my flat door for the night when I noticed the door was open. I hastily bolted it and ran upstairs, but unknown to me the intruder was already in the flat.’ Miss H.
Here the door represents the censorship the dreamer places between her conscious self and her sexual drives. In ‘strangling’ our own life drive, we ourselves feel cut off from life.
Door never seen before or hidden: Or it can be an unknown or newly discovered door, and is a common theme. It can mean the recognition or discovery of previously unnoticed aspects, abilities, fears, or traits in oneself. If the discovery is distressing, this may reflect a feeling of a change in ones status quo which is disturbing.
Often it is about the discovery of a huge new area of your mind, or the possibility of a new dimension of your being. See Dimensions of Human Experience
Example: I had no sensation of it other than space, hugeness. Then I lost my left arm, and – my whole body. It was like falling through a trap-door into the stars. I had been taken through the magic doors of sleep into a universe it seldom ever sees – deep dreamless sleep.
Example: I own a house. Its a big old I guess Victorian place and I love it. But there is a place “in” the house that I try to forget exists. You get to it through a hidden door and go down a corridor which takes you under the road outside into another house and a sort of separate studio room, which is light and bright and its a kind of arty place where people (me?) work. I feel I’ve been there before in reality, and I don’t know why I’m frightened of it.
In this dream the person is constantly forgetting that she has a part of her that is light and bright where she could work at art and creativity.
Wrong door: . This shows you wish to do things in the wrong way – the wrong door.
Example: I own a house. Its a big old I guess Victorian place and I love it. But there is a place “in” the house that I try to forget exists. You get to it through a hidden door and go down a corridor which takes you under the road outside into another house and a sort of separate studio room, which is light and bright and its a kind of arty place where people (me?) work. I feel I’ve been there before in reality, and I don’t know why I’m frightened of it.
In this dream the person is constantly forgetting that she has a part of her that is light and bright where she could work at art and creativity.
Useful questions:
What does this door stand between – indoors outdoors – me and someone else – a bedroom?
Am I in control of how I let people into my life or let go of them?
What way am I relating to the door?
See Dreams are Like a Computer Game – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Comments
I had a dream where i was in a hotel building. I was going through different rooms, opening doors going from one room to the other. It was really strange. Some doors opened to cafes, bathrooms and lobbies and finally the last door was a bedroom. In there laying on the bed was this guy who i recently ended things with after a 9 month fling. (He’s been on my mind a lot lately as i still have feelings) In the dream he said he was waiting for me and we then shared a very passionate kiss. Any idea on what all this means?
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Danielle – You start the dream searching for something, but couldn’t find satisfaction until the last room.
It means you were hungry for the feeling of passion and love of the kiss. All the other doors leading to food, and other experiences did not offer what you wanted.
But remember that our dream images are what we gathered from experiences, and are added to by ones own longings. So your dream may be a self satisfying dream, and may not be about the actual guy, but about your relationship with your inner man. When you think about a friend or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they change you and make you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-animus-jungs-view-of-the-male-in-the-female/
I just had a dream that a man in a red long sleeved shirt and black beanie was knocking on my backdoor and then ran thru my house and out the front door 2 times without even opening the door…. What does it mean?
I have a dream about my current boyfriend that wants to buy a door (not attached to a house – just a front door). The door has a small window of glass and the rest is made of wood. The feeling in these dreams are very light hearted and not negative. He keeps accidentally breaking the glass in the doors.
Before this happens, I tell him he doesn’t need the door. But he really wants this door. So he’s lookimg at it, drops it, or somehow breaks the glass (accidentally).The door is never rhe same, but it’s always wood and glass.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Jennifer – When we dream about someone, people often automatically believe the dream is about that person. But when we think of our friend or partner our thoughts are not them – just our thoughts and feelings about them. In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream.
So the dream is not directly about him but your feelings and thoughts about him; or your intuitive summing up of him.
The door without a house attached to it sounds as if, you or him, want to enter a new dimension of life or living. A doorway to a new life. Breaking the glass may be about the sort of invisible yet tangible barriers we may erect or feel around others, such as natural caution, emotional coldness, disinterest, fear of being hurt or pride; social barriers. Invisible aspects of oneself which nevertheless may trap us, such as fear, lack of self respect; self doubt.
Of course a door can also be a barrier. A barrier indicates a difficulty in yourself. It is either something which bars your progress or expression, or is used as a protection from things outside yourself, or from things getting at you. If you are sitting on the fence, it shows you attempting to avoid decision or action.
I had a dream that I was wondering around outside in the dark, I think I was trying to get away from someone or thing, I came across a door and I opened up to another door and it was smaller. I opened that door and there was another smaller door. This happened until the door was way too small for me to fit. A few doors before the last one was Yellow with a $25 sticker on it, I passed and took a double take and then continued on opening the next door. The last door led to the ground, it was busted around the frame and wasn’t hinged, it looked broken. In the dream I sat back puzzled. I wondered what that meant.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Rachel – The important thing in your dream is that you were trying to get away. But in your dreams, all the people, animals, places you see in your dreams, are simply your own feelings, fears, hopes and wonder projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind as images. So, it makes sense to take the image of your dream person, thing or animal back into you and own it. In that way, you are meeting and dealing with the things about yourself you are not owning or conscious of. That is why dreams are often difficult to understand, because we are hiding things from ourselves.
It is usually a feeling or emotion we are trying to avoid. A waste of time and effort because you cannot escape from yourself. It was getting harder and harder to escape, so what will you feel if you imagine getting through the last door?
I dreamt that my ex-boyfriend was knocking at the front door, I went and stood there for a long while yet I didn’t open it. I went back to my room and slept. My father let my ex into my room, and when I heard fidgeting I opened my eyes and he was sitting at my study table. I shut my eyes and ignored him. After a while my male cousin walks in and I wake up and we start conversing about a job opportunity. Oddly evertime we talked my ex would look over his shoulder. Eventually I got dressed, and my cousin and I went out the window because the stairs were being renovated. We left into the streets without uttering a word to my ex. What could this mean?
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Dear Anon – You cannot ignore any ex you may have been involved with – not in dreams anyway.
Ex’s play an enormous part in many people’s dreams. The reason is that dreams about ex’s are very tricky for several reasons. To start with most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love or interact with someone. In other words because we memorise the feelings and responses we felt; and because we learn through our experiences, we are changed by them. The memories and the learning are part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences, along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship.
To ignore them is to try to cut out a huge part of your memory and your life experience. So it is not your ex you are dreaming of, but your dreams are showing you your inner feelings about the past relationship and all the memories needing to be digested and learned from. So if you are troubled by dreams of your ex, the best way to deal with them is to work on integrating the influence left in you from the relationship. You can do this by thinking about the dreams about your ex and drawing on all you got from him. So I would suggest you integrate all the good and bad things. Try doing this by taking the dream images of your ex and pulling them back into your body. Yes, literally making them one with you. Do this slowly and allow any feelings that arise. This may sound strange but all the images in our dreams are projections from you inner world onto the screen of our sleeping mind; so taking them back into you is like owning them and integrating them. It is called honouring what we learned, bad or good, from the relationship. See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/
Just had a dream of my ex knocking hard on the door and I opened the door after some time as I wasn’t sure who it was. What does it mean thank you
Hi – I am stopping from answering your posts fully – but will try to give hints; sometimes long ones because I quote from masses I have already put online. Also I need to take time to update the site – dreamhawk.
It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practicing what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPersonOrThing or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Your ex is an inner part of you wanting attention. Many people do not realise that they have an inner husband or ex that is equally as powerful as an external husband. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences, along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with your husband, and they are what makes you the person you are. This is true even if your husband was never there for you – you still have all the memories of him not being there for you filed under ‘husband’. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner husband can appear in dreams because you are deeply influenced by what you hold within you.
Please help me intrepert this dream i had today. I had a dream that my wedding decision has been set to be on the next day and everything was great and I wanted to get the dress I want to wear, I wasn’t stressed alot, and then suddenly i was at my mothers in law house but i couldn’t get out because a strange person is standing there and i could see him through the doors lens he’s a very tall and a handsome man that i got attracted to but at the same time those people outside were changing. And for some reason we were scared to open the door and go out. And then all of the sudden we managed to leave but people were watching and then again went back and wanted to leave and samething happened.
Hi – I must take time to upgrade the dream dictionary, so must halt from answering your posts – I started revising the dictionary in 2006, and haven’t neared the end yet. I believe someone else may start giving interpretations.
So, for a while I urge you to read http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/i-am-no-longer-interpreting-dreams/ – It describes ways that can help you. And often it would help too if you looked at http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing
Tony
So I dreamt that a friend of mine (I haven’t known him for very long but we’re kind of good friends already) was walking away and I followed him cause we didn’t have a proper goodbye. So he enters this building through a door which opens outwards and I hurry after him but he doesn’t hold the door for me, it’s like he’s running away. Then he enters another door and it almost shuts in my face. I enter it as well and run up to him cause I saw that he was crying. He says goodbye, as he thought that was the only reason I ran after him. I hug him and hold him tight and he hugs me back. We stand there for a while and I comfort him, and that’s all I remember. Please help me, what is this dream trying to tell me? xx
What about standing inside of a wooden door frame? I don’t recall a door even being on it. Just an open door frame. I was in the door frame looking into the room where my husband was.
Dear Christa – I have looked at your two dreams as if the part that you describe in “Gold” is the second part of this “Door” dream;
“A keyboard (musical kind) that has a golden sheen? My husband is playing with it though, as he is calmly telling me hurtful words.”
You gave me little information to explore your dream.
What do you think and feel when you stand in the door and when you look at your husband;
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson?
I see the first part of your dream as symbolising your “frame of reference”.
A frame of reference is a complex set of assumptions and attitudes which we use to filter perceptions to create meaning. The frame can include beliefs, schemas, preferences, values, culture and other ways in which we bias our understanding and judgment.
See also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/beliefs/
In general, wood represents beliefs, ideas, opinions, habits that have become a fixed part of your nature. Just as the tree is originally green and supple but becomes hard and fixed as solid wood, so our opinions and attitudes, as they develop, are first pliable, then often become rigid.
It would serve a purpose to explore through “reframing” if the meaning you have given – “hurtful words” – is correct.
“To reframe, step back from what is being said and done and consider the frame, or ‘lens’ through which this reality is being created. Understand the unspoken assumptions, including beliefs and schema that are being used.
Then consider alternative lenses, effectively saying ‘Let’s look at it another way.’ Challenge the beliefs or other aspects of the frame. Stand in another frame and describe what you see. Change attributes of the frame to reverse meaning. Select and ignore aspects of words, actions and frame to emphasise and downplay various elements.”
Quoted from http://changingminds.org/techniques/general/reframing.htm
Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-animus-jungs-view-of-the-male-in-the-female/
Anna 🙂
I had a dream i was running and hiding from someone in the alley. I finally stoped when I saw my boyfriend’s car parked at my aunts house with the passenger for open it was raining then I woke up what dose this mean?
Alma – It means you are running away from your own inner fears – the someone in the alley.
Fears are simply emotions, and can arise from seeing so called scary films – your emotions will haunt you until you stop running away, then the fear will be gone forever.
To understand the rest of the dream click on the link and find your dreams meaning – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Hi can you please help me with understanding of this dream i had..I dreamt of my old house where i dont live anymore. I was entering the house through the backdoor where there is also the backyard. At that moment it seemed like i was with a guy we came from a date/night out (in real life its someone im still getting to know and we still must go on a date). So when we entered the backyard i saw all the doors were open. The back door everything door in the house. I thought i saw someone in the house so u got scared. The man i was with hold me tight or something. Together we went to look if somebody was in the house. He was kind of protecting me it seemed like. In the house we saw nobody but the house was full of mess. It looked as if someone opened all the doors and threw everything on the floor.. i do not remember the rest. Can you please help me with the interpretation? Thank you
I had a dream that I was walking towards my current front door, but it was backwards (in waking life my door opens in to the left, in the dream it opened in to the right) the door was open I was walking towards the door to close it. I gripped the door knob and began to close the door, about half way to closing the door, a undeterminable force pulled the door out of my hand and closed the door for me. ( it didn’t slam but it gently clicked) then I stood there in disbelief that it happened, so I grabbed the door and swung it open firmly but not hard and proceeded to close the door again, the same thing happend. So I grabbed the door, and swung it open hard. And as quick as it opened it closed shut faster and harder. I felt the slam in my bones and I heard it as if I were standing next to the door. Then I hear my still living father say “it was that big a$$ mother F******* ghost that sits on the truck” I woke up scared shit less heart throbbing and sweating. No one had been in the house for an hour. What does that mean?
I am hoping I could find some resolution here. I had a dream in which I saw an angel, or what I knew as an angel in my dream. There are parts that I don’t feel right in discussing however he took me to a door, that looked like a door inside a castle with the cliche circular handle to pull open. There was a chain around the knobs/handles preventing from opening it but it was slightly open as the chains tightened by pulling the knob. The angel said “your greatest fear is behind that door” and I was not fearful but apprehensive. I looked through the slight opening. I saw a wall about 15 feet away with a window with prison bars attached. The room inside was dimly lit. And as the angel said this, there was a being, monster/shadow that passed from the right to the left, next to the window as light was dimly coming through the room. Then it ended. I am trying to find out how to open this door or re enter this dream to attempt to open it so I may conquer my fear and replace that room with love instead of fear.
Dear Raven – There are several approaches possible, which does not necessarily mean that it must be an “either/or choice”.
“How to open this door” I understand as expressing your desire to open to Life/God again and let IT lead you on your healing journey.
This approach is described in http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/
If you feel like reading other people’s experiences with Opening to Life/God (or LifeStream) you can do that at http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/peoples-experiences-of-lifestream/
Because you also asked us to find a way how “to re-enter the dream and open the door”, you could also use http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/
Perhaps also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/monster-monsters/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-archetype-of-the-shadow/
Good Luck and please let me know if you have any further questions.
Anna 🙂
I keep having dreams of being caught on door handles everytime I go past a door and it seems to be difficult to get off can anyone help
I am in need of help in understanding a dream I had last night… I dreamt I was at a movie theater with my current ex who I fell in true love with and in the dream, we were happy and he had never broke my heart. During the movie, I saw at the entrance my very first ex boyfriend who I never loved, he was extremely abusive, we have been broken up for 5 years with zero contact.. He was standing and the entrance, I was terrified because he saw me and started to charge at me, I jumped up and ran for the emergency exit door, and it was locked! I turned around to run the other direction (my current ex, the one I feel the true love for) was no where to be found, completely evaporated from my dream. I heard a loud bang and turned around to see my abusive ex lying on the floor dead and blue with people standing around him trying to get him to breathe.. I woke up then. I’m concerned by the emergency exit door being locked, and why did my abusive ex die and why was my current ex that I still love so deeply nowhere to be found? I’m so lost. Any insight would help, or a direction to look in. Someone, anyone?
Dear Alexandria – What your dream reveals is that you have not digested your relationship with your abusive first ex-boyfriend and because of that you took the unresolved issues with you in your relationship with your current ex.
A movie theatre can be a symbol for a place of romance but also for feelings of hope and love that will compensate in some measure for the painful feelings that were part of your first relationship.
Perhaps you feel like exploring if your relationship with your current ex was meant as a way to cover up for this pain, rather than digesting and releasing it?
When your ex starts to charge you, you become aware that you took the fear and the pain with you in the next relationship and you cannot escape – the emergency exit is locked – because you cannot run from yourself and from what is a part of your inner world.
Your current ex is nowhere to be found, because you cannot see him anymore; your unresolved issues make that all you can see and feel is your past.
If you can understand that the memories of your first ex-boyfriend are still alive in your inner world, even many years after you broke up, then you can understand the problems he is causing; “Because we go blue when suffocating or having breathing difficulties, it can be used to show what a struggle we are having with life, how bruised we are with experience”.
To get a deeper feeling understanding of this, you could try to “Be your first ex-boyfriend” by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
It is actually YOU who is bruised with experience and who needs to start to breathe again.
Breathing links with being alive and in a normal state of awareness. The difficulty in breathing may point to your emotional state and how you still feel overwhelmed by the past experiences with your first ex-boyfriend.
You can also use the approach that is described in http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/digest/
Try doing this by taking the dream images of your experience or person and pulling them back into your body. Yes, literally making them one with you. Do this slowly and allow any feelings that arise. I know you may feel; “why should I merge with something or someone who gave me so much trouble?” Well, I have found that we take into our memory everyone and everything we experience. So merging with it makes it conscious again and if any feelings are allowed expression you have a chance to really understand and sort out what is useful and what has to be let go of – exactly as our digestion does. This may sound strange but all the images in our dreams are projections from you inner world onto the screen of our sleeping mind; so taking them back into you is like owning them and integrating them. It is called honouring what we learned, bad or good, from the relationship. Think of it like digesting something. In a relationship, whether a feeling relationship or one in which you are learning something, you often absorb things from the person or event.”
Another approach to heal and grow beyond your painful past is to use http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/
By experimenting you can explore what works best for you.
Anna 🙂
I just had s dream before being on this page.. it was in our house where i was raised but having a room made of plywood is strange for me bacause the house is concrete and my father loves to use tiles on everywhere he can put it, even on the wall.. the scenario was, i was on the 4th floor of our house, it looked being renovated or what since had a lot of clutter and wood everywhre.. suddenly, i saw a man wearing a light blue shirt, i was not able to see his face, he was stepping down the stairs that seemed to be from a higher floor that i seriously cant get why was even there.. the upper part of the stairs where he got from was already outside the wall (which was surprisingly a metal used for ceiling) of the house. I suddenly got frightened for seeing someone i dont know who was in our house and knock on the door of the room made of wood w panic.. im trying to remember if one of my sisters was there but im sure my father was.. they let me in and we locked the door.. but when the man passed by the door, he slammed it open and i got even frightened. He didnt try to get in or show his face.. but to my surprise my father didnt react or do anything about it.. i just saw the man in the holes of the wooden room going to the direction of the stairs going down..
Dear April Celis – Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-house-in-your-dream/
Among many other things you can also read there that;
“When you dream of a house, you are meeting a hugely important and many sided representation of yourself. It is both many faceted and multidimensional.
Although you cannot see it, your mind, along with your beliefs, has a particular structure or form. If the shape of your mind could be built into a three dimensional model, such as a house, you would probably be able to see that your mind has as unique a shape as your fingerprints. But at the same time there would be features of your mental ‘house’ that were very much the same as most of the people within your own culture.”
A renovated house may reflect those attitudes or parts of you that you have changed and so you can explore what it is that you approach different in yourself and your life; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/individuation/
The clutter and wood may symbolise the inner work that you still have to do to clean your “inner house”.
The man in your house I see as a part of your shadow that wants to be integrated. The Shadow is any part of ourselves that we reject, and so do not allow sufficient expression in our life. We may so dislike aspects of our nature we fail to recognise them altogether and instead see them in other people and criticise them; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-archetype-of-the-shadow/
To explore what the man in your dream symbolises you can use http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson.
What thoughts, feelings, images etc. arise when his dream figure slams the door open?
Are you afraid of your strong sexual desires?
See also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/sex/
Anna 🙂