Anonymous – The answers I give arise not out of me thinking up things to say, but from fifty years of exploring dreams in depth. So some of what I write may seem wild. This may be because dreams arise and are experienced by a level of your mind or awareness that very few people have any concept or experience of – usually called the unconscious. Life dreamt of its creatures millions of years before even humankind awoke and developed self awareness or language. So to understand dreams we need to leave our thinking minds behind and go into our feelings and reactions – a much older level of awareness.
But 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/But you appear to be in the process of waking up to what dreams are and what their possibilities are. But you have only taken small steps and need more understanding.
“I realised I could possibly have a nightmare.” That was a misconception based on waking fears, for whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. For all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
A little Kuwaiti boy survived the Iraqi invasion of his country and was living without his father, a prisoner of war. But a recurring nightmare, of Saddam Hussein stabbing his brother to death, was prolonging the trauma.
One night he had a different dream: This time he carried the knife, becoming a hero who kills his nemesis. The emotional weight he carried disappeared. Altering recurring nightmares may hold a key to recovery for many victims of trauma, says Dr. Deidre Barrett, a professor of behavioral medicine and hypnotherapy at Harvard Medical School. Barrett spent a month in Kuwait City after the Gulf War training other therapists to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. She says, “Just changing something in the dream gives people such a sense of mastery in controlling things.” See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/masters-of-nightmares/ –
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/Because you were slightly aware it enabled you to change your dream to a non threatening situation. But because 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, it was silly to avoid facing your own fears, because facing them would transform your life.
Also controlling your mind is a sign that you are frightened of yourself. Perhaps see
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/ –
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/integration-meeting-oneself/Tony