No face.

[darkling]

I'm usually pretty good at figuring out my dreams. I was stumped last night though. I call him no face because he wore a mask similar to the character No Face in spirited away, only without the color triangles. He also wore a white hoodie and jeans and was chasing me with a knife. What led up to that part was pretty much pure reflection of the neglect I faced in child hood and the freedom and challenges it presented with being abandoned in a a field with swampy spots, a few trees, and a broke down truck by my father at night. Normal enough for me until No face showed up. I ran and almost got caught by No face, but managed to trip him. I didn't see him after that and climbed a tree to wait for morning when it would be safe. It wasn't fear that made me run, but the acknowledgement of the knife. Has a knife better run would be the best way to describe the thought pattern. Later in the dream I was telling my father and my recently deceased grandfather about it and they scolded me for hitting(I guess referring to tripping) someone from "that place" for chasing me and that they had been chased before. In the dream "that place" referred to some kind of institutional living situation, but I'm not sure why the people there were institutionalized. Mental hospital, home for the handicapped, or what. Since waking up, I've been intrigued by who or what this No face person represented.

[Tony Crisp]

Darkling - Your dream brings up a lot of points that need explanation. Point number one is that any threat of abandonment creates and enormous emotional reaction. Certainly in the past, and still today in many parts of the world, abandonment means death. The greatest and most prominent drive in a baby animal is to stay connected with its parent or group. If it doesn’t it will almost certainly die. That instinct has been built into us as vulnerable animals for millions of years. The baby cannot help but feel that imperative.

When I met the feelings involved in being apparently abandoned in a convalescent home, for six weeks I couldn’t function normally because the emerging emotions and states of mind were so strong. If you have never relived a child’s terrible panic and known a state of timelessness where there is no hope of change, it may not be possible for you to understand or believe.

What I learned from being exposed to such feelings - actually living them with a child’s intensity - is that we build tremendous inner barriers to the experience. We build a wall of pain or even terror to hold the experience at bay - in other word we never want it to become conscious. Obviously for a child the experience is too much for it to face. But as an adult we gradually gain greater strength, and then we start to have such dreams as yours, where a frightening character threatens your life. The mask is because you do not want to see the face - because it is your face.

Remember what was said about an abandoned child fearing death. The institutional person is also you - in recovering my childhood fears I had many such dreams, at times I was the crazy person in the insane asylum. Before that you keep the feelings as a distance, but as you are willing to face them you take on the role yourself.

So if you are willing to see who you are behind the resistances you can do this by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson - and see also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/defence-mechanisms/

Tony

[darkling]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I can relate in a big way with how you speak of childhood fear of abandonment. Fits perfectly with how hard I have been working to overcome my own past lately as well. I've suspected that I have some repressed memories from my childhood before and they are getting closer to the surface as I have been working through my emotions and how I deal with people. Thank you again.