Nightmare

[ech2001]

Could someone please interpret this for me? Keep one thing in mind, I'm thirteen. Also, I do sleepwalk, sleeptalk, and sleep move sometimes. I don't think I tend to have Rapid eye movement, but I might, because my mom does. My dream/nightmare: I was in my house, of course a different setting nowhere I have ever been before. A homeless dude came up to us (I think he was African-American) and he asked to stay with us on a stormy night. For some reason, my parents accepted, and then he stayed with us. At midnight, I woke up and noticed that he was gone and so was one of my chihuahuas. I remember thinking that he ate the female one, Bella. I woke up everyone, and we were, well up. I'm not sure what happened for a while, but eventually, he came up t us and tried to convenes us that he was good. Again, my parents accepted him and he came back, then did something mean again. He did this several times throughout my dream. My parents stayed at my aunt's house, and left me home-alone with the guy in the house, I was very afraid. I remember ransoms notes, not for anything. I woke up laying down sideways on my bed, very cold, and terrified. Any ideas what this means? Please help!

[JoannaB]

First, everyone has rapid eye movement (REM) when they dream, so you definitely have it, and probably were in REM when you had this dream. Now what could this dream mean? I think it may be a dream about some of the concerns of growing up, such as "My parents do not trust me enough. They would rather believe some completely unknown who has proven over and over again that he is no good then to belive me." (Remember dreams exaggerate.) And "Sometimes though my parents expect me to handle stuff that I am too unprepared for and abandon me to fending with these issues." It's the problem of growing up: you feel like you deserve to be trusted, and yet you feel unprepared. You want your parents to listen to you when you have something important to say, and yet you expect them to protect you and you feel unprepared for greater independence. I think that the homeless guy may be a part of your personality too: a part that you do not understand, that feels like a stranger, a part that causes trouble and you don't know why, a part that you are not willing to integrate yet (and thus homeless) and you may decide to never do or you may decide to trust it and give it another chance. Your dream "parents" may also represent a part of your personality by the way: so the dream may be about why do you tend to trust something even after it has been proven bad over and over again, and why do you not take better care of yourself. In that sense your dream parents may represent the part of your personality that you yourself expect to be more responsible but sometimes is not, the part of you that tells yourself what to do, and sometimes makes the wrong decisions over and over again. We are complex human beings with complex personalities and sometimes we have trouble understanding ourselves. Of course, the dream also exaggerates: this guy is not really homeless, the troubles are exaggerated, etc. Dreams tend to exaggerate and twist things. Of course, any part of this dream interpretation can be wrong, and feel free to disregard it.