What does this really mean?

I dreamt that I was in a room with my daughter as an adult. There was also a coffin in the room which she insisted on opening. When she opened the coffin, in it was my daughter as a little girl. She insisted on looking at her, turning her over, etc. My daughter and I don't have the best relationship. I feel that she has squandered all opportunities afforded to her. I know that she will never reach her potential(and she has a lot). She is very smart and could have been anything she wanted, but she has chosen to live a life of struggle. She has told repeated lies in which I am portrayed as a villain. Even now in her 30's she still does it. I have seen where she has posted out and out lies about me, and it hurts a lot. She has done this type of thing since she was a teenager. I do still try to help her when I can, but I feel that she doesn't appreciate anything I do. Now, this dream.

Ok, my reply is biased, I must warn you, because I am a grown daughter, who has at times resented my parents attempts at interfering with my choices. However, given that:

Maybe this dream is suggesting that the little girl you knew is no more, and that your daughter is a grown up now, and that in your dream, she was trying to show you that, so that you can see that she is no longer that little girl?

*Moved to Dream Interpretation*

It’s of course an understatement to say that the situation with your daughter is a deeply painful one but hopefully, a reasonable resolution can be found in the future.

Trying to interpret a dream without knowing anything much about you and her is difficult, but it’s possible that the dream is saying that it might be helpful to examine in some way the origins of her very hurtful attitude towards you.

For example, if you have a sense of how old your daughter is in the upsetting image of her in the coffin, you could try thinking back to the time when she was around that age.

Any memories, thoughts and feelings that spontaneously come to mind surrounding this difficult image can be written down.

Then by sifting through what emerges, a clue about the basic cause of her feelings toward you might become clearer.

For example, it might hinge somehow on the idea that something vital in her “died” around that time or was even “killed” so that by the time she became a teenager, her rebellion was stronger than it normally would have been.

She (i.e. the little girl inside her) apparently views you as a “villain” who did something “villainous” to her.

Of course, this could have arisen from the misunderstanding of various circumstances as seen through the eyes of a young child and if so, would need some gradual, sensitive correction by describing the actual facts involved.

Or perhaps out of an understandable parental desire to do everything possible to ensure the success of your child in the outer world, certain natural tendencies and abilities in her personality were discouraged directly or indirectly because they may have seemed of the type which society in general doesn’t highly value.

However as mentioned, without knowing anything much about you and your daughter, this approach to your upsetting dream may not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way.

Please feel free to make any comments you wish to about this particular way of looking at your dream.