Recurring (and escalating) dream about Charlie Sheen

Greetings, all.

I've been having a recurring dream about the actor, Charlie Sheen. To give some background, I'm neither a fan nor a detractor of the man. I don't think he's as talented as his father and brother are, but he has done some parts in shows that I enjoyed. (However, most roles he plays, I think he's pretty boring and isn't really making an effort.) I don't follow him in particular--if the media suddenly deems him 'newsworthy' (such as getting fired from a hit show), then I hear about it, since it's plastered all over the place. Otherwise, I don't.

Off and on for the past few months, I dreamt that I married him because quite literally, his life depended upon it, and I was terrified at what would happen if I didn't--I didn't want him dying because I refused to help. (I'm not quite sure why the marriage saved his life, though.) But once I did, my sympathy disappeared and I was angry and resentful and afraid. He seems to be frightened of me, and keeps trying to tell me the marriage will work if I just let it, and that he really needs it to work, he can't have it fail. This has been the general nature of the dream, where I seem to be trying to keep my distance and just get him to leave me alone as much as possible. Sometimes his father (who I know in real life is Martin Sheen, but in my dreams is Michael Douglas) tries to intercede on his behalf to ask me to give him a chance to show he could be a good husband. I'm always tempted to do this after his dad talks to me, but then when I see him, I'm angry and resentful and afraid again.

Last night, the dream escalated where we actually had a fight. In the dream, I was watching a movie he was in (I don't know if it was a real one he was in), and he made a snide comment about that being progress, that I would actually watch him on TV even if I wouldn't talk to him. I got mad and picked up the remote control, which got very hot in my hand, and pointed it at him, and he got scared and ran. And I remember I was horrified at how close I'd come to doing something *really* awful to him, started feeling bad for him again, and thinking I should apologize and agree to try to make things work.

I tried 'tracking' these dreams to see if maybe they got triggered by my watching a movie/TV show that he was in, or if he'd maybe been mentioned in the news, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If anything, I've found out as a result of all this that out of all the movies he's made, I've only seen seven of them, and of those seven, four of them I never even realized he was in it (he had cameo or bit parts, or had just been starting out and I never made the connection over the years of "Oh, that was a young Charlie Sheen.")

Any thoughts appreciated. Given that I never thought much about the actor one way or the other, it's a head-scratcher why my subconscious is choosing him.

It's probably unimportant why Charlie Sheen in particular, though possibly it's because of certain of his qualities (er - or lack thereof?) - no, I mean his personality traits or maybe those of the characters he's played (which mostly seem to be himself). The important thing is how those traits and the type of relationship represented in the dreams relates to you and your life.

The reason for him recurring can be simply because you dreamed randomly of him once and woke up wondering what the hell that was about and as a result he got impressed into your mind. This happens sometimes when a dream causes great wonder or puzzlement, it makes you think a lot about it, and what you think about tends to show up in your dreams, especially if it's something dream-related, so a sort of big self-reinforing cycle.

You didn't mention if you're married or not - and I'm not asking you to, but that's an important factor for you to consider and can make a big difference. For instance, if you're married it might be saying something about your marriage, or if you haven't been married it might be more about your fears of how any relationships might go for you. His latest show is Anger Management, and that seems to be a big factor in the dreams - both of you being afraid of each other and you especially being afraid of what you almost did to him. By any chance do you have problems with anger? Or maybe in the past you had a boyfriend that you almost hurt or something?

If you don't actually have anger issues, don't worry about it, because rage is something that sometimes just happens in dreams randomly. Apparently the brain needs to occasionally test-fire its various systems, including those associated with anger and fear, and it does that in dreams, which often scare the heck out of people. I've had rage dreams before - not often though.

I've had dreams where I was apparently living somebody else's life, this is something to keep in mind. I mean, I was me in the dreams, but my situation was one that on waking I realized represented a friend of mine. The dreams quite literally put me in their shoes so I could better understand their lives from their own viewpoint and be able to appreciate what they've gone through. The couple in your dream might not even include you, it might be a couple you know. Possibly you're trying on somebody's life to see if you can understand what it's like to be her. Know anybody like that? Especially if maybe your opinion of her is harsh or unforgiving, that tends to be when we get these dreams (at least I assume so, in my case it seems to be true). As Carl Gustav Jung has said often a dream is a correction of a waking attitude.