Thread: Weird dreams since baby was born

The whole experience of having a baby is topsy-turvy enough without the unfortunate anxiety that you’re going through, but the good thing is you’re open to what your dreams can offer regarding this difficult situation.

And this particular dream is presenting in metaphorical terms a basic objective view of your personal situation along with a few apt pieces of advice on how to move forward towards a less stressful state of affairs.

Although in order to provide a more accurate interpretation it would usually be best to have some additional background information about you, a few ideas about your dream can be outlined as follows.

For example, it’s conceivable that the “meeting at the library” has been called in order to discuss the upsetting nature of your current circumstances.

But perhaps from the dream’s point of view, the library with its shelves of maybe stock answers, maxims, “good advice” and opinions etc. (as perhaps coming from both inside and outside yourself) won’t work very well in solving the problem (i.e. everybody is apparently drunk and the meeting isn’t being very productive).

In response, it looks like the dream could be proposing the need to firmly return to your instincts and to trust them, i.e. as in the basic, primal image of a mother feeding her child.

But in this way of looking at your dream, something is described symbolically that might tend to obstruct this proposal and this could potentially result in continuing problems.

For example, your car is parked on a hill which apparently must be fairly steep.

The suggestion might be that some attitude or outlook etc. causes you to be usually moving “uphill” and contrary to the pull of “gravity” or natural instincts as it were.

A vehicle symbolizes the complex mix of the physical body along with one’s interests, drives, wishes and beliefs etc. etc., that is, it symbolizes a kind of body-and-soul unity.

It’s possible that there’s been a kind of rebellion on the part of this unity which has caused it to “let loose” with a lot of anxiety (i.e. the gear switches on its own from Parked to Neutral, allowing the car to move backwards, making you feel completely out of control in the dream).

The fact that the car apparently did not have its brakes applied and the transmission alone was being relied upon to keep the car parked on an incline might possibly imply that the “pause” to look at things with the aim of improving your situation at the meeting could perhaps be undermined by certain habits of thought and so on which would tend to want to continue to move “uphill” contrary to an instinctive pull “downwards” basically to the “earth” and a certain “groundedness” of living in the moment for example.

If so, it’s as if the body-soul will have nothing to do with any such strategy and therefore sabotages it, resulting in the frightening feeling that no matter how you try to control your emotions, nothing seems to work (i.e. you hit the brakes but the car speeds up).

Then you, the stranger and Aladdin manage to slow the car down enough so that you can jump out with the baby.

Perhaps this might possibly indicate that some trait of character possessed by your fiancé’s brother could be helpful in relieving your sense of anxiety if made part of yourself in some way.

Also, the presence of Aladdin from the Walt Disney movie could represent the value of returning to some child-like attitudes, especially if this movie is related in some way to pleasant childhood memories.

In any case, the dream apparently takes a final swipe at your usual conscious attitude by making the car a toy one, perhaps implying that now you’re a mother, from the dream’s point of view, it’s time to somehow replace some “childish” attitudes (not be confused with “child-like” ones) and to become more “adult” in certain areas of your approach to life.

In the next part of the dream, your fiancé probably mostly symbolizes some helpful reflections, thoughts and ideas that are more “sober” because they relate to your actual personal situation as opposed to being rooted in broad, general concepts and approaches etc.

Following this new, personal route is safer than staying with old habits etc. (i.e. he is afraid and recommends staying in the library overnight).

The library has changed into a church and you go down many flights of stairs to a baptismal font.

This implies a movement down into your soul or psyche to be “reborn” by immersion in the “healing waters” of transformation (i.e. your fiancé wants you all to bathe in the baptismal font).

But change and having to adopt new attitudes and ways of thinking is inherently challenging and understandably upsetting (i.e. you are afraid of the water rising in the font and prefer to shower using “secular” water which has no power to effect regeneration).

When you return to the room, it’s an impressive scene of a large deck with various swimming pools containing animals, everything being bathed in the warm light of the sun.

The dream appears to be saying that by consciously working at your situation (i.e. the deck has been made through manual work), you’ll be able to gradually “sort out” (i.e. a different type of animal is in each pool) your relationship with the varying aspects of your instinctive life within.

For example, the seal probably represents the lively, playful part of the instincts which feels at ease in contact with the unconscious (i.e. with water) while the bear can be more problematic.

All of the impressions that you’ve consciously and unconsciously received during your lifetime regarding the image of a bear are being used by your dream to express part of its central meaning in a symbolic way.

You can try focusing on the images of the bear in your dream and write down every spontaneous memory, thought and emotion that comes to mind. Sifting through these can provide some basic clues about the meaning of a bear for you as an individual.

Also useful are the collective beliefs and impressions made by bears on people as a whole over thousands of years.

Briefly summarized, these include the idea of many cultures that the bear is the quintessential “wild beast”.

Also, its awesome strength and its supremacy in wilderness areas have often made the bear an incarnation of nature itself.

And from the earliest times, bears have formed a central part of religious practices for many peoples.

Just like nature, a bear has two sides. It can be clever, prudent, “wise” and protective. On the other hand, if crossed, it can become extremely violent and destructive, going “berserk” (etymologically derived from Old Norse “berserk” = "wild warrior”, probably from the stem of “bjorn” = "bear" + serkr "shirt").

In practical terms, if a person “angers” his or her instincts too much, an “attack” can potentially take the form of any one of an endless range among upsetting physical and/or psychological symptoms, perhaps unfortunately as has appeared in your feelings of anxiety.

Our job is to meet our inner bear half way by respecting its wisdom while being wary of its volatility in certain circumstances.

Perhaps by frantically trying to “rescue” your baby from the apparently non-aggressive bear could limit the growth in some way of your own inner child’s spiritual wisdom by not “getting to know” your inner bear.

Apparently from the dream’s point of view, not gradually facing this inner “bear-reality” could potentially lead to a continuing serious “confusion” and a lack of ease regarding your own instinctive reactions and those of your baby as he continues to grow (i.e. the hallucinations regarding your baby and the animals)

So in summary, the dream could possibly be saying that the core of your anxiety is the reality that even among psychologically robust and stable women such as yourself, feelings associated with pregnancy and birth tend to be highly contradictory.

For example, it’s only natural for the feelings of joy and excitement about the baby to struggle against those of fear and refusal as likely have appeared in the drastic change involved in becoming a stay at home mom for example.

But if a mother leans too strongly towards beliefs and opinions that include “I must think only kind thoughts about my baby” etc., and blocks out “unacceptable” emotions and reactions, then this makes the instincts “angry” because their ancient wisdom as it were is being ignored too often.

Anyway, without knowing anything much about you, this approach to your dream might not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope that these ideas can be helpful in some way and that your bad dreams and feelings of anxiety can disappear or at least appear much less frequently.

Please feel free to ask any questions or to make any comments about this way of looking at your dream.