Strange reoccurring story/mythology in my dreams.
I'm brand new to this site. I've been looking for resources that might explain some of the reoccurring dreams that I have but so far nothing has been helpful.
I'm a woman in my twenties, I am a student at a prominent and very competitive university. I am not married and do not have children. I come from a good family, two wonderful parents, three brothers and a sister. My relationships are mostly good with them. I date off and on, but have commitment issues. I often pull out pretty early on if I think the man is starting to fall in love with me, because I don't want to lead them on and I am slow to warm up. I am an INFJ. I love animals and children. I've dealt with depression for much of my adult life. I work as a preschool student teacher and a security officer respectively.
I have an inordinate level of control over my own mind and body. I'm good with pain. I once had to recieve police certification for carrying mace on the job. Part of the certification process meant I had to allow a cop to mace me right in the face, so that I would know how it felt. This was to show me how to use the mace, how it felt when it hits you square in the eyes, and how to push through the pain and keep working in a dangerous situation. Also so that we would not be temped to use it in a situation that could be deescalated another way.
I told myself it was going to hurt, but that it was okay. The cop sprayed me in the eyes. I pushed the pain down mentally to where I could barely feel it and walked it off. The sheriff said that he'd never seen someone respond so calmly nor recover so quickly.
The reason I say this is to give an example over the control I have over my own mind and body. It isn't the normal level of mental control, and I'm not sure how I got that way. I can think myself out of being afraid, and push myself to action. I can instantly take control of my dreams if the situation becomes unpleasant, and have never had any real practice or serious research on lucid dreaming.
I have sleep paralysis chronically. Though I haven't in a few months.
I have strange dreams.
First I guess I should explain that my dreams have a very specific rules that have been consistent since I was a small child.
1. when being pursued by something or if I need to be hidden or sneak past someone, holding one's breath turns you invisible to enemies.
2. Solid objects can be phased through if you slow your breathing and press into it in a specific way.
There are also certain places I have never been that I dream of constantly.
Such as a glen with a dirt path surrounding a muddy pond.
An old house with a locked basement, on the moors, with a boathouse and an old dock.
A man with blonde hair and blue eyes, who is my husband or boyfriend in the dreams though he does not exist in real life and I have never met anyone like him before.
A dark unpleasant woman who is not my mother, trapped in the basement of the house, desperate to be freed so she can do... something. Like something bad. in the dreams she's supposedly my mother though I've never met her and she clearly isn't my mother. Myself and a handful of other people I've never met work together to keep her trapped (she's less like a real person in the dream and more like a witch or a hag) because if she gets out something bad will happen. But in the dreams the one thing she wants more than to be freed is for me to be trapped in the basement with her.
Most of the dreams about her, involve these long elaborate histories of her and her own mother, I can't remember most of it. There is a father but he's kind of sad and is usually trapped with her.
There are several dreams in which we are trying to free him while leaving the mother trapped, but freeing him comes with weird consequences and alters the rest of the dream world negatively.
(yeah this sounds super weird typing it all out. But these dreams are way detailed.)
There's also an old church in my dream with long hallways surrounding a chapel and cultural hall. There are secret passageways that lead under the church and into a kind of catacomb of tunnels. I dream that myself and countless others are hiding in the catacombs from bad people. I know the catacombs really well and could probably draw a map of them from memory. There is also a ladder leading upwards behind a stage or podium. The ladder leads to a catwalk, a door, and a hole in the wall that leads to more tunnels. You can hide in the tunnels and lose enemies in the catacombs. And in the dreams when being pursued, I always think of the tunnels and passageways and go there to escape.
There are other people I dream about from time to time that do not exist. There is a dark haired man and his family, he claims to be my husband and his family wants me to go away with them but I don't want to go. So I tell them I'm not ready or I make some deal or excuse and the man promises to come back in a few years to take me. Its a weird dream to be sure.
All of my dreams are in color. My mirror image is never distorted in dreams but normal.
That glen I mentioned earlier is a lot like the catacombs in that I know the paths and areas very well and lose people in them, or hide out. There is one area near the muddy lake/pond that creeps me out. I never go there if I can help it. there is a pale man who sometimes appears there and he's scary af . Also not a real person.
I guess thats enough for right now.
what do you lot think it means?
The catacomb or church dreams rarely feel scary. I feel like the moment I step into the tunnels I have control, or that I can lead away enemies or lose them.
Many of my dreams are about escaping but I rarely feel afraid during them unless I have to help someone else escape. Then it becomes stressful and I have to lead them through the danger.
The dreams with the mother are a stale kind of creepy. They feel familiar, like its all happened before and it will all happen again. They also feel melancholy. Like I want to save the mother or change her, but there is no way to do so.
The glen dreams are creepier. Like the entire pond area is a danger zone. I don't know the pale man. Or what he'd do if he caught me. But I don't want to know either.
The boathouse feels the most dreamlike. There is a girl who hides under the boat in the murky water. I lay in the boat and talk to her. She is sad. But not creepy. She feels like an old friend with whom I used to be very close but I've forgotten the name of.
And then theres the well. behind the house is a dry well. If you climb to the bottom you can see the bars to a tunnel that leads to the basement where the mother stays. It feels like a secret that I don't want to mother or the girl in the boathouse to know about.
Thats good for now.
What do you think? I really want to know what your interpretations would be.
EDIT: I've never lived in the english moors, near a glen, or any body of water with a boathouse.
