Dream self extremely depressed.

[Aniviel]

Hi all; I'm not even a lurker, but I've posted here before in the past and you guys were very helpful. I just had two dreams in a row where my dream self was lethargic and depressed, and utterly without hope for the future. In the first, I had for some reason gender-swapped into a (highschool or college-age) schoolboy, and was at some sort of career-fair or college fair or something, not sure. The place was filled with serious forward-looking youths like myself, uniformed in these cliché school clothes, all dark pants and starched shirts and blazers and ties. I was there, wandering around and thinking about what a waste life was and how I couldn't bear to even feign interest in any of the booths set up. In the second, the main part that I'm worried about was preceded only by my (real-life) brother's gruesome loss of one of his legs in a capricious bout of some sport involving a cannon, and my accompanying another mentally disturbed (dream-fabricated) sibling to a grim, dank sort of home for the insane. Anyway, there was a swimming race in a lake near my house, and the passage going right by my backyard dock was literally packed with nearly identical swimmers, belly-to-belly and shoulder-to-shoulder. Note that this has been a fear of mine in the past-- entering water where the surface is filled with people/objects that might make it difficult to find a way to the top or even be noticed. In the dream, I was disgusted with my life and did a half-hearted dive into the water, thinking as I slipped in, 'Good. Maybe I won't have to come back up.' In both cases, the depression my dream self had made her mostly apathetic and simply defeatist-- there was never any wrenching despair involved. Now, I used to struggle with these sorts of feelings ALONG with some despair, but the thing that weirds me out most is that lately, my life could not be better. My senior year of highschool united me with some truly awesome people who have helped me see the world as the wonderful and exciting place that it is. I am headed off in just a few weeks to a respectable college that I absolutely adore. I have lovely friends. Most of all, because of how I used to view the world, I marvel every day at how good I feel now. These dreams have been extremely worrying, but I'm wondering if they could just be pre-college jitters. I am heading across the country, and I'm isolating myself from all of my old friends and a new romance. (I know from last night's dream-- with which Freud would have had a FIELD DAY-- that I am sort of worried about leaving behind my parents and their practical knowledge, even though I am also happy to be away from the irritation ) Furthermore, I associate a lot of my old depression with school, even though that's not at all how I feel now. Maybe I'm worried that something is going to upset my perfect life... Any thoughts?

[unclesirbob]

well your dream is maybe taking you bvack to those lethargic times and saying "do not return to such times. You knw what they were like" ------------------------ To understand the dream mind you need to understand neural networks. Neural networks store up information by comparing one thing to another. They store moments when you felt similar. For instance one time you may feel extremely exhausted after you finished some exams. So when you have a dream it may point to this event as a way of expressing how you feel about some current event. Put simply a dream therefor says "I felt tired yesterday after completing the work tasks. I was really as tired as I was after I finished my exams last year". So a dream really express our feelings by pointing to a series of unrelated metaphors. Dreams tend to build up a meaning using a series of metaphors. So a dream may feature you "feeling tired", "feeling confused doing a puzzle" and finally "getting drunk". So the dream mind is actually building up a set of feelings by pointing to a series of feelings you felt previously. These seemingly unrelated events and feelings may simply be pointing to the previous day when "I felt tired yesterday at work. I steadily getting more confused. By the end of the day I was totally incapable of making any rational judgements". So in that way getting drunk expresses how you felt INCAPABLE at work the previous day. Its in this way that metaphors build up a dreams meaning. But the dream mind is refering to these almost like a list such as "felt as tired as I was during the exams", "felt very confused" and "I was aiming for a target". These pages are especially helpful in showing you how to interpret dreams http://unclesirbobby.110mb.com/dreamessayhowtopost.php Interpreting dreams http://unclesirbobby.110mb.com/dreamessayhowto.php Triggers for dreams http://unclesirbobby.110mb.com/dreamessay.php Dream dictionary