A dream like no other I've experienced

[chi apprentice]

This is my first time posting here, so hello everyone... After my dream last night, which really spooked me, I decided to do some research on dreams and look for a dream forum like this one to get some other input as well. I read the "read this first" thread about posting here... I hope I give enough information, and the correct information. In any case... I very rarely remember my dreams. When I do, it's just little bits and pieces that never really mean anything to me, and I forget by the next day or two... Not last night. I'll explain a few places and people I'm about to mention. My barn. I love my barn, its amazing, I work 3x a week there mucking stalls and cleaning up, its a good, happy place full of learning. My car... white Acura Integra. Little car, a '97. My boyfriend's church. I do not like the people of the church, they make me extremely uncomfortable. However, the gym, where my dream partly takes place, isn't too bad. I play volleyball there most Thursdays. Kenna, a friend from long ago. She and I met when we were about 2 or 3... (we're both 17 now)... she and I used to be very close, but recently she irritates me. I've been very involved with theatre for a few years now... I'm currently working on a show with my community, Kenna is part of the show we're doing. I was at the barn and apparently I needed to kill these two kids. I didn't want to though. When I went to stab them, they were just laying there, like they were already dead. It didn't occur to me if they were or not. Anyway, I bend down and consider what to do. I was going to maybe just slit their throats, but even that I wasn't too sure. I stand back up and there's blood everywhere, on them, on me, on the stall doors (remember, barn), dripping off the knife. Apparently I had killed them, but in my dream I did not see myself do it. I felt so scared and worried about what will happen to me. Next thing I know, I'm driving around in my car and people are screaming at me that it's only a matter of time until I get a knife in the chest as well. I'm dodging people and cars and people keep trying to talk to me, but then they always just say "THEY'RE GONNA FIND OUT"... One of the places I drive is a familiar road, and place I've driven several times in the last two weeks or so. The other main place I drive is a place I've never seen before. I pulled in a cul-de-sac in a neighborhood, and people are running out of their perfectly clean houses with perfect lawns, down their driveway, and screaming at me. I was frustrated with everyone talking to me and I was scared. I was also humiliated. I got very paranoid, worried someone would stab me. I pull out my phone to text someone, and there's blood on my phone. Mainly over the 4 key, then it spreads/smears to other parts of my phone. Its my exact phone too. I put my phone away and look back to the road. So then I'm in the gym at my boyfriend's church, walked in on rehearsal for some sort of theatre production, and Kenna comes up to me, starts to talk to me. I tell her I really have to get going, I can't stay here, there's too many people... I don't like large groups of people, and there were just too many and I felt closed in. I walk "outside"... I put that in quotes because I don't know where I was. I turned away from Kenna and I was suddenly somewhere else. I don't know where, it was only for a split second. It seemed like I was somewhere outside, but I can't be sure. In any case... I get stabbed in the chest. I don't remember seeing a hand on the knife, but at the same time I don't remember a lack of a hand. All I saw was the knife going into my chest. That concludes my dream... I wake up because of the pain. This was around 4:30 this morning, I was up until 6 trying to relax, my chest hurt so bad. It's gotten better by now (now that its afternoon) but when I take a deep breath, something is constricting around my ribs. Well... I hope someone can help me a bit. Or even direct me to a good website to help me identify a lot of the aspects of it (a dream dictionary of sorts), I know there was a lot I just threw at you. Thanks in advance, Amanda

[kingius]

It sounds like you have unresolved guilt over some pain you have caused another who really did not deserve it. Perhaps even you have caused this pain, this wound to them, by accident. Deep down, I think, you feel that what you did to that person should be done back to you to redress the balance.

[Delilah]

The part about your chest hurting in the waking life sounds disturbing. If you wake up from another dream with your chest hurting, you should definitely see a doctor. I don't know to what degree that pain would have affected you to know whether you should see a doctor now, but since you're the one who experienced the dream and its after-effects, it's your call. I don't know what your dream means, but sometimes when we sleep sensations from real life can leak into our dreams: someone might be talking, and you'd hear some of that in your dream, or there might be bright headlights in your dream caused by sun shining through your window. The entire story of your dream might have been based around what your body was feeling while you were asleep. Hopefully it was just a creepy coincidence and something harmless, though.