Old dream still bothers me, haven't made sense of it

[Amoeba]

Ok, some background story: I had this dream maybe about a year or two ago. Most dreams that I have not been able to interpret I just forget about, but this one keeps popping back into my mind, as if there is something in it that needs resolved, or something in it that I need to understand. I've posted this about before, but I was not able to get very much help. The dream: I was walking up a set of concrete stairs in an old broken apartment building. All the doors were off their hinges, everyone just lived kind of communally. It was filthy and smelly, dark and cold and there weren't many people. I felt really really sick, like the sympathy nausea you feel when you're with someone who is sick. There were children running about as if they were happy - probably knew nothing better than the squalor they were enduring - but they looked sick. Pale, skinny, covered in sores and scars. Their mother looked even sicker than they did, but she carried on with a smile on her face and worry on her eyebrows washing the clothes by hand in cold, plain water. I almost got the feeling she knew they were doomed to die like this, but wanted to stay strong for her children. There was so much pain, sadness and agony - yet so much love. I'll never be able to forget it. When I left the building the nausea lifted. It was snowing, the landscape was covered in snow. The city could be seen in the background but it seemed eerily quiet - no traffic noise, not even any movement. Just tall, quiet, grey buildings listening to the near-silent snowfall. I could hear a man whistling and singing. It was an old man with a big grey beard. He was with his dog and he was singing about the "good old days". Again, I could sense so much love, it was unlike anything I'd been able to comprehend before. What I have derived from it so far: Not a lot. I have had this dream nagging away at me for so long and nothing really to show for it - the reason why I tried to give up interpreting it. I simply didn't think there was anything to interpret. But dreams typically do not keep bugging me time after time, not in the dream state but a waking state. I haven't had it re-occur as a dream, but the emotions and atmosphere and the characters keep coming back to me while awake. The man with the dog does most of all, I don't know why. I don't know any old men and I don't particularly like dogs. I tend to get anxious and get sympathy symptoms when someone else near me is feeling uneasy or unwell, it would explain why I felt the way I did in the dream but not why I haven't been able to get it off my mind or why I had this dream. I am particularly afraid of severe sickness and disease, especially in filthy conditions. I remember feeling guilty for wanting to get out of that building, as if I wanted to avoid these people despite the fact they had done me no wrong. The amount of love I felt from them made me feel even more guilty. The setting almost seems like a sort of post-apocalyptic setting. I have had lots of post-apocalypse type dreams that I have felt very much connected to, but have never really bought into the idea that such a thing will ever happen in reality. Nations will rise and fall, but I think humanity as a whole still has some ways to go yet. So, for anyone who is willing, can someone help me with interpretation?

[Darkmatters]

Hi amoeba -- let me state right up front, I'm not a certified dream interpreter on this site.. not sure if there's a team of specialists who handle this section, or if it's ok for newbs like me to post here... but I'm not offering an interpretation really so much as tossing out what might be helpful questions, so I hope this is alright. Ok, fine print out of the way... Sometimes it's helpful to think about every character in a dream as representing yourself. This was Freud's contention, though it's not always true. sometimes we definitely dream about other people, or even things we saw on TV or whatever. Question... were you anxious about sickness as a child? One possible interpretation would be you saw yourself as a child, innocent and happy not yet suffering from the anxiety... there was an adult, possibly representing you AS an adult (their mother)... sick (with anxiety?). And maybe you were projecting into the future an seeing yourself old and happy, cured of the anxiety? Sorry, wasn't going to offer any interpretations... but that's just completely hypothetical. I have no idea if it's anywhere near target. Ok, signing off now to leave this to the professionals.

[Amoeba]

Was I anxious about sickness - yes, I had a phobia of vomit, which I cured for when I am sick but still haven't gotten over other people throwing up. But the phobia was specifically to do with physical vomiting, not being ill in general. There was no vomiting in this dream. The most it could relate to the dream is the guilt of running away from people and having a major freak-out panic attack when they puked when they could use my help - very similar to the guilt felt in that dream when I couldn't stand the atmosphere in that building any longer and retreated away from it. The fear of disease and illness is really quite new to me, probably because of my sheltered upbringing I was simply unaware until more recently that these things even happened, and that people could endure such pain and suffering. I appreciate your suggestion and there has been a connection to part of the dream as a result (the guilt) - even if just a small one.

[Darkmatters]

Cool. I suppose it would help immensely of course if you could say what was going on in your life at that time... anything important. But what are the chances you'd happen to remember that? Unless of course you kept a journal or diary at the time. I have often kept journals, and Im often quite surprised when I go back and read parts of them to find what parts of my life occurred at the same time. Usually my memories of different events are completely disjointed... I mean Ill remember for instance a time when I got fired from a job and a time when I dreamed some particular dream, but surprise surprise when I check the journal they happened at the same time and I never would have guessed it. The point of this long-winded spiel is that if something did happen that might have caused the dream you might have a skewed memory of WHEN they happened in relation to each other unless you journaled them. It's a good idea to include waking life and dreams together in a journal for this reason. Oh, another thing that can help you to interpret this dream is to go though and take each character and each situation and each setting etc, and list anything and everything that they make you think about... even in an offhand way. Sometimes association will hold a clue. A lot of times once you start writing about something it helps you focus your thinking on the subject a lot better than just freeform thought.

[wyldfire111]

A possibly Jungian style interpretation might ask the question was there ever a person in your life that you neglected when they had an illness? Possibly lingering guilt for a realitive that you didn't spend time with before they died?

[Amoeba]

No, if it did happen I wasn't aware, so couldn't have remembered.

[johnpaulww]

just a guess. you see very people of poor physical health. and poor economically. but they are one big family. super loving and happy. maybe its a lesson. to teach you that money does not bring happiness, its your family and friends and the relationships that you build in your life that bring you happiness. when you go outside you see the simplicity. not a confusing city life. the whistling man is sad because the simple happiness is gone and peoples focuses have shifted from relationships with your family and friends that bring happiness, to nowadays seeking happiness from objects and material wealth. my two cents - good luck bud

[Amoeba]

just a guess. you see very people of poor physical health. and poor economically. but they are one big family. super loving and happy. maybe its a lesson. to teach you that money does not bring happiness, its your family and friends and the relationships that you build in your life that bring you happiness. when you go outside you see the simplicity. not a confusing city life. the whistling man is sad because the simple happiness is gone and peoples focuses have shifted from relationships with your family and friends that bring happiness, to nowadays seeking happiness from objects and material wealth. my two cents - good luck bud Thanks. I feel I learned that lesson years ago, I don't know maybe it was a manifestation of that lesson. My parents always tried to buy my love substituting affection for things instead and as a result I was unhappy and lonely growing up. I learned to see little value in material things and cherish every bit of affection I got to share with someone, and that was usually not with my parents. I feel the simplicity had a sinister side to it, it was cold and harsh, raw nature. The old man wasn't looking back on the old simple days, he was looking back on the material age. Now that you mention that, the city having gone back to simplicity, back to nature even, there is a theme of dependency. The family who were starving and dying, clinging on to nothing but their love for one another, were living in an old derelict building where there once would have been heating, running clean water, and shelter from the harsh winds - now its almost uninhabitable but yet they stay because they don't know how to survive anywhere else. Perhaps the old man is misguided, I think he was a manifestation of me actually, blinded by the idea that we need all this materialism to survive. I really do feel that by the old days he was referring to the present day, him being in the future in a time when many humans have forgotten the very basics of survival. I think that's why he had a dog - maybe he was re-learning love and the importance of relationships.

[Darkmatters]

It's fascinating that our subconscious cooks up these little entertainments for us, in great complexity, but our conscious minds are often unable to understand just what they mean. How odd... you'd think you would be able to understand your own subconscious more clearly. But then, this way it makes dreams endlessly fascinating, which they wouldn't be if we understood them clearly. Hmmmm.....