recurrent nightmare about mother

[lmzee]

Hi all, This is my first post here. Thanks for taking me in and listening to my story. I'm thirty-nine, live in Germany but was born and raised in the US. I have two daughters and have been married for thirteen years. My life is busy but pretty uneventful. In my childhood I had a recurrent nightmare about my mother. The dream always started with my mother standing half in shadow. She'd turn to me and I'd see that she was wrapped in an old afghan that I (in RL) associated with being sick. Suddenly, the numbers on a digital clock would start flashing, and I would see that my mother was glowering at me. I suddenly knew that she wanted to kill me. I felt paralyzed with fear and powerless. I knew she would kill me and that there was no escape. I'd then wake up with my heart pounding. I no longer have this dream, though I had it over a fairly long period of my childhood between the age of seven or eight and twelve-ish or later. When I told my husband about it, he told me he had never heard of anyone dreaming about a mother who wants to kill them. He said I probably dreamed that because of my mother's aggressions against me. Growing up, I did often feel like my mother felt jealous and aggressive towards me. She was distant, not maternal in the usual way, and I remember always being pushed away if I tried to hug or cuddle with her. Sometimes she'd explode or be violent in a way that went too far - trying to choke me if I talked back, slapping me in the face out of the blue as I walked by, stopping at the scene of a car accident I'd been involved in as a teen and yelling at me in front of the police (though I wasn't at fault), then driving away without bothering to find out if I'd been hurt. Towards the outside world she often talked about what a great kid I was, how bright and accomplished I was. I never felt love or concern from her and never realized that these things were missing until I met my husband much later. My father was affectionate but weak and childish, dealing with his own issues with alcoholism/drug abuse and deferring to my mother out of fear. It is possible, though I can't be sure because she hasn't been diagnosed, that my mother has some form of bipolar. Her father and all three of her brothers had it/have it. The last time I had contact with her three years ago, I had to flee the house with my two kids because she had another violent episode out of nowhere. She called my cousin to claim I had gone crazy and attacked her, probably as a way of trying to deflect blame onto me. The cousin came to see me right away and told me he believed me because his father, my last living uncle, had been doing similar things for decades now. Of my other two uncles, one died of overexcess at 42 and the other committed suicide in his early thirties. Lately I've been trying to face some of the old issues because I think I have been harming myself by trying to suppress them and just get on with things. As a child, I felt like I deserved to be treated this way and felt guilty by association. I've never really let go of my own fear that deep down, I could be just like her. But my relationship with my own kids gives me hope because I think they feel loved in a way I never did. Am I oversimplifying things by thinking my dream about my mother is really about my mother? Could I have been dreaming about something else? If mothers are symbols of love and the nest, but your own mother never provided any of that, are the symbols still the same? What about the afghan and the blinking clock? If you got through all this, thanks for reading. Any comments are welcome.

[dreamer9]

well i have never interpreted a dream before, but the flashing clock could symbolize that time is running out for something... possibly improving your relationship with your mother? the Afghan that you mentioned could be confirming your suspicions of your mother's bipolar disorder... Just some thoughts...