I Experience The Emotions Of All DCs In My Dream

**Aerin** · 01-16-2014 12:29 AM

I have had pretty vivid nightmares since I was thirteen, largely about being raped or hunted by various DCs (almost never anyone I know in real life). When this first started occurring, I was very disturbed when I awoke and it took me hours to snap out of the bad mood I was left with, but after the age of 17 most of my dreams involving rape or murder began seeming more distant. They still occurred with the same frequency, though my brain felt much more desensitized to it and it seemed as though I could almost fast forward over the worst parts of the dream.
However, for the past year since I've turned 20, my worst nightmares are no longer about rape or being killed. I have dreams where I experience the emotions of all the characters in my dream. In all of these dreams my real life persona is present with another character and I can feel my perspective, but I can also feel the repercussions of everything I say or do in the other character as if I were them as well. I do not jump characters. I am both simultaneously. Honestly, these dreams are deeply heartbreaking. They normally deal with feelings of despair, loneliness and rejection--where I am responsible for inflicting the pain and experiencing it. Also, I have dreams where the other DC represents a person I know very well and takes the form of someone or something else, but I seem to intuitively know who they are without any sort of queue. In all of these cases, the dreams themselves are very uneventful, but the feelings alone are so gut-wrenching that they stay with me for months after they occur. I have a difficult time shaking the feelings I experience alone for days.
I still experience dreams of being raped and murdered, but during the dream I feel annoyed because I'm so desensitized to them and the other dreams are so much worse by comparison. Has anyone else experienced dreams where they are able to feel the emotions of everyone in their dreams? If so, have you always had these dreams or were they something you acquired? Also, does the fact that I can do this mean that I am making progress towards the awareness found in lucid dreaming or is it just another subset of nightmare I have no control over?

**Sunyata** · 01-16-2014 02:24 AM

Hey Aerin,

You didn't mention, are these dreams all lucid or non-lucid? I've been able to put a stop to any recurring nightmares through lucidity, so if you're not getting fully lucid in these dreams, that's a definite goal. The way I've been able to do it is that when I become lucid in such a dream, I stop and look around at everything I see/hear and realize that it's all part of my consciousness. In this way, I take a moment to really understand that dream characters represent a part of myself that is so unresolved that it needs to personify itself as a dream person in order to get dealt with. Once I feel like I really get that, I start interacting with the dream again, but this time with a sense of compassion for myself and the desire to really learn from everyone in the dream.

From there, you can try asking the DCs individually, "why are you here" or "what do you want to tell me" or even "why am I dreaming about you". That usually changes the conversation quite drastically from a drama in which you're a player, to a situation where they're giving you insight into yourself. After dealing with dream characters in this way (sometimes even just once), it feels like that part of your consciousness that was manifesting as a DC has been dealt with and brought into the open.

Do this over and over again until you've mastered the idea that they are trying to help you understand something. It's weird to say, but now I actually look forward to nightmares because they're such deeply rewarding experiences (even when they're not lucid now).

**Aerin** · 01-16-2014 08:57 AM

Sunyata, thank you so much for your reply. I was very hesitant about reaching out to any sort of dream-related community, but this issue has irked me for so long that I was really pushed to share my experiences in a more public forum. Your reply really put me at ease, just knowing that I have nothing to be afraid of, as silly as that sounds. =P

To answer your first question, I didn't explicitly state whether or not I was lucid dreaming because I was still a bit fuzzy on the definition. After a bit of research, I am lucid dreaming in the sense that I'm often aware that I'm dreaming during the dream, but I've never had much dream control. When I do, I think that it's a failure to recall when I wake or a conscious decision to fast forward over some parts of the dream. That's as much control as I've ever had. How self-aware are you while you lucid dream? Because the only reason I'm aware that I'm dreaming is that I can track my own reaction during the dream. For instance, I often feel annoyed during events that should otherwise be traumatic because they've occurred so much. I realize how misplaced the feeling of annoyance is with regard to other emotions that I should be feeling like anger or sadness which is how I become aware of the dream. It's as if my conscious self is watching a movie that it can't leave. I don't always achieve this level of lucidity; during my most emotional dreams--particularly the ones where I am every DC, I'm unaware that I'm dreaming because I'm missing that annoyance dream sign.

I am definitely curious about finding ways to develop more dream control, however my attempt at a dream journal proved fruitless. I didn't feel comfortable recording the terrible things that I dreamed about (which I suppose is something I'll just have to get over) and stopped after around two weeks. In that sense, I haven't been very proactive, but I am curious as to what you meant when you wrote that all DCs represent unconscious issues. My own dream experience so far has lead me to believe that some dreams are very symbolic, while others are so vile that I think that it's just my imagination seeing how far it can bend my tolerance. Because of this, I'd like to think that some dreams are simply meaningless. What's your view on this? Also, what issues have you resolved through lucid dreaming, or do you become aware of the issue just enough during the dream that you are able to logically resolve it during your waking hours?

**Sunyata** · 01-16-2014 08:48 PM

Totally understand your hesitation...the internet can be such a mean place and dreams are so personal

Glad I can help at all!! I'll try to address all your points and see if I can shed any light here.... (this might be a long post, haha.)

Originally Posted by Aerin

I didn't explicitly state whether or not I was lucid dreaming because I was still a bit fuzzy on the definition. After a bit of research, I am lucid dreaming in the sense that I'm often aware that I'm dreaming during the dream, but I've never had much dream control.

There are definitely different levels of lucidity, ranging from not-lucid to fully-lucid. It sounds like you're in a bit of a pre-lucid state in a lot of these dreams. That means, you get the sense that something is up, but it hasn't fully hit you that you're dreaming inside your own consciousness and can literally do whatever you want. There's a lot of great material that will help you turn those kinds of situations into fully-lucid dreams (on this site and in many great books. I recommend starting with Stephen LaBerge's "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" if you haven't read it yet)

Originally Posted by Aerin

How self-aware are you while you lucid dream? Because the only reason I'm aware that I'm dreaming is that I can track my own reaction during the dream. For instance, I often feel annoyed during events that should otherwise be traumatic because they've occurred so much. I realize how misplaced the feeling of annoyance is with regard to other emotions that I should be feeling like anger or sadness which is how I become aware of the dream. It's as if my conscious self is watching a movie that it can't leave. I don't always achieve this level of lucidity; during my most emotional dreams--particularly the ones where I am every DC, I'm unaware that I'm dreaming because I'm missing that annoyance dream sign.

Your feeling of annoyance in these dreams is actually a great tool for you to become lucid, because it's such a great dream sign. You can set the intention that, "whenever I feel inappropriately annoyed at something that should make me feel sad or scared or angry, I'll do a test to see if I'm dreaming." Then there are lots of tests you can try. My dream test is to hop in the air a little bit and see if I hover there. That way, if I'm not dreaming, no one will notice that I just did something weird, lol, but if I am dreaming, I'll know right away. There's lots of other great dream tests, like looking at a nearby clock or a book (text and numbers are often garbled in dreams). The key is that you have to go from a vague sense that you might be dreaming to a conviction that you definitely are, so find something that works to convince you of it.

Originally Posted by Aerin

I am curious as to what you meant when you wrote that all DCs represent unconscious issues. My own dream experience so far has lead me to believe that some dreams are very symbolic, while others are so vile that I think that it's just my imagination seeing how far it can bend my tolerance. Because of this, I'd like to think that some dreams are simply meaningless. What's your view on this?

Well, first off, we can probably both agree that the dream world is constructed by your mind, right? (eg. the dream characters aren't real people who are really performing these heinous acts in real life). So your mind is the writer, producer, and all of the actors in this drama. They aren't being "done" to you by some outside force. So you have to ask, "why is my mind going here?" If your imagination is just bending itself to see how far it can go, why is it going to the depths of the grotesque instead of going to the most blissful stuff it could possibly imagine? For whatever reason, your psyche thinks is necessary to go there in the extreme. You aren't having fun in these dreams, so it's not doing it for the giggles... it's doing it for some other reason.

I picked up this great quote while reading some Carl Jung a few years back, which illustrates this point:

“Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is”.

In Jungian philosophy, your "shadow self" is full of all the things you reject about yourself: the shitty ways you feel, the thoughts you push out of your mind, the actions you haven't forgiven yourself for, etc. It's a good way of understanding nightmares.

In this way, you don't have to see the DCs as representing unconscious issues in a literal way (eg. if someone is stabbing someone, it doesn't mean that YOU want to stab someone). Maybe there's just a vague, underlying anger that you have towards something or someone or towards yourself that's been there for years and in the script of your dream, it plays out as a stabbing sometimes, as a rape in another dream, and as an argument in a third. But the "unconscious issue" might be the same anger (just as an example). The point is, the negativity exists in your mind somewhere, but until you embrace that with compassion (instead of pushing it away, or judging yourself) it can't really dissipate and will keep coming again and again.

Originally Posted by Aerin

what issues have you resolved through lucid dreaming, or do you become aware of the issue just enough during the dream that you are able to logically resolve it during your waking hours?

The stuff I've resolved with lucid dreaming has been really profound and has usually been underlying "feelings" or "tendencies" that I didn't realize I was carrying with me. I'll give two examples that were really poignant to me:

1. I had a friend in middle school that I was just TERRIBLE to. I unloaded all my garbage on her and treated her as my wretched sidekick. I didn't realize I had done that until I was graduating high school and looked back at that failed friendship. Then I had this huge guilt about it, but didn't know what to do. Then we both moved far away and I just never talked to her again. For years, she would show up in my dreams, whenever I was having the worst time. The dreams themselves were always different, but the *feeling* was the same: I felt like shit. So one day I became lucid as we were in some terrible situation, and I turned to her, smiled and said, "why are you in my dream? Do you want to tell me anything?" and she said "oh, I just want to be friends!" and smiled back. Of course, this wasn't really her, it was my mental projection of her... it was ME trying to forgive MYSELF all this time. In real life, she might still dislike me, or she might be neutral about it. But I woke up from that dream and realized I'd been torturing myself and feeling shitty for YEARS and I was done with it. I had forgiven myself. Now when she shows up in dreams, we're like giggly high school buddies.

2. I had this vicious dream where I was back at the bar I worked at when I was 19, except everything was vile. There was mold on everything and a little boy was getting molested in the corner by an old woman. There was a pond that smelled and looked like feces and I started to puke cuz it was so gross. But my puke was crab legs and animal carcasses and I was pulling them out of my throat. (SO GROSSS!!!) When I woke up it wasn't the scene that stuck with me, but the *feeling* of it all. I had just never felt so terrible in my life. I sat in that feeling for a while trying to accept it. Then I realized it was kind of an amplification of a way I sometimes feel about myself. Like, this feeling that I've been doing everything terribly wrong, and all of my decisions are going to end up badly, and no one will ever like me again, etc etc etc. A vile anxiety and sense of unworthiness that I've had probably my entire life. As a person whose pretty successful and together, I was tucking those thoughts of self-doubt and self-hate away, but in this dream, they were like, "Enough already! Here it is!" haha... So I spent the rest of the week being compassionate to the part of my self that felt anxious and scared and gross. I was really nice to myself and convinced myself I don't deserve to ever feel that way again - even if I do do something wrong.

So for me, the key is to see your dream scenarios as a candid conversation with yourself in which you talk in images, feelings, and symbols (because they convey meaning better than words do). Don't push anything away... accept it as a part of you. Journal about how it feels and what you'd like to ask the people in your dreams when you do become fully lucid. See your dreams as your partner in understanding consciousness. We all have SO much to learn from our minds, it can actually be really fun and very rewarding.

Hopefully that helps a little?