A Difficult Dream That Led To Embracing Peace
This week we are embarking on a mental health journey specifically focusing on your thoughts + emotions! As you may already know, your dreams can play an integral role in understanding who you are, revealing how you feel about aspects of your life and identifying your subconscious desires. Dreams can even explain traumatic events in your life and lead you to a healing phase. When interpreting dreams, we first analyze the dream’s symbols to draw conclusions about the overarching theme and meanings. This week, we analyzed a difficult dream that was connected to the dreamer’s waking life and eventually led to peace. Check out the dream submission below before reading about its meaning!
From Pain To Peace
“Understanding my dream requires a bit of background. I was raped in college and after telling my best friend about it, she silenced me and did not believe me. She sided with my rapist (a fraternity guy) over me, never addressing the situation with him, but rather continuing to go on dates with him. Lastly, it is important to note that I am an Enneagram type 2 and I hate conflict, so I am usually passive to make others feel comfortable.
“In my dream, I was hosting a party at my house, while my new neighbor was having an art lesson upstairs. All of a sudden, my ex-friend showed up at my house with some of her friends, who were going to the art lesson upstairs. Instead of going with them, she waited downstairs in my house. I saw her and was immediately taken aback. I couldn’t speak up at first and I felt like I lost my voice.
After much deliberation (and ultimately not fearing that I would make the people at my party uncomfortable), I finally told her: “Your presence is not welcomed in my safe haven.” She laughed at me and continued to put on her sweet persona, saying I was being unreasonable.
“I then continued to firmly say that she should take a walk outside while she waited and the only thing I could offer her was a glass of water. She refused to go and so I told her again that she was not welcome in my safe haven. After that, she disappeared and I eventually found her outside my house by her car. I kept having to remind myself why I was upset because I tend to easily forgive and forget.
“She asked why she wasn’t allowed in my house, and I finally told her “because you were my best friend and you chose to side with my rapist instead of believing me.” She was silent. She got in her can and left when her friends were finished with the art lesson. I felt an assuring peace as I watched her drive away, and I felt like I had regained some of my voice back.”
-Anonymous
Dream Symbols
Friendship (Falling Out)
Dreaming about a friend typically reveals your feelings about that person. If you dream about someone who you’re not friends with anymore, it can be a sign of grief, secret sorrow or a tendency to confide in the wrong people. This person or friendship can indicate an underlying issue or communication problem that has yet to be resolved in your life. This symbol also represents the negative memories or experiences we have with this person. If you’re able to overcome a conflict with them, the dream might be showing you that you are healing and moving into a more joyful life.
Party
Generally, parties represent your social life and your feelings about groups, your social skills or lack of them. Dreaming that you are the host of a party can symbolize your relationship with the different aspects of yourself or point to an internal desire to be accepted, celebrated or loved by others. Planning a party in your dream highlights that you are too methodical (even in the aspects of life that should be fun). So relax! Let yourself enjoy life instead of planning it to a tee.
Art Lesson
This symbolizes teaching one how to become articulate in illustration and how to create a new image to display to others. It can be a positive or negative symbol, depending on the context of your waking life. If someone who’s hurt you (and has not taken responsibility for it) is an artist in your dream, it symbolizes their ability to manipulate others by painting themselves in a good light, despite their harmful behavior. This symbol can also represent that the dreamer is suppressing their creativity and should learn to express themselves artistically.
Voice (Lost and Found)
In dreams, speaking depicts communication, typically between your waking self and your unconscious mind. It can also represent wanting to communicate an aspect of yourself that is infrequently seen in your mainstream personality, behavior or demeanor—something about yourself you’ve been hiding from others, but want to express. Finding your voice and talking to others in a dream reveals that you’ve thought extensively about something, but you haven’t actually expressed it in real life yet.
Drinking Water
This symbol represents “taking something in” and learning how to nourish ourselves emotionally and spiritually. Water symbolizes finding emotional balance and creating harmony within our mind, body and soul. This resolution will come when we look inside of ourselves and truly examine our past experiences. Drinking water can also symbolize the need to get in touch with our emotions or to acknowledge apathy about something necessary for our emotional growth. Finally, dreaming of water highlights the freedom we have to discern which of our feelings we should nourish moving forward.
Car (Driving Away)
Typically, dreaming about a car represents how you see yourself and where your life is headed, as well as the power you have to influence your own life. Cars can also symbolize unconscious views of the progress in your life, as well as the intensity of the feelings you have about this progress. Dreaming about a car can reveal your present ability to take people with you in life or to leave them behind, as you move forward and advance in life. Going somewhere new in a vehicle can represent meeting someone new, while driving away in a car means it’s time to let go of someone or something.
Peace
Dreaming about peace reveals that you are able to accept endings in life (the end of a relationship, career path, life phase, etc.). This dream indicates that you have successfully resolved an emotional challenge or issue and you are now able to move forward in harmony. You should rest and embrace the peace you feel subconsciously, as you wait for the next steps or new adventures in your life.
Dream Meaning
This dream shows that the dreamer is a strong person, who is in a healing phase of her life. Although the dream deals with heavy topics like sexual assault and betrayal by a friend, we believe this dream is a positive one, as the dreamer ultimately finds her voice and is able to express herself + find peace.
The dreamer might have dreamt that she was the host of a party, a symbol often connected to social life, because of an innate desire to have control over her social life—perhaps a response to the trauma she faced. It could also point to her desire to still be accepted, loved and understood by her social group even after her assault. This desire could be a result of the betrayal of the close friend mentioned in the submission.
The fact that the guests were attending an art lesson is especially interesting, as this symbol can be interpreted as learning to mask themselves—or painting themselves as something they are not. We interpreted this symbol to mean that they might be trying to pass as good friends, when in reality, they deeply hurt the dreamer by the way they continued their friendship with her rapist. Because this was someone who hurt the dreamer, it symbolizes this person’s ability to manipulate others by painting themselves in a good light, despite their harmful behavior.
The dreamer’s inability to speak at the beginning of the dream points to an inability to express her feelings to the friend mentioned in the submission. However, because the dreamer is able to talk mid-way through the dream, the dream shows that the dreamer is actually ready to bring this subject up with them in waking life. At this point of her healing process, the dreamer is capable of verbally expressing the pain caused by her friend’s actions--even if she doesn’t know it yet.
After speaking with her ex-friend, the dreamer asks the girl to leave and offers her a glass of water. The water symbolizes the ex-friend’s need to get in touch with her emotions and to acknowledge her behavior, which has emotionally impacted the dreamer. Obviously, this dream is from the dreamer’s perspective, so it makes sense that the dreamer chose to offer her ex-friend a glass of water.
While outside, the dreamer watches the girl drive away. As we mentioned before, dreaming about a car can reveal your present ability to leave people behind, as you move forward and advance in life. It is clear that the dreamer is okay leaving this particular person behind, in order to move forward and heal. The girl drives away, showing that it’s time for the dreamer to let go of the friendship they once had (and maybe even the expectations she has for this person to apologize). This dream ends with the dreamer feeling peaceful, which indicates that she had successfully resolved this emotional challenge and she is now able to move forward in harmony. The dreamer should embrace this peace, as she takes for the next steps in her healing process.
Empowerment Dream Theme
While dreams of feeling empowered come in many different forms, the empowerment taking place in this dream is a sign of healing + moving forward. The dreamer may have felt powerless through this situation in the past, but she is healing from her trauma + finding peace within herself. The dreamer’s confidence and self-esteem are on the rise, causing her to come to the realization that she does not need to put up with this toxic friendship.
The empowerment theme is representative of the strength of the dreamer. She had to be brave in the past to deal with the trauma of her sexual assault and she is now bringing back her strength + bravery to stand up for herself. The dream is a sign that in her subconscious she believes she is strong enough to do so if she can get past her fear of conflict.