Dear All,

I have a weird reoccurring dream, effectively what happens is I run from one room to the next, where each room is some sort of puzzle, in some HUGE stately mansion, and there is effectively some sort of dangerous entity running after me, I seem to KNOW I can get out of the mansion, but the rooms seem to represent different parts of my life, and I want a new life (hence LaVitaNuova) and yet although I can be conscious in my dream, and recognise I've done this dream before, I am unaware of how to change the content.

Can we do anything to stop these?

Regards,

Hi LaVitaNuova,

I would ask you what are you doing in your waking life that reflects the quality of 'feelings' you are experiencing in the dream? If dreams are recurring its because there are things in your waking life that you need to pay attention to.

Make a note of all the symbols and what they mean to you and then identify those elements your waking life.... then use NLP to make the changes in your waking life that your dreams are urging you to make, only then will you find these dreams will subside.


Best wishes
Nina

Hi

I used this idea with a girl who was having nightmares and had been having them for a few years- this was almost 3 months ago now- and she as been nightmare free since- doing this- so it might help here.

At the end of the day at work, if you work in a office - sit at your desk- and run through your whole day backwards from where you are in that time all the way through to you woke in the morning- see, hear and feel your whole day running backwards, then take a minute or two to have a really good stretch- and say to your self in a very confident calm voice "I QUIT" then go home- and enjoy that time- when its bed time- do the same thing that you did at work- run your whole day backwards- then think of 1 or 2 very pleasant- experiences from your life- and remember them in detail- once you start to feel the good feelings- say to you self in a very confident calm voice sweet dreams- and take these good feeling with you as you fall asleep- on waking up- take a little time to remember 1 or 2 nice real life experiences and say in a very calm confident voice to yourself start the day- give this a go for number of days- and see what happens-


Jay

A Peaceful Warrior

It appears that Nina & I share a similar view on the role of dreams.

LaVitaNova, if I have understood you post correctly, you give the impression that you want to either stop these recurring dreams or change what happens during them. In my opinion, if a dream is bugging someone, it's because their unconscious is doing its best to bring something to their conscious awareness - something that it really wants them to take care of or sort out. The thing is, our unconscious minds tend to deal in metaphors which is why dreams very rarely seem to reflect waking reality. Nina has given good advice on how to decode the metaphors of your dreams, but I suspect you already know what it is they're urging you to take notice of.

The unconscious can be pretty persistent in trying to get us to pay attention to certain aspects of our life or behaviour, and it doesn't do so on a 'whim'. It has a genuine positive intention. If it wants your attention, best to listen.


All the best

Andrew Skirenko

Dear Andrew,

First of all thank you for your response,

I am only guessing the rooms represent different times of my life, I do not know what they mean from my life even transferring metaphorically. There doesn't appear to be any correlation whatsoever. The rooms are a maze from one to the next. MY lifes been fairly simple though unenjoyable much of the time. I'd like to change that thus I've been to various therapists Master pracs' of NLP and hypnotists to no avail. The dream in question has only been recent and not a lot has been happening except for my dedication towards learning hypnosis and sorting myself out, however NLP doesn't work on me nor a lot of other therapies.

"if a dream is bugging someone, it's because their unconscious is doing its best to bring something to their conscious awareness" - seems a shame the conscious mind can't be aware of it anyway, whats the point in having two minds when one would be better. Plus in some scenarios for example another bad dream I get, I am fully aware of the issue in real life, it's an issue I am SUCCESSFULLY AVOIDING (don't ask) so its not a problem most of the time. So why bother giving me nightmares about it? I've already considered the issues consciously, the nightmare doesn't give me any insight on how to better deal with the problem? If a nightmare is about a problem you are aware of and consiously sorting out, can we stop the reoccurring nightmare? Also with regards to the bad dream I don't understand, are there any self hypnosis techniques we can do to find out what it means?

Regards,

Dante,

"So why bother giving me nightmares about it?"

It is displaying this behaviour for a reason, that is not up for debate, what the reason is only you can tell, hypnosis will find out what the reason is but I am guessing you already know.

"the nightmare doesn't give me any insight on how to better deal with the problem?"

To be frank, it is telling you. It is telling you to try something new and different to what you have done in the past and from what you currently do. Again, hypnosis will help you peel the onion and get to the core issue.

Having said that, do you have much input to the dream scenario? I love those dreams where you have control over what you character does (your character normally being you). Could you find some new rooms to look in? Or pick a book from the shelves and have a quick read of the back cover to find out what's going on? Are there any forbidden rooms?

I am guessing if you acted differently by possibly tiptoeing or stomping through the house you can fine tune your senses to learn alot more about what is going on. With some trance practice and a good hypnotist you may be able to reach the Delta stage of sleep during trance and have someone 'hold your hand' and give you prompts while you walk through the house.

I am excited for you!

Matt

I also once read that dreams are organised in that.. the beginning is the past, the middle is what is now and the end is what represents the future. We often have a lot of different dreams so noting the order in which your 'bad' dream falls may give you a clue as to whether or not this issue is related to the past, present or action you need to take in the future. So placing it in a 'time' context may help any hypnotist you work with to structure a process of questioning around it.

Are you keeping a diary of your dreams? This is very useful for conscious review. Recording them wtih dictation machine would be better than writing down as often movement will wipe the memory of a dream on waking - but I used to get good at doing this with mine if I moved..verrrryyy slowlllyy LOL

But you know writing is a good way to eek out stuff from the unconscious to bring it into awareness...so perhaps start writing what you think the dream may mean - or if you were a friend giving advice about it..what would you write to them in a letter - this will then provide a way for the unconscious to communicate through you what it wants you to know - it could be a better cost effective exercise as your unconscious knows you better than anyone else.

But one insight I had about your dream issue..is a need for you to face your fears, this is a common theme and i had a similar one years ago...a black stallion was chasing me and he wasn't friendly, I thought he was going to run me over...but then I turned around and STOOD UP to him..and told him he was nothing but a coward etc etc....wow! That felt good - I never dreamt of that Stallion again - I guess he went to pick on someone his own size LOL The message obviously for me was that I had to stand up for myself and not be such a pushover - seems very obvious now looking back,but at the time...it was all still too 'close' for me to see it.

Good Luck Dante.. you will get there in the end

Nina

Hi Nina,

"But one insight I had about your dream issue..is a need to face your fears, this is a common theme and i had a similar one years ago...a black stallion was chasing me and he wasn't friendly, I thought he was going to run me over...but then I turned around and STOOD UP to him..and told him he was nothing but a coward etc etc....wow! That felt good - I never dreamt of that Stallion again - I guess he went to pick on someone his own size LOL"

Presumably you can lucid dream then?

Well at this time it was a thing that happned in the dream by itself. But I have had a couple of lucid dreams - one when I drank some carnation water by mistake in a night club LOL.

and teh other when I read a book on how to do it... I got the wind tunnel effect I knew it was a lucid dream but didn't have the wherewithall to change anything.. I was too amazed at just watching the whole experince from my dream bed - I actually remember my dream body getting out of bed and going downstairs to the kitchen...whoooo wierd ehehe

So yes..I have had them but don't go out of my way to reproduce them, but the carnation water was a hoot...but I don't recommend that you use that method. ehehe

Hi Dante,

I don't personally buy the idea that dreams are your unconscious mind "trying to communicate" with your conscious mind. For a start, we have evolved to mostly forget our dreams, so it's hardly an efficient communication method!

A fairly straightforward interpretation of dreams, alluded to by Richard Bandler amongst many others, is that dreams are your brain's way of practising what you're doing during the day, so that when you wake up the neural pathways are stronger, and you can do it more efficiently. So if you're having scary dreams, that's because you're scaring yourself during the day.

This is supported by the fact that in the last few weeks of pregnancy, babies spend up to 80% of their time in the REM state, something generally agreed to be closely tied to dreaming. And after birth, they spend 70% of their sleep time REMing, whereas adults spend just 25% REMing, babies needing to "wire in" a lot more new stuff than adults. So it's not implausible to suggest that the REM state is where we wire in our new instincts .

Joe Griffen and Ivan Tyrrell add a new spin to this by linking dreams specifically to unfulfilled, incomplete arousals as well as brand new learnings. In other words, having a fight with someone, and coming home bloodied and bruised, or running away and eventually collapsing, panting under a tree, is very different from sitting in an office in front of your computer, heart beating, desperately wanting to punch someone, or get the hell out of there, but you can't act, you can't complete the pattern. In the first set of examples, the instinct is fulfilled, you have fought, or you have run away. In the second, in the office, it's been suppressed. (And suppressing it may be a very appropriate thing to do by the way - they're not advocating a Fight Club revolution or something!).

Based on anecdotal dream studies, and a pretty plausible over-arching theory, they suggest that it's the unfulfilled arousals (the not being able to punch or run away) that tend to influence dream content. As if the brain is playing out the incomplete template, using metaphorical dream content, perhaps to preserve it as an instinctive pattern.

Anyhow, how does this help you?

Well, one, as you've suggested yourself, you don't need to "act on the message from your unconscious" because you already know you're avoiding someone (and feeling a bit uncomfortable about it?) during the day. There isn't any more of a "message" you need to get as far as I can tell.

Two, you could use whatever techniques you're familiar with to just reduce the emotional charge of the "avoiding". You said you haven't found NLP derived approaches that work for you up to now, so I won’t suggest any particular “technique” to you. But as I’m sure you know, different people from different cultures and backgrounds would do and feel very different things if they were in the same situation as you. I wonder how Hunter S Thompson would behave, or the Dalai Lama, or one of your friends, or an Australian surfer. And as a human being, you have vast potentials for flexibility, both in how you respond behaviourally, and emotionally.

And three, a bedtime ritual might well be a good idea. Before you drift off to sleep at night, take a moment to settle yourself, take a few slow deep breaths, some simple progressive relaxation, and really focus on something in the day, or something in your life that you enjoy, that you like. It could be something small, like a drink with a friend, or something you own, or a joke you shared at work. And focus on it enough to get a warm fuzzy feeling, what is it that you really like about that thing? And then a second thing, and a third, until you’ve done five or so. And then, step two, run through a few different ways, really outlandish ways you could deal with any challenges you’re facing at present. How would a friend of yours deal with them, how would Hunter S Thompson at his most drugged up deal with them, and the Dalai Lama, and an Australian surfer? Just as possibilities, some realistic, some wild. And then give yourself the suggestion to have a deeply restful sleep, and some fascinating dreams.

Something like the above might well introduce a new change into the way you’ve been doing things up to now, both in life and in your dreams. Just a thought anyway .

Joseph.

LaVitaNova wrote:

Can we do anything to stop these?

I use the following method:

I postulate that the dream is trying to accomplish something and that, for whatever reason, the dreamer wakes (perhaps not completely, but enough to halt the dream) before it's done.

I explain this idea to the person asking me for help.

Then, using simple hypnotic trance, I lead them back into the dream, and we interact with it, searching for the end or (in one instance, a recurring nightmare) creating an ending.

I've had occasion to do this only about five times, but it's worked every time. And it's been amazing, too, entering the dreams of other people.

virtualAngel wrote:

a black stallion was chasing me and he wasn't friendly, I thought he was going to run me over...

Dreams reveal a great deal about you, and by design they tend to be opaque to the dreamer. I can guess that you were probably approaching puberty, or already in it, when you had that dream.

(I'm no fan of Freud, but I've found his book on the interpretation of dreams to be quite useful and interesting.)

but then I turned around and STOOD UP to him..and told him he was nothing but a coward etc etc....wow! That felt good - I never dreamt of that Stallion again - I guess he went to pick on someone his own size LOL

That's pretty much what I'd suggest if someone came to me with a recurring "being pursued" dream, and if I'm intepreting the symbols correctly it was the perfect thing to do anyway. Interesting that you did it within the dream itself, though. I've only had a couple of lucid dreams in my life, and they were really interesting.

In one of them, I only went lucid at the end. I was being pursued by some evil entity which meant me harm, and I got to a point where I couldn't run. Faced a wall or something. Somehow I went lucid in the dream. I turned and faced the whatever-it-was just as it grinned and sent a powerful blast of energy at me, meaning to destroy me. I relaxed, opened my arms, and peacefully accepted the energy into myself. It rocked me, and the light blinded me, but I felt it run down into the ground through my feet. When my sight returned, the entity was gone.

Hi Dante.

In the Native culture dreams are sacred. Creation whispers before it speaks. Understanding how Creation works, *I* would rather listen to the whisper!

I personally see dreams as a tool and have been able to decipher some pretty intricate situations (mine and others) because of their symbolism. Sometimes they are expressions of your day, sometimes they are metaphores for your life. I personally enjoy the premonitive ones!

Sometimes you even get visitors come see you! I once had an old Lakota boyfriend show up on a horse (I love horses) inviting me to come with him! He is a pretty powerful man.

I agree with some of the things that have been written here. I would also like to ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind.

Is this mansion yours or someone else's? Is it daylight or night time? Can you smell odors and see all of the colors? Are you in your body or an observer?

These details can actually help in knowing what type of dream this is. Not knowing the details of your dream or your life, I would ask you two questions:

1-Does your life reflect your beliefs, your hopes and your values?

2- What are you willing to do today to ensure that it does?

You're the expert in your own life Dante, be the one who makes it better.

Be healthy!

Isabelle

Isabelle_Aubé wrote:

Hi Dante.



Is this mansion yours or someone else's? Is it daylight or night time? Can you smell odors and see all of the colors? Are you in your body or an observer?


My body.

These details can actually help in knowing what type of dream this is. Not knowing the details of your dream or your life, I would ask you two questions:

1-Does your life reflect your beliefs, your hopes and your values?

No.

2- What are you willing to do today to ensure that it does?

I'm not sure what I can do. I had another odd dream last night, I was helping a friend who was sick when in the past I had not been in a position to give him help when he had given me help - that was fairly annoying as its always important to pay back favors.

You're the expert in your own life Dante, be the one who makes it better.

Be healthy!

Isabelle

Regards,

Michael_DeBusk wrote:

I use the following method:

I postulate that the dream is trying to accomplish something and that, for whatever reason, the dreamer wakes (perhaps not completely, but enough to halt the dream) before it's done.

I explain this idea to the person asking me for help.

Then, using simple hypnotic trance, I lead them back into the dream, and we interact with it, searching for the end or (in one instance, a recurring nightmare) creating an ending.

I've had occasion to do this only about five times, but it's worked every time. And it's been amazing, too, entering the dreams of other people.

Very neat Michael. Thanks for sharing that.

LaVitaNova wrote:

Can we do anything to stop these?

So... how is it coming along?

Dante,

You said:

"and yet although I can be conscious in my dream, and recognise I've done this dream before, I am unaware of how to change the content.

Can we do anything to stop these?"

I personally have a belief that if you just listen to the client they will offer you the "solution" to their problem within about the first 5 minutes of telling you about it.

Your comment about being unaware of how to change the content followed by your question of what to do to stop the dreams suggests to me that at some level of consciousness YOU BELIEVE that if you change the content (with someone's help) you can stop the dreams.

Hear is my suggestion then...

At night when you are resting calmly and safely in your bed simply tell yourself that the next time you have that dream you will look at your hands in the dream.

That's all.

You might have to repeat this ritual for a night or two or three, but it *will* happen. At some point you will be having the dream and will be aware that you are having the dream and you will remember to look at your hands in your dream.

Once you have done that, you will have changed the dream. And it will stop haunting you.

That's all there is to it!

Good luck,

Venus :-)

Interesting Bridget,

I have recently discovered lucid dreaming as a result of writing down a dream when I awoke at a time of morning I just knew I had to go back to sleep again. I was able to change content of my dream by looking around and thinking "it would be convenient to see a mirror on the wall" as an example. I went upto my image to ask myself a few questions hoping I could get some answers from my unconcious mind. Unfortunately nothing came. Though I did fly in my dream and that was fun, I was able to realise I was in the dream by thinking should I usually be here?

Anyone ever use a dream to work out what their unconcious mind is thinking regarding non-useful behaviours? I've only ever seen the idea you can ask your unconcious mind questions using a pendulum or inhypnosos. I'm yet to see ay evidence the pendulum idiometer answers are definitely comig from within and not the normal concious mind.

Regards,
Jon

Bridget how often do you find the look at hands thing working? How do you know your dreaming, do you 'automatically' lok at your hands when in the dream environment?

Jon