Violent dreams of boyfriend

LegacyUser

hi all, unusual problem and hoping someone has some good advice for me. in short i have really violent dreams/nighmares of my boyfriend trying to kill me nearly every night. Its at a stage where i'm so upset when i wake up that i'm terrified to go back to sleep, and the not sleeping is having a big impact on my day to day life. I really have no idea why i'm having these dreams, it started off one every couple of nights/ a week but now its one every night or could even be too. During the dream usually after the attempted murder or during is when i wake up, i wake up panicing as though its still happening and it takes a few mins to sink in thats its not. So any ideas on why or how to stop it or cope better? Thanks!

Mr Benevolent

Do you have these fears in real life? If not, see below.

Dreams mean nothing. I trained as a hypnotherapist, delved deeply into dreams and can guarantee the that they mean nothing at all. All I can say is that they might represent vague and illogical fears, but that's it. No real significance whatsoever. Personally I always have dreams of my girlfriend cheating on me. They still mean nothing. I even tell my girlfriend about them.

seenitall

Confab wrote: »

Do you have these fears in real life? If not, see below.

Dreams mean nothing. I trained as a hypnotherapist, delved deeply into dreams and can guarantee the that they mean nothing at all. All I can say is that they might represent vague and illogical fears, but that's it. No real significance whatsoever. Personally I always have dreams of my girlfriend cheating on me. They still mean nothing. I even tell my girlfriend about them.

Completely disagree with this. I have not trained as a hypnotherapist but I know what I have been through and experienced, and seeing a qualified therapist I was told that dreams matter a great deal as an indication where our subconscious self is at and what our unaknowledged hopes/fears are and that is how my dreams feel anyway. My dreams always make a strong impression on me, and actually they are usually very obviously about a particular situation in my day-to-day life.

The reason why your story resonates with me is that when I was youger, I used to have a recurring dream, that my parent was chasing me around our flat with a meat cleaver. My parent was going to butcher me and kill me.

I grew up with a very, very domineering and bullying parent and I didn't know any better, that is all the parenting I got so I wasn't able to compare it with anything else. Things were "normal". My dreams were a very regular and actually a very obvious indication for me that things were not "normal" or good or healthy, that I lived in constant fear of emotional abuse, and that fear translated into really extreme violence in dreams, the only place where it was allowed to do so.

I am not trying to say anything at all about your boyfriend here, I don't know him or the kind of relationship you have. I just want you to know that from my experience, having an extreme-experience, recurring kind of dream, is an indication to be looking into the part of your life which is represented, what kind of issues you might be dealing with underneath the surface, and just to examine your feelings, I guess. Nothing more sinister than that, really.

I hope this helps.

Dreams are still barely understood by humans. When you dream, your unconscious mind is fully in control, and you cannot suppress your most basic instincts like you can while conscious. I think this is why dreams can be so disturbing and have common themes such as cheating, murder/death and even former partners who you haven't had contact with in forever. Dreams are an all-access pass to your mind.

If you have a fear of being killed by your boyfriend (or anyone close to you) while awake, then this easily explains your dreams. In either case, I would see a psychologist.

Mr Benevolent

seenitall wrote: »

Completely disagree with this. I have not trained as a hypnotherapist but I know what I have been through and experienced, and seeing a qualified therapist I was told that dreams matter a great deal as an indication where our subconscious self is at and what our unaknowledged hopes/fears are and that is how my dreams feel anyway. My dreams always make a strong impression on me, and actually they are usually very obviously about a particular situation in my day-to-day life.

The reason why your story resonates with me is that when I was youger, I used to have a recurring dream, that my parent was chasing me around our flat with a meat cleaver. My parent was going to butcher me and kill me.

I grew up with a very, very domineering and bullying parent and I didn't know any better, that is all the parenting I got so I wasn't able to compare it with anything else. Things were "normal". My dreams were a very regular and actually a very obvious indication for me that things were not "normal" or good or healthy, that I lived in constant fear of emotional abuse, and that fear translated into really extreme violence in dreams, the only place where it was allowed to do so.

I am not trying to say anything at all about your boyfriend here, I don't know him or the kind of relationship you have. I just want you to know that from my experience, having an extreme-experience, recurring kind of dream, is an indication to be looking into the part of your life which is represented, what kind of issues you might be dealing with underneath the surface, and just to examine your feelings, I guess. Nothing more sinister than that, really.

I hope this helps.

The concept can go the other way as well, i.e, the OP may have treated her boyfriend very badly and unconsciously fears retribution. Dreams do no repay interpretation, you may as well ask a psychic for advice then a psychologist in this situation. Psychologists aren't trained to do anything about dreams.

LegacyUser

i've heard that for reoccuring dreams often ones that end suddenly because you wake up it someone helps if you create the ending. So try writing down the dream and at the point where you normally wake write down a good ending where it all ends up okay. This "finishes" the dream in your head and means you are less likely to dream it again.

seenitall

Confab wrote: »

The concept can go the other way as well, i.e, the OP may have treated her boyfriend very badly and unconsciously fears retribution. Dreams do no repay interpretation, you may as well ask a psychic for advice then a psychologist in this situation. Psychologists aren't trained to do anything about dreams.

Maybe not, but a working therapist would be pretty much au fait with the idea that dreams are in fact a reflection of what is going on in the subconscious self. Anyway, I never recommended the OP to see anyone at all about her dreams, be it a psychologist or a psychic, just that her particular dream has all the hallmarks (regular recurrence, extreme violence) of reflecting an issue in her waking world, as was patently the case with me.

Confab

Confab wrote: »

The concept can go the other way as well, i.e, the OP may have treated her boyfriend very badly and unconsciously fears retribution. Dreams do no repay interpretation, you may as well ask a psychic for advice then a psychologist in this situation. Psychologists aren't trained to do anything about dreams.

She has the dreams for a reason, i.e. she may be depressed or suffering from anxiety which she doesn't consciously notice. Psychology is the scientific study of the mind, which is absolutely relevant here. It might not deal with dreams but it does deal with the mind as a whole.

Faith

I've written a dissertation on dreams and the evidence points to dreams being a collection of randomly activated memory that are basically at the forefront of your mind, and random stimuli. If you recall a memory during the day, it's more active in your brain than one you haven't consciously recalled recently. Brain waves called PGO waves occur during dreaming, and it seems that they cause these memories traces to combine with random stimuli to form dream images. I don't want this to be a science post, but my point is you had the first dream like any other dream, then it stuck with you when you woke because it had been so disturbing. Thus, it became a memory and was triggered again the next night, and so on.

It's really upsetting, yes, but I don't know if there's much you can do about it. The more you think about it, the more likely you are to dream about it again the next night, it seems. I suppose you just need to understand that it's just a dream, and not an evil portent of things to come!

Psychoanalysts are typically the ones who attribute meanings to dreams. They may be on to something, but it lacks any scientific backing generally. Psychoanalysis is mostly theory, not fact.

LegacyUser

thanks for all responses. Generally we have a good relationship althoug i have trust issues towards him. Nothing massive just he met single girls on his own and kept it from me, not on purpose he can just be quite inconsiderate but him being inconsiderate i find hurtful as he never knows when he is so he never knows until after he's upset me that he is upsetting me if that makes sense. Honestly though its nothing serious so i don't understand these dreams at all.

Its not always the same dream, he seems to find a variety of ways to murder me, last night he shot me, and bent over me to hold my hand so i couldn't stop the blood from wound, and told a passerby he had already called an ambulance when he hadn't, another one is we're going on a walk and he beats me over the head, drags me to a remote shed thing and chains me up leaving me to dis of thirst/starvation, he comes back randomly to check if i miss water and food, another is while i'm cooking he sets fire to the living room, trapping me in the kitchen, watches me stuck and coughing and then leaves. He seems to enjoy my pain in all of them, when i wake i'm really frightened and scarred of him and he hates the way i look at him when i wake up. its really driving a wedge between us. he wants to hold me but i get too freaked out for a few mins.