Maria Duval

Many of us suppress our emotions in the waking world—especially extreme ones—for fear of somehow alienating those around us, or else of appearing dangerously vulnerable, or even of disgusting ourselves.

This means that the only way in which we can “safely” express our true feelings is in dreamland. Dreams that are flooded with a positive emotion may furthermore often be categorized as wish-fulfillment dreams, while those that are blighted by a negative emotion may be classed as safety-valve dreams.

Below is an analysis of two emotions common in dreams: fear and freedom.

FEAR

If you had a nightmare that left you paralyzed with fear, you probably awoke feeling very relieved to realize that it was just a dream, and you may have spent most of the next day trying to push it out of your memory. However, these types of dreams are underlined by our waking fears—which are very real, though perhaps repressed—which are likely to appear in our dreams again and again until we confront and resolve them.

Symbolic and Verbal Associations

Unconscious fears; phobias

Something (or someone) that one finds “monstrous”

Repressed personal qualities or characteristics

External threats

A call to action; the “fight or flight” response

Positive Interpretations:

If you have a waking phobia of spiders, did you wake up in a panic after dreaming that hundreds of giant, hairy arachnids were crawling all over you?

Or, if you suffer from a fear of heights, did you have a nightmare in which you found yourself dangling precariously over the edge of a very high cliff?

If so, your dream was probably just mirroring your waking phobias, especially if something in the real world has recently triggered your fear.

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