Now we continue the lesson on dream resolution and focus on examples. If you haven’t already done so, read:
Resolution example: chased or pursued in a dream
We pick up the discussion and explore the dream theme of being chased or pursued and how to resolve it.
When interpreting a dream about being chased or pursued, first simplify it. Something is chasing you, doesn’t matter for now what it is. What’s really chasing or pursuing you?
The dream presents your pursuer as some sort of physical form, but that representation is just a costume covering a deeper idea. The appearance and actions of the pursuer are based on the script of the story and your thoughts, feelings and perceptions, so if it’s scary and dark, you know there’s a metaphorical truth to it. It feels scary and dark or is perceived that way. It’s a mirror image of something about your inner or outer world. In dreamland, those two worlds can blend, so differentiating them can be tricky. However, differentiating is important for tracing the dream back to its source.
A good friend of mine had recurring dreams about a big shadowy thing pursuing him like a hunter after its prey. My friend knows very well how to protect himself both physically and psychologically, so we quickly determine that the shadowy thing that chases him is not likely to symbolize a threat to safety because he’d react differently to it. The thing pursuing him isn’t fear for his health or of death. We boil down the dream to a question. What do you fear the most, and it feels like it’s getting a little too close to becoming real?
And the answer is, he fears being unable to provide financially for his family. At the time of the dream his job situation is iffy and he knows things can end badly if he doesn’t straighten it out. His biggest priority is to take care of his family, and failing them as a provider is his biggest fear.
To resolve the dream, he focuses on securing his job situation and income. His dreams of being pursued go away. They came back a few years later when different fears came forward for him to face. The theme of being pursued by a shadowy bad thing is a theme his dreams use to symbolize the idea of fear, whatever his biggest fear is at the time.
After a dream like that, first step back and consider that whatever chases you is likely to represent something intangible: guilt, regret, the truth, unfulfilled desire, unrealized potential. The more you avoid it, the more it is likely to pursue you.
- Resolution for chase dreams: Identify what is really pursuing you. Make connections with other parts of the dream. Fully understand it. Make a decision. Do something about it.
More about how to step back and see the story in the dream:
Swimming in River Styx: Find meaning in the dream story
Pursued by a serial killer
It’s possible that whatever chases you in a dream could represent a person in your life and the situation is truly dangerous. People who are being secretly watched or stalked can get warnings in their dreams. However, usually the danger represented by something in a dream is not physically real. Instead, like in my friend’s dream I discuss above, the danger is intangible. Now we’re going to add a new layer of complexity with the following dream:
A business owner dreams that he’s in his company’s warehouse when he gets a text message telling him to beware the serial killer stalking him. He ignores the message and continues with his work, then gets another message, more urgent:
The serial killer is in the warehouse.
Watch out!
Uh oh. Take heed when dreams express urgency. Since the setting is the dreamer’s company — specifically the warehouse — and it’s not imaginary but instead is the actual warehouse he owns — we can form a hypothesis that the danger is to his business from an external factor, and he urgently needs to realize what it is.
It’s wise to consider alternate theories about a dream’s meaning related to inner life. Something could be brewing inside him that’s a threat to his business. Perhaps he’s getting really sick of the business he’s in, he’s overwhelmed with work, or pessimism is about to overtake him. Dreams are known for warning about what’s about to surface from within you. It’s possible that this person perceives it as a threat because it really is a threat to his business.
We don’t have enough detail in the content of the dream to tell for sure. Instead, we have clues to follow. A detail that invites scrutiny is the fact that he gets the messages via text. Information delivered in dreams as text messages, emails, letters, conversations or just a voice speaking tends to come from structures of the psyche in subconscious parts of the mind. In other words, we can hypothesize that there’s something the dreamer knows subconsciously and the dream is trying to bring it to his attention.
The dream provides another detail by representing the danger as a serial killer. The dream deliberately chooses to present the danger this way. You begin decoding the symbolism by associating. What comes to mind associated with serial killers? They’re methodical. Calculating. Cold. Ruthless. And they kill!
Now we have three clues: the setting, the message, and the serial killer. We also have associations. We note that the setting is from the dreamer’s waking life; it’s not imaginary. We have a sense of urgency. We have the dreamer’s reaction of ignoring the message, a way of saying he could be ignoring a little voice warning him of danger. Now what?
I hand this information over to the dreamer and ask him to ponder. He already knows subconsciously what the dream means, and it’s my hope that by giving him my perspective, it’ll jog his memory.
A day or two later he comes back to Reddit Dreams, the online forum where we met and discussed his dream, and tells me he figured it out… just in time. One of his suppliers is also a business rival. The rival acts friendly enough and gives no indicators of being the sort of cutthroat competitor who would try to destroy the dreamer’s business. But he is, and he’s plotting behind the scenes to deliver the death blow. He’s the serial killer stalking the dreamer, and the dreamer knows it intuitively but ignores it. The dream gels together everything he needs to understand the warning and react before the (business) killer can strike. This piece of information pulls in everything we observe about the dream:
- The warehouse: It’s where the dreamer stores what he receives from his supplier, the serial killer.
- The message: Yeah, it’s urgent. Thank you subconscious mind.
- The serial killer: Serial killers smile to your face before stabbing you in the back. The business rival shows nothing outward to make the dreamer aware of the potential for danger.
- One other clue to note: the dreamer plays a direct role in the story, not the role of observer or witness. That implies his direct involvement in the central subject or idea of the dream.
- Resolution: recognize the danger and act accordingly. In this case, the first action to take is find another supplier.
Make connections between dream life and waking life
Consider situations where people are said to pursue or be pursued, to chase or be chased. You pursue a job opportunity. You chase a dream or a lead. You pursue someone you want information from. You chase money. You pursue romantic or sexual interests. Situations like these are likely to be turned into physical representations of chases and pursuits. The dream acts out the idea.
It might be too obvious, but imagine a clown pursuing you with a bouquet of flowers and you react by accepting the flowers. Now imagine that someone who cracks a lot of jokes is pursuing you romantically with the intent of marriage. What does your reaction say? It probably shows that you are interested in the person! You might not realize it consciously. I’ve seen this scenario play out a thousand different ways in dreams that all boil down to deciding whether to a). accept someone’s romantic interest, or b). pursue someone romantically. The clown and the flowers symbolically connect the dream with the suitor and his romantic interest.
Or let’s say that a hideous monster chases you. The first step is to figure out what it symbolizes. Oftentimes dreams exaggerate to get your attention and illustrate the dynamics of a situation. You know that a monster isn’t really chasing you in your waking life so it must be symbolism. Maybe it symbolizes a bully at school, or a supervisor or other authority figure making your life miserable. Maybe it’s a fear, a bad marriage, a stalled ambition, an uncomfortable truth, a rejected part of yourself, a feeling of guilt or shame.
Once you identify the symbolism and how it connects with your life, the next step is to make a decision. Perhaps you are being chased because you won’t stick up for yourself, or can’t work up the courage to leave the job that’s making you miserable, or won’t face your fear, or can’t save a bad marriage, or can’t achieve an ambition.
On the other hand, maybe you aren’t really trying.
To repeat myself, the dream itself might offer a resolution, or you might have to figure it out for yourself. Or both.
Resolution: the loose end
After going through the steps of D3 to analyze and interpret a dream and uncover its connections with you and your life, you might find that you get to the end and there’s one detail, maybe more, you can’t figure out. Your interpretation could be off-track; your hypothesis for the meaning is incorrect. Dr. Carl Jung and other great dream interpreters advise us to watch out for these loose ends in dream interpretation. Everything in the dream has to fit together as a big picture for you to be confident that your interpretation is correct.
But…
A loose end might be the resolution embedded in the dream’s story and presented as a detail, one that you can’t fit into the picture any other way than as the resolution. Resolution is often the oddly shaped piece of the puzzle, the detail that balks at being categorized or fit into the story. It can present itself as a story element — setting, character, symbol — or narrative component — action or reaction — but can’t be interpreted the same as other dream details that fall into those categories.
Let’s dive into an example.
Working for the family business
A woman dreams that she’s working behind the counter at her family’s business. A commotion breaks out in the lobby and she dreads having to deal with it. No one else is around though so the responsibility falls on her. Then she notices the character Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the lobby, and Faith has no legs. Near the exit door she sees a young boy who appears ready to leave the scene.
This is a fun dream to work with and a favorite example of how dreams offer suggestions for resolution in the story. Here’s the breakdown:
- The family business symbolizes business the dreamer does for her family. The meaning of that detail of the dream is found in the alternative definition of the term. She works for her family in the sense of planning holidays, preparing, arranging, cleaning up. She handles finances and takes care of the family home. Her family doesn’t actually have a business, so we focus on the symbolism of it.
- The commotion in the lobby has two-fold meaning. One, family occasions tend to be full of little dramas. Full of commotion is a good way to describe them. Two, the dreamer’s inner life is in commotion because she’s tired of the responsibility for everything always falling on her. Extended members of the family get to enjoy the benefits without pitching in much to help. It’s a pattern that’s persisted for a long time and the dreamer is sick of it. In the dream, she dreads being the only one to deal with the commotion in the lobby. Her reaction in the dream reveals her feelings.
- Faith is another multilayered symbol. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character is an ass-kicking, takes-no-shit gal. The dreamer really wants to start kicking the asses of family members who are all take and no give. But she can’t — the time isn’t right. You can’t kick ass without legs, right? View that modifier of the dream symbol as symbolism for the dreamer’s feeling that she can’t kick asses in her family despite her desire to do so.
- She also can’t just walk away from her life. No legs means no walking away.
- And there’s more. Faith is a wordplay for faith meaning “belief or trust.” On one level, she’s losing faith in some members of her family. On another level, she has no faith in a higher power that sees and aids her in her endeavors to care for her family. That’s the sort of help she expects to get from above.
The young boy near the door is the final detail to fit into the picture. He doesn’t play a role in the story other than to be in the scene. We know the dream puts him in the story for a reason because dreams have reasons for every detail. The boy though doesn’t appear to connect the dots with anything else in the dream. He’s just there.
Now view him as the dream’s resolution. What’s it really saying? Within the context of the dream-story, he’s placed near the exit door. Aha! That’s a clue. You have to know the dreamer for it to be obvious, but if you observe how she goes about the family business you’d know her gritty resolve to do it right, with close attention to detail and deep care, while sacrificing some of the fun she could be having. Kids have fun, or at least they’re supposed to, which explains why the dream made a kid the character near the door. That “why don’t I get to have some fun” feeling is a source of her inner commotion.
With that in mind, we see a suggestion in the presence of the young boy character to walk away when she needs to. In the Faith character we see that she doesn’t feel empowered to walk away — the character can’t walk with no legs, right? And besides, that’s not who the dreamer is — she’d never walk away from her family nor do anything that even hints at giving up. No, the dream is really saying, “take a break before too much pressure builds within you.” Some people can’t walk away, even temporarily. They have to learn to give themselves permission. And indeed, after the dreamer applies this advice she is better able to handle her family business.
It’s not a Fairy Godmother solution where the problem is solved with a wave of a magic wand, but it’s the beginning of the dreamer feeling empowered.
Take matters into your hands
Sometimes a dream won’t offer a resolution until you become proactive. You have to do something about the situation or take steps that allow the dreaming mind to respond. Decide to turn around and face the thing chasing you, stop running, stand your ground, or at least find a safe place to hide. The dynamics of the situation have to change or you will continue to be pursued. Once you take action, the dream can respond.
This is especially true of recurring dreams. They have a few reasons for recurring, and one is they continue a story, but you have to make the right decisions at critical times or it can’t continue. Your dreams will then tell you the same story another way and see if that helps you get to the resolution.
As you dream, you walk through the story. When it needs a resolution or is naturally working toward it, you find it by playing along. And the funny thing is, by making the right decisions while dreaming, you see the response in your life. Doors open. Opportunities knock. Fears go away. Answers come.
Dream resolution example
Let’s say that you have a recurring dream about a monster chasing you. You can’t identify what it symbolizes. Night after night you are chased and it disturbs your sleep. Finally you get fed up and confront the monster. You scream at the top of your lungs, “STOP CHASING ME!!!”
Then the monster shrinks down to a small child holding a blanket. You feel silly when you realize you’ve actually been running from a harmless child. Your action gives the dream an opportunity to respond. The response helps you identify the dream symbolism, and by identifying the symbolism, you can interpret the dream and find resolution.
A small child holding a blanket can symbolize feeling insecure. So the question is, what are you insecure about? Or, in what way do you need comforted? What basic needs are escaping your attention?
Imagine the person who plays fast and loose with their money and somewhere deep inside they know they’re courting disaster. It manifests in their dreams as a monster chasing them. The inner child is at the core of the story because it feels the most vulnerable. It can’t manage your money for you!
- Resolution: better handle finances; give the inner child the security it needs.
The same imagery could symbolize feeling too insecure to pursue a romantic interest or publicly display a talent. The desire has been pursuing you but you’ve been ignoring it, and anything ignored or repressed is going to be the subject of dreams, even nightmares. This general dream scenario can apply to a variety of situations in life.
- Resolution: figure out the source of the insecurity and take steps to address it.
More common dreams and their resolutions
Three more common dream scenarios and possibilities for resolutions. As you read, keep in mind I’m only providing examples of what these themes can mean and how they can connect with your life; the possibilities are much more vast than what I cover:
- Intruders around your house
- Murder
- Something stolen
Intruders in or around your house can symbolize privacy issues, boundary issues, or anything that’s intrusive. That includes external factors such as someone intruding into your life, or internal factors such as intrusive thoughts or feelings.
- Resolution: think through the situation and take action. Give yourself more privacy. Set and enforce boundaries. Identify the intruders in your life and keep them at a comfortable distance. Identify the thoughts and/or feelings that suddenly barge into your mind.
For example, a woman dreams that an unwelcome stranger is at her front door, which is unlocked. She runs to the door, desperately wants to lock the it and keep out the stranger. She arrives simultaneously with the stranger.
n her waking life, she had recently been contacted by her father, a stranger in her life whom she had previously welcomed back and regretted it. The dream is sending a message that she doesn’t want to give him another chance. She had debated with herself — it’s her father, after all, and she wants to give him the benefit of the doubt — and the dream shows how she really feels.
- Resolution: keep her estranged father out of her life.
Murder in a dream can indicate something needs to change. You are frustrated or angry and need to vent. A bad situation has gone on too long, or you are stuck in a place or situation in your life that you want to leave. Something is “killing you” in the figurative sense, such as in the phrase “the stress is killing me,” or you “murder your chances.”
- Resolution: make the needed changes; deal with your anger; find an outlet for your feelings and emotions; relieve stress; resolve to do better next time.
Something stolen from you can represent that an important part of your life is missing. Most likely, whatever is stolen is not material or physical. The thing taken could be decision-making ability, freedom, independence, confidence, opportunity, or self-esteem. Or perhaps you feel taken advantage of or treated unfairly. Perhaps someone stole your heart, or something stole your confidence. The source might be an external factor, such as a person or situation, or an internal factor, something about you that is like a thief in the night.
- Resolution: identify what’s been taken, or how you are being taken advantage of, and decide what to do about it.