Natalia Snider is a certified dream practitioner living in Carbondale. She works with people’s dreams and imaginations to facilitate self-healing. Every month, she will analyze someone’s dream in The Sopris Sun. Anyone can submit a dream for personal analysis or inclusion in this column by visiting: www.dreamhealings.com
Dream
Hi, I had a strange dream last night. I took cough medicine so maybe that’s why. In the dream, I was in my college town, drunk with a friend. (I’m sober and have been for years. I did a lot of stupid things back then and have a hard time forgiving myself, so I don’t like the idea of being drunk in real life, let’s just say).
Anyways, we saw a raft full of our other friends floating down the street. I guess it was flooded. So, me and my friend tried to catch up with them because we were supposed to be on the raft. We chased it to a beach, but got separated. I tried to take a shortcut and fell off an embankment, landing on a bunch of fishermen’s lures and junk on the beach. The fishermen were mad because this drunk guy ruined their lines, and my body was riddled with fishing hooks. I kind of just laid there and gave up.
Then, a middle-aged woman came down and gently removed each hook. The pain was visceral. I could really feel it. I thanked her and then continued to search for the raft full of my friends. I searched the beach for a while but never found them. The feeling I had was that they left without me on purpose. I was sad in the dream and felt betrayed.
Interpretation
Okay, first the obvious, then the not-so-obvious. The dream was indeed induced by the feeling of the cough medicine because it’s similar to the feeling of being drunk. Any medicine we take before bed will affect our dream space from the mildest medicines to the most active. There is always a layer of meaning in dreams that is correlated to the body. But this one goes so much deeper than just the body.
Let’s discuss the meaning your subconscious has left for you. The unwanted feeling of being inebriated has provoked your emotional body to release a truth that it has been holding onto. Something that needs attention. It is revealing to you that this is what you think you deserve for your history with alcohol: not being included or worthy of friendship, that you must feel physical pain and that in the end you are alone in this journey. Yet it’s not such a morbid dream, instead it is only your perspective on the dream. Which happens to be the “big takeaway message” from this dream: to shift your perspective.
First you begin with a friend in the dream, but instead of sticking with that friend you run after other friends who seem more fun. So, the first thing your subconscious wants you to notice is that you already have friends. Then, you get stuck with hooks and a caring female figure comes over to help without any prompting. This indicates that you have people that care for you unconditionally, even if you don’t realize it or ask for it. That they are there for you even when you give up.
In the final parts you are alone looking for the friends on the beach, and this feeling of abandonment emerges. Yet, the grass isn’t greener. You abandoned your friend for others and purposely left the care of the female. Your subconscious is allowing you to experience the feelings you are meeting in this dream. Like a mirror of emotion — a perfect way to show you how it feels.
It’s also a perfect tell that you already have everything you are searching for; that you are worthy and always have been. You have friends and you have unconditional love. You are not alone unless you choose to be. Choose your perspective. That’s what your subconscious is offering you to observe and contemplate from the safety of your bed.
Often, the dreams that leave us with poor feelings pointedly do this so we must address them. They are being unconsciously stored inside of us. Emotions are meant to be felt and released. We hold onto them when we don’t allow their natural flow in and out. Suppressed emotions come out in dreams to try to get released. They sneak out of the gates when our conscious mind isn’t in control. The paradox is that we hold onto them so hard that there then becomes this idea that it must also be hard to let them go.