Pleading with my Captors

by not bitter 11 Replies latest jw friends

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  not bitter

  I have always had bonkers dreams and I remember a lot of them, even some from my childhood. I have the common dreams of flying and being chased all the time. And I used to dream about demons but not for a very long time.

  But heres the thing, I often dream that I've been captured and about to be tortured or murdered and the rest of my dream is about me negotiating my freedom and promising all sorts of things if they will only let me go free.

  I even tell them where other people are hiding so they will take them instead of me. I don't like to think what that part says about me.

  My question is, does anyone else have similar dreams as I've not heard of this one before. And, I do wonder if its due to my upbringing and being in constant fear that I would be captured during the great tribulation and put in a concentrations camp and tortured. I can remember always wondering if I'd be strong enough to die for my faith and would I turn others in in return for my freedom. I remember having these thoughts throughout my childhood.
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  OneEyedJoe

  I wouldn't put much stock in what your dreams say about your personality. I tend to see dreams as an evolutionary development that lets us experiment at a low cost (i.e. your mind can play out simulations to see how things might turn out, with no consequences for bad results).

  In your case, I'd say the takeaway is that your dreams have taught you that you wouldn't feel good about yourself if you gave someone else up to save yourself. Instead of indicating that you are of lesser integrity, your dreams have taught you that your integrity is important to you.
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  Witness My Fury

  It seems logical that your early fears play out in these dreams, but that's just a guess. You are bound to be somewhat disturbed by your in dream actions if they are not what you would wish in reality.

  I used to have a regularly repeated disturbing dream (nightmare?) for years that involved me being in a sand pit at night with large coloured balls (think hard shiney and heavy snooker balls but 3 meters in diameter) rolling one after another along the wires on telephone poles and dropping off the end onto the ground. That was about the sum of it, but it was disturbing enough to wake me up each time I had it.

  Other disturbing dreams involve size as well, I used to have regular waking dreams where I was awake and aware but obviously not 100%, I'd grip my wirst under the covers and it would feel like a finger and really freak me out, then I'd grip my finger to check and it would be huge.

  Others involved car chases and suddenly I cant reach the pedals or see out the windscreen because i have shrunk.

  The joys of the mind eh?
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  not bitter

  Witness my Fury - I also have the car dream where I can't reach the pedals and similar to yours what I call my fat finger dreams.

  I can have the fat finger feeling when I'm awake
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  scotoma

  When I was interested in Fritz Perls Gestalt Therapy I used to find his method of analysis useful.

  He felt that everything in the dream is YOU. You are the prisoner and the captor.

  You might want to create a dialog between the prisoner and the captor.

  Captor: "I'm not going to let you go"

  Prisoner: "Please... Let.. Me... Go"

  This is a classical Top Dog-Underdog scenario.

  You need to identify with the power side and figure out what or who you refuse to let go.

  Who or what are you clinging to.

  Eventually you will realize that you have the power to abandon your captor and take its power back into yourself.

  You need to identify your imaginary security tied up with your captor. There is something in your life that you want to free yourself from and at the same time you are afraid of losing your security.

  All dreams come down to varieties of this dilemma. You need your enemies for something.
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  Witness My Fury

  Yes that fat finger thing feels weird, I havent had it for a few years now, but used to get it a lot. At least I'm not the only one.
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  Vidiot

  Dreams are your brain's equivalent of a screen saver.
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  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  I have a recurring dream where I'm a muffler.

  I always wake up exhausted.

  Sorry. Didn't really happen.

  I've had many dreams, even very recently, where I'm back in bethel or a very bethel-like setting. Some are rather scary, like, "wait, what happened to my freedom, and the work toward a degree?" Other times it was more like, "snap, now I have a degree and can get whatever I want out of this strange company!"

  Another time, I dreamed that I ate a giant marshmallow.

  I woke up and couldn't find my pillow ANYWHERE!

  Sorry. Didn't really happen.
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  SAHS

  I myself have had a reocurring dream about a large storm system slowly approaching from a distance. It certainly doesn’t take too much intelligence to realize that the approaching storm represents Armageddon – complete with dark clouds and multiple tornado funnels. (Those sketches in the big old orange-colored book “Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained” certainly had a large part to play in the psyches of many prepubescents.) Also, I have had many dreams about weird, uncanny “supernatural” things happening. In all these instances, I’ve always been really glad that it’s been only a dream. My, what fears are fostered by that Watchtower enterprise!
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  Band on the Run

  I studied psychoanalytic theory and dreams during college. Most scholars today believe we don't dream what we remember. Our brain adds content after we wake to make a cohesive dream. If they are correct, dreams are not predictive. All I know is that my father threw me down the stairs at home when I was in high school. After that incident, I had repetitive dreams of hurtling through space. My dreams happen at the Grand Staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which is majestic. Home was just a bunch of dinky stairs. I don't know why but the dreams stopped in my thirties. There are some Bible verses thrown in for good measure.

  As long as I can recall, Jehovah was my tormentor. Jesus was nice. Jehovah was a monster!

  Has anyone seen dream books in the ghetto? They were common in Newark, NJ. You could see them at McCrory's and Woolworth's. I always was tempted to play the numbers based on my dream. It would be funny to donate the winnings to WTBTS.