Interpret My Dream

Lemon kittens vs koala tacos?

Last night I had a strange and vivid dream, and when i woke from it I actually wrote down some of the dialogue in the notes on my phone.

I dreamt that I was the head of a multi-disciplinary design agency, who other companies outsourced their design needs to; product design, graphic design, architectural, all sorts. Generally high-end. A bit of a demon boss, arrogant and aloof.

One day a member of the public (quite possibly an old lady) was in the offices – possibly commissioning some work, maybe just visiting – and encountered me on the stairs. I was typically rude and aloof, and she understandably took umbrage and called me ‘succulent’. I think she meant something much ruder. This triggered some kind of moment of existential crisis and I stormed out of the office flamboyantly in the middle of the day.

When I got back about 1/3 of the staff had left because they’d had enough and this was the last straw. I called everyone’s attention, and made an announcement.

“I’ve been playing the character of a design wanker for 20 years and it seems the edges may have got a bit blurred. I think I went a bit method, and I didn’t mean to.”

“I’ve made some calls. I’m disbanding the company with immediate effect. Individuals can keep the contracts they’re currently working on if they wish, we’ll sign them over to people.”

“I want to remember why I started doing this in the first place. So I’m going to start a new company, concentrating on sustainable, ethical, low-cost design. Doing what Eames and the Bauhaus etc were meant to do. Bring great design to everybody, affordably. Because good design helps you live better, helps communities and individuals thrive. Bonds society. It shouldn’t just be for the wealthy. It should be for everyone.”

Basically I wanted to start IKEA. This is the point at which I realised I was definitely dreaming (as opposed to earlier on, when I just suspected I was subconsciously, and influenced the dialogue; it felt like writing something, rather than dreaming. Like creation rather than experience.)

What does this mean?

buy some Lego?

Always a good suggestion.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/577b79c988e4a714088b5c60-960-720.jpg

Hmm

Before that’s taken the wrong way, I should add: you’re finding the various dynamics and obligations if your life beginning to become a strain, and your subconscious is looking for some way to disrupt them, and bring you back to your original values.

Possibly

You're saying I should leave my wife and kids and go cycling for a couple of years?

Try the Lego - I don’t want anything on my conscience.

But it sounds like it could perhaps mainly be a work-stress dream or worries about whether work the wider value. (In my case, I don’t need my subconscious to tell me this - I’m thinking about this constantly).

Knowing nothing about your life, it’s difficult to speculate, butI’m going to anyway. A few things jumped out:

- you suffer a meltdown after being called a ‘succulent’. It is a peculiar insult and brings to mind the idea of retention - of something being held in or repressed or held onto. And maybe it’s also symbolic of being able to survive on little nourishment, pooling from inner resources. That this is such a particular source of upset in the dream hints towards a sensitivity in this area. Maybe an unconscious questioning over whether what’s been held onto to self-nourish is really good or not. This might be internal self representations or not I really have no idea.

- you want to remember why you’re doing something. This could link to the first point - it may no longer be clear why something is being held back or held in.

- there’s this idea that circulates in the dream of wearing a different face and the boundaries becoming blurred. Of having to uphold a facade in order to design things for other people. You express a wish to move away from ‘bad’ design to ‘good’ design. What is the bad design you are struggling with? I don’t know but it’s probably whatever first comes to your mind. I don’t mean IKEA. Like Luna suggested though, it could be to do with a wish to redefine your internal values. There seem to be some general anxieties floating around about goodness and control.

I’m going to stop now because I’m starting to feel unethical. I want to read more ILX dreams!

Why are you starting to feel unethical?

Probably as this is tantamount to therapy in a public forum!

Yeah, there’s this analytic notion of not over-formulating and letting the individual arrive at conclusions for themselves. Obviously this is different, but the analytic super-ego watches me everywhere. (Should also stipulate that I am not an analyst).

After the last 12 months I am very OK with therapy in a public forum. I have been through absolute hell and I am not afraid to share so others don't have to. Also it's interesting!

this dream means you want to start ikea imo

I’m sorry you’ve had a such a bad year. I am a big fan of sharing. xp

not of chocolate I'll warrant

Who shares that?

I have no idea how well my year is known on here, so, some context is on my blog: https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/

Thank you for the context. That is some year... Best wishes to you and your family and I hope your anxiety continues to recede.

I have had a recurring dream for 10+ years now. The particulars vary sometimes, but the core goes like this: I am moving into an apartment or returning to one after a period of time (often the dream takes place in law school after returning from winter or summer break). After the passage of some time, I realize that my apartment is connected to living areas or apartments of other, unknown persons, such that my apartment bleeds into their other persons space (ie no door to close).

The dream is accompanied by a powerful feeling of unease and upset as it becomes apparent that this arrangement has been going on for some period without my awareness.

Any thoughts?

Part of the upset is the process of my discovering the arrangement involves my finding rooms, doors, or hallways which I have never seen before.

Dreams about houses or rooms are quite often spoken about in connection with the inner self and the layers of consciousness or organisation of the psyche. There’s a reason the basement is the most frightening room of the house...

To accept this metaphor for a moment, the dream seems to suggest an anxiety about unknown and unwanted channels in your mind. That the building is also inhabited by others could represent lost or unintegrated objects...people or things that continue to exert pressure on your unconscious that require more processing. And all the rooms and doorways you don’t know about...something about feeling disconcerted with unknown parts of the self?

Thank you. Or known parts of the self.

So my dreams where I'm in a house (not my own) and there are sets of stairs going down down down and i have to descend even though I know there is some awful, indescribable but palpable horror at the bottom - this is fine. Perfectly normal. No therapy needed.

Couple of follow ups:

- Succulent: aside from the gardening sense of plants that are able to survive on little nourishment, I think this also has a more common sense of being juicy, ripe, luscious? Perhaps there's a worry about being at the peak of life (in some sense) and being able make the most of it before the season changes? Again, I've wrestled with this worry myself over the years - and my experience of suddenly trying to make the most of my life in an abrupt way ['oh my god, I've got to do this right now whilst I'm still young' or 'time is running out'] causes panic, haste, greed and regret rather than pleasure.

-The living areas and apartments of other people: I'd be inclined to see this more as fretting about boundary issues/intimacy issues with other people, rather than unexplored areas/hidden parts of the self.

xp, we can all embrace therapy for our dreams about horrific, intangible basement dread. :)

In ‘Making the Best of a Bad Job’, Bion talks about how we shouldn’t necessarily favour our waking reality as being the most important or indeed ‘real’, and that communications from the sleeping state should really be regarded with equal seriousness. It’s a simple point but it totally recast things for me when I read it.

The living areas and apartments of other people: I'd be inclined to see this more as fretting about boundary issues/intimacy issues with other people, rather than unexplored areas/hidden parts of the self.

This makes a ton of sense to me.

we shouldn’t necessarily favour our waking reality as being the most important or indeed ‘real’

Exactly what two people recently escaped from a dream cult said at an intro dream workshop! We were encouraged to "feel our way into" dreams, not to interpret them.

I don’t know what a dream cult is, but it sounds...good?

i dreamt i somewhere that felt like Mexico and looked like it but there were also parts of Tipperary town (nearest town where i grew up) in it too. like we were in a pub in tipperary at one point in the dream. i was going around the town with my friend martin looking for a pair of shoes and my wallet (i did actually lose my backpack in guanajuato once). we were walking around the streets going from place to place. i was walking around in my socks

we also came to someones front garden where two middle aged indian guys lived. there was dogshit all over the garden and it smelled awful

there were flies everywhere on the lawn but despite their tiny size they were killing crows on the ground and the crows were twitching. thats the last thing i remember from the dream.

i dreamt i *was* somewhere that felt like Mexico

I dreamt the other night that I kept urinating on the floor in my parents' house.

In the dream, was this inadvertently/by accident, or as a kind of rebellion ?

Kind of both?

this cryptic one-liner came to me in a dream

"the jerk store called, I'm running out of credit"