INTERPRETATION
There are two instances of not caring in your dream. When you broke up you said, “I wasn’t really concerned” and the thing that freaked you out at the end of the dream was that your dad “didn’t care” when your mum talked about her affair.
It’s always helpful to look for a recurring theme in a dream, a repeating pattern, sometimes referred to in dream interpretation as a ‘motif’. The motif is a strong key to the interpretation. It’s often the key issue. Your dream is about “not caring”.
Aha – but let’s look again. Isn’t it interesting that the thing that freaked you out, the thing you MOST cared about in the dream, was your dad not caring! Now, there’s a paradox – and another wonderful clue to interpretation, because another helpful thing to look for in a dream is a pair of opposites. Your pair of opposites is ‘caring too much’ (caring so much you get freaked out, which is not a healthy response) and ‘not caring’ (at all). The pair of opposites in a dream usually define the issue the dream is addressing. In this case, the issue is ‘how much to care’.
So far, just with those two observations, we know that your dream is about how you handle caring, and about how you probably swing between caring too much, to your freaked-out detriment, and not caring at all. Which is the best approach, to care too much, to not care at all, or a point somewhere between the two?
The beginning of a dream tends to set the theme that sparks off the issue. At the beginning of your dream you are on your way to a party, and later in the dream you note that you’re “all excited” to be at this party. So the theme of your dream is great excitement over (perhaps) a celebration, or at least excitement over a bit of fun. What particularly excited you in the day or two before this dream? Excitement – remember that for a moment while I draw another key thread.
Another thing to look for in a dream, as a clue, is any play on words. Now, you didn’t use the words ‘parting’ but I wonder how close ‘a party’ and ‘parting’ (breaking up) are. You were excited about the party. My feeling is that even though you said you didn’t care about the break up, you were actually very excited about it! No wonder you didn’t seem to care about breaking up! Were you particularly excited about the prospect of a change (a ‘break’ from the old) in the day or two before this dream?
Your boyfriend, in this dream, may represent your relationship, but most likely represents ‘something’ you were breaking up with at the time of the dream – something you were moving on from, something you were changing. This dream is about change, about being excited about change, and yet … the biggest change that comes up in your dream is when you hear this news about your mum’s affair. Your response in the dream is to freak out. It’s a change you’re not expecting, and it reminds you, when you think about your dream, of an actual experience from your past, your memory of your dad telling you he was leaving yor mum. That was a huge change for you, wasn’t it, hearing that your parents were splitting up?
So, you have a real life experience in your past of feeling freaked out when your dad announced a change. You wanted stability – life as you had always known it with your parents – you did not want change!
Our past experiences – especially traumatic ones like this – shape how we respond to life in the future. It’s likely that you developed, as a result of this experience, a great fear of change.
You may not be fully conscious of the great depth of this fear of change. This dream is your opportunity to recognise this and let it go – stop it from affecting how you respond to life and how you choose to be and act from now forward.
Stand a long way back from your dream, and then summarise it in one sentence. You could say, “I was excited and there was change in the air, but suddenly I remembered how freaked out change makes me so I ran back to the way things were.” Where could you apply this sentence to your experiences of the day or two before this dream?
When people fear change, control usually develops as an issue. People who fear change sometimes try hard to control everything in their life – to keep things from changing. Sometimes they become the controller, even trying to control others. Sometimes they choose controlling partners and strictly routine jobs and lifestyles in an effort to avoid change. Do you fit into either of these patterns? Which?
It’s time to let go of your fear of change so you can also see an end to control issues in your life. Fear of change is keeping you restricted, instead of enjoying excitement - like the prospect of that exciting party (or parting), for example.
So let’s now return to the issue of how much to care. We need to put it in the context of the issue of control, which is related to fear of change. When you fear change, when you need to feel control in your life (whether you’re doing the controlling or allowing someone else to control you), there are times when you need to suppress your feelings – to not care – to block out (or control) your true emotions. Do you do this sometimes, in the same way your dad did in the dream?
And are there other times when you care too much, when your emotions are out of control with caring, as they were when you were freaked out in your dream? Do you over-react and over care sometimes? Do you care so much about avoiding change that you make unhealthy choices?
Do you live this contradiction, torn between keeping your emotions under tight control (not caring) and over-reacting with freaked out emotion (caring too much)? It’s time to find a balance between these two extreme states, to care enough to feel and express your emotions without over-reaction, and to allow this new approach to free you from a restricted, controlled lifestyle, to allow change.
In the dream you felt you had to tell your boyfriend something. Shortly after this, your mum starting telling you something. She started telling you about her affair – a big and exciting change, and, as you saw it in the dream, a betrayal. So, there are two ‘tellings’ – another recurring theme, or motif.
Remember, everyone in a dream represents something about yourself, so all the characters in conflict with each other in a dream represent the conflicts within you. Part of you wants to “tell” (express) an exciting change, and part of you is horrified by this, feeling change is a betrayal. In your dream, your parents were split up while your mum had the affair, so it wasn’t a betrayal, was it? There’s another way to see this; another point of view. Your dream shows you that you dismiss exciting change as valid, and see it as a betrayal. Any time you decide to make a change, you judge yourself as guilty and run for the status quo/ control.
It’s time to see the positive in change. Your dream attempts to show this at the beginning, where you layer the second dress on top of the first “so you could see a bit of each”. It’s a kind of mix-n-match, a bit of the old, a bit of the new, to create a different LOOK – a different point of view – a change. Making a change in life can be like adding a new layer, building on the past in a new way, growing. Do you care enough to be ready for this? Do you ‘not care’ enough about change (not fearful of it) to free yourself to do this?
DREAM ALCHEMY PRACTICE
Since your dream featured a party that you ended up missing because you were freaked out by change, you missed the party cake, complete with candles – let’s imagine. We’ll use this symbolism to alchemise your fear of change into a celebration of change, a celebration of releasing yourself from control issues. Draw or find a picture of a big celebration cake, and stick it on a poster or on your vision board. Each day, step out to make a change – even a little one – and, when you do, draw a candle on your cake and celebrate joyfully! Whenever that daily change involves freeing up control, award yourself two candles. Continue in this way for two months. From time to time, buy a real cake, light the same number of candles as you have drawn, celebrate and eat!
Jane Teresa Anderson
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