Issue 88, December 2005
Dream Rage
©Jane Teresa Anderson, December 2005
When did you last feel angry in a dream? How did you express it: a tight-lipped suppression, a brooding sulk, a breathy curse? Did you give the finger, kick the cat, or throw a tantrum? Or did you explode into rage overdrive, screaming self-righteously at the offending person, or picking them up and throwing them repeatedly against a wall until they were as floppy as a rag doll? Shocking? Yes and no. This is a very common and extremely healthy dream, though it is not one many people will admit to having.
Think about this: how do you feel when you wake up from a rage dream? How do you feel as the day progresses? At first your dream verbal abuse or violence may shock you, but as the day unfolds you usually notice a deep sense of calm. Looking back on your dream you may rightly conclude that a good deal of anger was safely released, with no-one being hurt, but you might be completely baffled as to why you were angry in the first place, and why were you angry with this particular dream character.
The emotions we feel and express in dreams are often raw, deeply impassioned, without balance or reserve. Fear, joy, love and guilt, for example, may overwhelm you in dreams, yet on waking you may question the source of these energies. Surely any guilt you may have felt in your life is nowhere near the scale implied by your dream, and where, oh where, is this dream soul mate capable of igniting such awesome love?
Your dreams, once interpreted, reveal the current state of play in the drama that is your life. How you handle your waking life is reflected in your dreams, as your dreaming mind works the night shift to update your experiences and keep hammering away at creating the Big Picture of life as you, personally, know it. Your drama is different to my drama because our different experiences have given us different beliefs and attitudes about the world. Our dreams show us how our dramas have been built and how they are likely to play out in the future, unless we change the scripts.
Each night we meet, in our dream theatre, the basic plots, character traits, recurring themes, issues, conflicts, emotions and beliefs that have defined our individual lives up to this point, as they interact and influence the outcome – your waking life.
So, what can your ‘Rage’ dream drama tell you about the current state of play of your life? What can it tell you about the role anger is playing in shaping your waking life? Let’s look at two examples of Dream Rage, to find out:
Miranda’s dream:
'TORRENTIAL RAGE'
"My dream was simple. I walked into a room and saw Annie. She was just standing there, quite innocently, but I went up to her and started to tell her exactly what I thought of her. Telling escalated to shouting, and shouting escalated to screaming. The words kept flowing in torrents, accusing and recriminating Annie without pause until the emptying of my lungs squeezed the last drop of venom and I fell to the ground, exhausted. Annie, totally taken by surprise by my uncharacteristic outburst, still looked angelically innocent.
I don’t remember a lot of what I said, but the bits I do remember made sense and were true to my personal view of Annie, which is that she is a Prima Donna with zero interest in what anyone else has to say."
Miranda laughed after recounting her dream, "At least I had my say in my dream, and she didn’t talk over me as she usually does!"
In interpreting a rage dream, the first thing is to identify the energy you are angry with in the dream. In Miranda’s case, the energy that drew such rage was Prima Donna energy. Anger expressed in a dream is usually anger that is not expressed in waking life. Instead it is either consciously held-back or pushed deep into the unconscious mind. Either way, it releases itself in dreams given the right trigger, leaving the dreamer better for the dream venting, but unless the basic issue is addressed, the anger will build again and continue to affect the dreamer’s waking life.
Miranda’s anger issue was with Prima Donna energy, but why? The next question to ask about a rage dream is, “What is the opposite to this energy?” Miranda came up with ‘meekness’. When it comes to dream work, everyone has their own ideas, and it’s Miranda’s feeling for the opposite energy that helps her to understand her dream.
The two opposite energies define the issue that is causing conflict – and anger - for Miranda. Looking back over her life, Miranda realised that she had been brought up to ‘speak only when spoken to’ even though her parents seemed to demonstrate the opposite, rarely listening to other people and commonly talking right over them. It was only now, in looking back, that Miranda saw her parents’ energy as Prima Donna and her own, by contrast, as meekness. She remembered times when she had adventured into the spotlight, even, at one stage, setting up a charity aimed at helping political prisoners voice their experiences. The charity work had not succeeded in the way she had hoped, as Miranda felt increasingly uncomfortable in her high profile role, meeting and greeting more than a few Prima Donnas along the way. When the charity folded she had felt angry with herself for not making it work, and angry with others for making her work difficult.
Over many years of grappling with issues of ‘meekness versus Prima Donna’ without making any real progress, Miranda had gathered a huge amount of resentment and anger. She realised that a recent work scenario had triggered her Rage Dream.
As a result of understanding her dream rage, Miranda understood that she had acquired a belief, from childhood, that ‘meek is good’ and another that ‘speaking out is bad’, so whenever she tried to speak out, she failed. Over many years, she became increasingly angry with herself, for being too meek, or for not being meek enough, or for feeling she was being a Prima Donna, or for not being able to handle Prima Donna energy around her. Whichever way she looked at it, she couldn’t win. She was stuck in her issue and she was seething about it, but it wasn’t until she interpreted her Rage Dream that she understood any of this.
The beauty of dream work is that once you identify a belief that is not working well for you, you have the key to change this.
Sean’s dream:
'VIOLENT RAGE'
"I battered and bashed an old friend of mine. I grabbed him by the hair and swung him around, smashing him to the floor. I have no idea why."
Sean viewed his old friend as "lazy." "He was always trying to get away with not doing any work, always getting others to do things for him. It’s why we fell out in the end," remembered Sean.
"The opposite of lazy?" he asked, "That’s easy! Hard working!"
It didn’t take Sean long to understand his dream rage. He was extremely hard-working, so much so that he never had enough time to do the things he wanted to do. Life seemed unfair and, when he came to think about it, he was extremely angry with his lot. He just hadn’t realised it till now.
But how had this happened? Sean thought back for a while. "At school I was very bright. I found class so easy it was boring. I day-dreamed my way through school but nearly always came top of class when it came to exams. Over the years I became very unpopular, as you can imagine. I can’t quite put my finger on it right now, but I think it’s got something to do with why I work so hard these days. It’s something about needing to earn my rewards, something about life not being meant to be easy."
Sean realised he had acquired a belief during his school years that to earn rewards and be popular he needed to be seen to work hard. What a wake-up call!
"So all that anger I directed at my old lazybones friend in my dream was really all my anger about the hard yards I’ve made myself do," he concluded. He was bright enough to work out the rest himself, as I’m sure you can too.
Dream rage? Let the lightning bolts illuminate the way forward.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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