"Someone is Trying to Break Into My House!" A Dream Interpretation

Upcoming Dream Workshop

This practice of community dreamwork at The Salome Institute has been an enlivening opportunity to join with others who are interested in expanding their relationship with the unconscious, symbols, and dreams. In this series, Satya will introduce some foundational elements of recording and observing dreams for those who are new to the practice, as well as our process of exploring dreams in community online. Then, in each of our six sessions, Satya will host live dreamwork for two participants who have expressed interest in “working a dream” in a live, interactive format.

Dear Satya:

Q: I have a recurring dream that someone is trying to break into my house. It's usually a very scary man, maybe about forty years old. (I get chills even thinking about him now). When I wake up from this dream, I often have to get out of bed to make sure the door is locked before I can go back to sleep.

A: Oh dreamer, this is such a common theme. I'm glad you brought it to our attention so we can work through it together. You want these dreams to go away and stop taunting you, I know. You wonder what they could possibly mean and why they're afflicting you. They're disturbing your sleep and penetrating your waking life with the fear they contain. These dreams are very important dreams, but they rarely mean anything like what you're likely to think they do.

First of all, I'd like to refer you to a little post I wrote about recurring nightmares. Please give it a read to help gauge what type of nightmares you typically suffer from. It can be important to identify some trauma history around nightmares, in addition to overall symbolism.

Okay, before we go on, I need to ask you to do one more thing: Get a piece of paper and a pen. Go on... I know it's old-fashioned. Now take a moment to go back into the feeling of this dream, then write down as many descriptors of this scary guy as you can muster. But write down what he's like besides being scary. Does he have a job? Does he have a family? What do you know about him that you might be surprised to know. Then, finally, ask yourself what you think he wants from you.

It's really important that you try to get to know this guy because he is your shadow. He's you. I know, it's yucky to hear that, but keep listening. This is important stuff. When we have an idea of who we are, our perspective about ourselves can become kind of rigid and fixed. Those things you avoid acknowledging about yourself to feel more comfortable don't just go away. They get cut off from your awareness and then tend to fester and get pissed. In your dreams, they turn into actual figures, and they can turn kind of primal and wild in their frustration at being neglected. These figures are part of your whole person, but they're being left out in the cold. No wonder they want to break in.

So, the underlying sense in this dream is that you feel under attack. You likely feel like you're under attack or in danger in some form out in the world too. But your dreams are telling you something very clearly here: despite all the dangers in the world that may cause a person to feel fear, you are currently under attack by your own self. Nothing more. Get real with yourself here. Try to be gentle and forgiving. Take your time. What are you running from? What are you trying not to notice? Who are you scared of being?

The answer to these questions can be found in gently trying to understand who this figure is that's trying to break in. There may also be information in what house you're in in these dreams. Is it your current home or a childhood home, for instance? Notice what time of your life these dreams are situated in, and you may gather more information about what part of your life they're speaking to.

As you do this exploration, take heart! There is always a happy ending when these dreams resolve. You will find that this man actually just wanted to tell you he loved you, for instance. Or he may hand you flowers. I know this might sound absurd, but this man is not as scary as he feels. The anticipation of jumping out of a plane is scarier than the jump itself (or so I've heard...). Similarly, anticipating an encounter with someone you're trying to avoid tends to be worse than the encounter itself. Try not to think about this too much, but work on engaging with this man a little more directly—either in your dreams, if you can, or in waking life projected onto strangers or people you don't like. Get to know him and what he wants. Try not to avoid him internally or externally. Discover what's happening when you start to feel under attack in waking life. Stay safe, but also bring your guards down a little. Get curious. You may discover that your life changes in positive ways as this happens. And you'll be surprised by how.

P.S. You may enjoy listening to this Radio Lab episode called "Haunted Dreams" in which a man who has been plagued by the same dreams as you--for twenty years!-- finds a way to make them stop. It's a great episode but--spoiler alert--they stop rather short of explaining why the dreams were there in the first place and what changed for the man after the dreams stopped. Perhaps your own exploration into this territory can illuminate those questions further.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"I'm Driving My Car and I Can't Slow Down." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

I have had several dreams in which I am driving and I can't slow down. Sometimes I run red lights, sometimes I am driving and I cannot figure out how to use the brakes. I am usually very scared but I somehow manage to stay in control of the car.

A: Unfortunately, this is a very common dream theme, but it's one that is indicative of a cultural illness of manic activity. The message from the dream is clear: you need to slow down.

You may even think that you have already slowed things down in your life. If so, the dream is saying "try harder." This is your own unconscious giving you a very clear message. Listen.

Cars in dreams are symbolic of you. They're like turtles' shells, the additional homes or bodies in which we travel through the world. If you have dreams of driving, pay attention. Pay attention to the way in which you are driving, or if you are driving at all. If you're not driving, who is? Who's in the driver's seat? This is very important information. You can develop great insight into what aspect of you is actually in control of your life, or perhaps it's another person in your life altogether.

Your dreams are indicating that you are holding onto control by the skin of your teeth. You may think "but I'm killing it right now! I'm totally in control of things!" If that is the case, this dream is clearly indicating another layer of what is going on, that perhaps you're riding on a degree of mania, feeling on top of it while actually beginning to crash (pun intended). While you are safe for now, you don't really know how you're managing it. After a while, you'll start to pay the price if you don't heed the advice of your dream.

Dreams are often the first line of defense in getting us into alignment with our inner selves. If we're checked out or disengaged from our path in life, our dreams will reflect that. Sometimes, they'll turn into nightmares to get our attention. But if our awareness gets too fragmented, we can fall into physical danger too: we forget to look both ways when crossing the street, we stop paying close attention when driving our car in waking life, maybe we just get angry with people in our lives when we needn't be. It's also possible that following these dreams, an injury or illness may appear to slow us down by force. This may again be what the dream is reflecting directly, with the car representing the body. Take a good look at your immune system, your sleep habits, your eating, and your physical well-being.

Your dream world is your ally. If your dream is telling you to slow down, it's not demanding something you cannot accomplish. Find a way to spend more time alone, to breathe, to stay aware of the moment-to-moment details in your life. Bringing yourself into the moment of whatever it is you may be doing will significantly slow down your internal clock and pace. You'll be the better for it.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"A Menagerie of Wild Animals in the Backyard." A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Q: I am in a house that is overrun by wild animals. I walk into a room, the nook just off the kitchen, and I see a Monitor Lizard buried head first in a big vase full of flowers and scummy water. He scurries up and out of the vase as I enter. Outside in the back, courtyard area, a couple of large cats are sitting, maybe a Lion and Cheetah. They were in and out of the house as well. My mom was there, along with other female family members. The animals did pose some danger to us, but there were wary of us as well. It occurred to me that they wanted water, that they were here looking for water. Is that why they had come in from the wild? I assumed that wild animals have ways of getting what they need in the wild, but not anymore, I guess. Not these days. As we stood looking over the yard from above, I wondered to my mom about filling up a kiddie pool with water for the animals. She suggested we do it tomorrow as trying to navigate around them at that moment would be dangerous. I felt for them, though. Tomorrow is a long ways off if they're really thirsty.

A: Thank you, dreamer, for sending in this dream. You shared with me in writing that you woke up from this dream with the word "Menagerie" in your head, and that you hadn't been entirely conscious of the meaning of that word: "a collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition." This word, and the tone of its definition, may provide an interesting insight for us as we explore the rest of your dream. You also shared with me that you weren't feeling physically well at the time of the dream and you wondered if there might be clues to that in the dream.Indeed, the animal nature of your dream suggests a reference to your own animal nature: your physical, instinctual self. The animals have come in from the wild and are invading your home. They're thirsty. I immediately began wondering in exploring this dream why they're thirsty, and what they (you) are thirsty for exactly. I wonder too what it means that they're displaced. The realities of environmental degradation and global warming are bound to show up in the dreams of anyone living in the modern era (we're consciously and unconsciously experiencing it), but the image should still also be looked at symbolically. The ever-expanding cities and shrinking natural world has a psychological correlation for us all. In the modern era, psyche becomes heavily weighted towards the conscious, literal, rational mind and further distanced from the interconnected, mysterious realm of the universe in which we live.

The modern psyche is raised to be narcissistic and sociopathic, with ever-expanding egos and ever-decreasing reverence for whatever it is that we can't understand. But, whether we like it or not, the wild comes back to us. The grass grows up between the cracks of the concrete, the ants return just when you thought they were gone, and the winds and rain may bring a city to its knees with little warning. Is that what's happening in your life? Your wild nature is demanding attention. It's reclaiming territory and making its presence known. Before exploring the deeper symbolic layers of Water, the first "interpretation" of this image might simply be that you're thirsty. Really. This fact may be buried in your consciousness, something which you're not terribly aware of and therefore shows up with your animal nature stating what it's feeling: "I'm dehydrated." Whether or not this could be a symptom of your sickness or of a tendency for you in general, I don't know, but it's a simple reading of the dream that might be valuable for you to explore. The unconscious inhabits all of us, our cells and our muscles, not just the dark reaches of our mind.

On a more symbolic level, I'm going to start by offering you what might seem like another simple statement (or a stoner's attempt at profundity): Water is central to life. Without water, there would be no existence as we know it. Adult humans are nearly 60% water. Social centers have typically been built around major water resources, rivers or lakes or oceans. Fountains have been placed in the center of city landscapes and kingdoms. Water is central, literally and symbolically. So we know, instinctively, to bow to the water within us and outside of us. What might this mean for your dream? It may be that you're feeling somewhat disconnected from life itself, that you're needing to reconnect to the life force in some way, to your emotions (another aspect of water in dreams), and to the spiritual, soulful realm that gives life meaning. This could also be seen as the Yin aspect of life, the feminine, anima, source of life that animates material existence. This nod to the feminine seems to arise in particular with the mention of your mother and the female members of your family, a theme also echoed with the particular species of cats you mentioned.

The Monitor Lizard in the vase of water is curious to me, especially in that he is situated in "the nook just off the kitchen." I'm curious here again about the way this dream may be orienting you towards very specific parts of your body. The kitchen tends to be correlated with the stomach in dream symbolism. The kitchen is the place where food is chopped and cooked and broken down, where the alchemy of food digestion begins. So the language around this lizard's hiding place just make me wonder if there might be an illness or imbalance (not necessarily serious) associated with your liver perhaps, or spleen. I also wonder this because this particular animal is named from the Latin root word Monit, to warn. What, perhaps emotionally, might be stuck in one of the smaller organs near the stomach? You might explore Chinese medicine for some answers here, or visit a good practitioner. The image of the lizard in dreams can also be related to lineage; that from which we evolved. This might tie in again with the appearance of your mother and family in the dream and what you might be working through in your physical and psychic inheritance. Perhaps there is a lineage of disconnection from some emotional depths that you are working to heal. And, of course, perhaps you have personal associations to Monitor Lizards that are valuable for further insights into why this animal is there, off the nook of your kitchen.

Finally, to return to the word with which you awoke: Menagerie... Menagerie. The notion of captivity that defines that word is resonant to me in working this dream. It makes me wonder: are you feeling trapped? Are things feeling too controlled and confining in your life? Are you needing to be wilder? Ask yourself these questions. Spend some time really sitting with the notions. Is your life feeling as though you are in captivity and that your deepest self is not getting a chance to roam and be free? If there is an inkling that this might be true, see what you can do to rectify the situation. In your psychic landscape, you can transform the wilderness, bring the flow of water back to where it belongs, and encourage the animals to return to their natural environments where they want to be. In the future, hopefully in the near future, if you can bring more flow back into your life, your dreams will reflect these changes and it will be you who is visiting the animals, out in the wilds where they are most alive and free.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

Trauma, PTSD, and Dreaming: Understanding recurring dreams and nightmares.

I've written before about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and dreaming, that is, on the way that severe trauma can alter the dreaming function of the unconscious. Keep in mind that severe trauma can not always be easily assessed by the person who experiences it. For the most part, individuals who experience trauma are likely to minimize what they experienced. Even if the trauma itself can be cataloged as a part of war or an assault, the individual who underwent the difficulties (the shock and likely psychic or physical experience of near death) is not always able to see clearly how traumatic an experience they endured. Our psychic self-protections are strong. We can become tough as nails to defend us from terrible difficulties and it is not until those defenses begin to soften (often over time, with a lot of patience and love and gentleness, assurances of safety, and good bodywork and therapy), that an individual can acknowledge how terrible the trauma they experienced truly was.

The official diagnosis for an individual who becomes affected by a traumatic event is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, known simply as PTSD. This label can address a variety of symptoms, both physical and mental, but the exploration of how an individual becomes afflicted with dreams that repeat the traumatic event, having to relive what they experienced in recurring dreams, remains under-explored. A few years ago, I wrote a post about the work of Dr. Barry Krakow, refuting the notion that his work with the dreams of patients suffering from traumatic recurring dreams was new work, or non-Jungian. Indeed, as far back as the beginning of the 20th century, Jung understood what was happening within the unconscious of traumatized individuals, as well as how to cure the further trauma of recurring dreams.

Recurring Dreams and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Jungian Psycholgy

I came upon this passage today from a seminar that Carl Jung delivered in 1938 that explores the dreams of individuals suffering from "Shell Shock" the diagnosis of psychologically affected returning soldiers that preceded the modern diagnosis of PTSD. Jung explains how recurring dreams from trauma ("shell shock") indicate an absolute shift in the psychic system, and are a singular exception to the way dreams typically process and digest material from life.

The dream is never a mere repetition of previous experiences, with only one specific exception: shock or shell shock dreams, which sometimes are completely identical repetitions of reality. That, in fact, is proof of the traumatic effect. The shock can no longer be psychified. This can be seen especially clearly in healing processes in which the psyche tries to translate the shock into a psychical anxiety situation. (Carl Jung, Children's Dreams, pp. 21-22)

Jung continues in his explanation, elucidating the way in which some traumatic experiences must be altered, slowly, into more symbolically rendered shocks in order to be metabolized and integrated into the individual's psyche. (Ultimately, this is very similar to what Dr. Barry Krakow and others are currently working on; it must be pointed out for historical record that Jung was already treating patients in this manner over 75 years ago.)

The reaction of shell-shocked patients is that a knock, or anything reminiscent of a shot or an explosion, suffices to trigger nervous attacks. The attempt to transform a shock into a psychical situation that may gradually be mastered can also succeed toward the end of a treatment, however, as I have observed myself in a series of dreams of an English officer. In this man's dreams, the explosion of the grenade changed into lions and other dangers that he was then able to tackle. The shock was, so to speak, absorbed. In this way, the dreamer was able to master the effect of the shock as a psychical experience. Any time we are confronted with a shock in its "raw," not yet psychical, form, our psychical means are not sufficient to overcome it. We are not able, for example, to cope with physical injury or a physical infection [directly] by psychical means. ... It also seems that a shell shock is so hard to cure because in most cases it is accompanied by  heavy, bodily shocks that probably cause very fine disturbances of a nonpsychical nature in the nervous system. (Carl Jung, Children's Dreams, pp. 21-22)

That's a lot of material to digest! But the summary of Jung's work here is pretty simple to summarize and is (thankfully) being integrated into work today with PTSD patients and the recurring dreams and nightmares that they suffer. The summary is that typical dreams are never just repetitions of daily events (they always include telling, important differences), but total repetition can occur if the dreams are the result of a traumatic event. These dreams seem to overpower or overwhelm the symbol-making function of psyche and likely also come with a physical residue of trauma that must also gradually be worked through (the field of Somatic Experiencing is doing very interesting work in this area). If you are suffering from recurring dreams or traumatic nightmares, there are methods of treatment that are very effective and that can provide relief and renewed health. It is critical, however, that you seek treatment. The loss of sleep and anxiety that can result from traumatic recurring dreams, along with all of the other pain being experienced, can be detrimental -- not only to you, but your loved ones. Seek out a mental health professional who has experience with tending to recurring dreams and traumatic dreams.

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).

"Gross! I Pooped and Put it In the Fridge!" A Dream Interpretation.

Dear Satya:

Okay, this is kind of gross, but I'm really curious... in this dream I'm standing alone in a nice, big kitchen in a house that feels somewhat communal. I have to go to the bathroom, but I don't want to use one of the bathrooms because I want to avoid people knowing. The next thing I know, I've pooped in a plastic compost container and am placing the full container in the refrigerator! I know I intend to flush it all later. It's really full and gross. Later, I am in another room and there's a crew of people, in their 30s, happy, gathered and cooking in the kitchen. I have anxiety that the container will be discovered. When they leave, I go to the fridge and find that someone has dumped and cleaned the container and that it's now full of cooked white rice. What?!

Awesome! Yes, in a way this is a totally gross dream. Fine. But the symbols behind it are also pretty awesome. Here's the quick-and-dirty (so to speak) about poop dreams: they can very directly reflect what's going on in our "psychic digestive systems." The psychological processing of things is not unlike physical digestion in the way it works: we take things in, process them, integrate the nutrients, and release the waste. When life throws us things that are requiring more of our attention, poop dreams often show up. The dreams are pointing to the need to digest something, to fully take something in, or they can point out problems with the processing. With "psychic digestion," there are endless social norms that can keep us from properly integrating what we take in. Each day, the emotions, experiences, memories, relationships, stimuli, information, and conversations in our lives cannot all be fully digested because we don't have the time, or we get interrupted, or we're at work and on deadline. Too much of the external expectations and not enough of the internal awareness can leave us constipated, or sick. Symbolically and literally.

In this dream, you're scared to go to the bathroom because other people are around. This can suggest that you have needed to process something that's happening in your life away from others, or that you were unnecessarily concerned about the opinions of others in regards to what you're sorting through. I say this in the past tense because this dream has a full conclusion. To start, you do poop, reflecting that something that you were processing (a relationship struggle? a work difficulty?) has worked its way through your system (you've found some clarity with it), but before you let it go completely, you put it in the fridge! You "put it on ice." Something more was to be done.

The critical, wonderful twist to this dream comes when you discover that the poop is no longer in the bin and that there is cooked rice in its place! Wow. This kind of image reversal is known as alchemy, the act of turning stone into gold, or the psychic human equivalent, poop into food: the S*&t of life into personal growth. This is a pretty literal symbol when you look at it that way. (The compost bin, if you consider the concept of compost, is the other symbol that really points to this.)

This theme of transition is such a crucial one in dreams that I know we'll have to explore it more soon. For now, I would venture to say that this dream is reflecting that you have successfully processed through some things recently and have turned the experience into nutrients for a new beginning. Get to know those people in the house who helped you do that. They're your allies and support and good parts of you to know for the future.

Have you had a dream like this? Leave a comment and share!

Satya Doyle Byock is a Jungian psychotherapist, the Director of The Salome Institute, and the author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, 2022).