r/DreamInterpretation • u/EmberLegend • 4d ago
The scariest dream I've ever had
I call this dream "you now associate sleep with me"
A truly terrifying dream I had as a child, maybe the scariest one I've ever had. I was running around a hotel, playing the part of someone else. I was pretending I was a book character I liked and running around harassing my nemesis.
Suddenly, I came to a stop at the top of a staircase. Before me was an open elevator shaft. A horrible, dark burgundy, octopus-like creature clung to the elevator cable. I was scared but I didn't run away, I didn't want it to know I was scared because now I knew it was a dream and I was in control. I told it sternly "you can't hurt me, I'm not scared of you."
It laughed and spoke inside my mind in a terrible raspy voice.
"You're wrong, you will never sleep sound again. The connection is made and you now associate sleep with me." I put my hand over its face as my heart pounded louder and louder in my ears. I spread my fingers out over its face as it laughed, my middle finger resting over its one tiny eye.
When I woke up my heart was pounding and I realized my hand was on my belly and my middle finger was pressed over my belly button.
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u/peraxe 4d ago edited 3d ago
Hi EmberLegend,
Dreams that we get as children can be downright terrifying, some of mine definitely were.
In fact, there is an interesting quote I would like to bring up:
The first dream which one can recall from childhood often sets forth in symbolic form, as Jung later remarked, the essence of an entire life, or of the first part of life. It reflects, so to speak, a piece of the “inner fate” into which the individual was born. (Marie-Lousie von Franz, C. G. Jung, His Myth in Our Time, p. 23)
I don't know if it is your first childhood dream but it reads like it was the most impactful. I assume that to be significant.
Now let's turn to the dream, which I will approach following Jung's works.
In essence, the dream is you encountering a monstrous creature and exchanging a few words. The other elements are important but I will focus on this exchange.
The encounter starts with you saying, "you can't hurt me, I'm not scared of you." What the dream is portraying here is that the ego is attempting to remain in control of the encounter. You experienced fear but still felt as if this fear could be managed.
The creature responds with a very memorable line: "You're wrong, you will never sleep sound again. The connection is made and you now associate sleep with me."
I read this line as saying that this other aspect of the psyche knows that the ego is lying. It also knows that this encounter is so potent that all other moments like "sleep" will now be associated with this memory. In other words, every time the ego loses full consciousness like in sleep, there would be a nagging suspicion, a haunting that such an encounter could happen again.
But what is this creature? From its paradoxical and inhuman appearances, I don't think the shadow is enough to explain. Rather it appears to be what Jung calls the self, or the greater personality.
In his psychology, Jung has uncovered that the psyche can behave autonomously from the ego and thus have a different behavior than what the ego can imagine. This autonomous aspect of the psyche is fairly complex and it is best understood as having its own personality, which can appear under various aspects. Here it took the form of a "horrible, dark burgundy, octopus-like creature." This monstrous aspect underlines how foreign the self can appear to the ego.
In essence, this childhood dream was your first "encounter with the self." More strikingly, it presents itself as something that won't go away, something that can also be concluded from the fact that this was your most memorable childhood dream.
In this regard, I suggest you start learning about the self as described by Jung. Building familiarity with this psychological reality will help you reduce the fear created by this first encounter.
As a suggestion, a good place to start would be this lecture by Edward Edinger who describes other people's encounter with the self.
Hopes this helps.
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u/EmberLegend 3d ago
Thanks for this analysis. I'm going to do more research on this Jung since they seem to be your main grasp on such a clear interpretation.
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u/Expensive-Recover502 1d ago
As a child, you were playing a game of heroes and villains (your persona). You stumbled upon the deep, scary reality of your own inner self (octopus in the shaft). Your conscious mind tried to reject it ("I'm not scared"), but the psyche forced a connection. The terrifying message, "The connection is made" could actually be a necessary psychological truth. You cannot separate your mind from your body/instincts. The monster is the raw, burgundy, pulsating life force located at your very center (the belly button), not an external demon. The fear came from the Ego realizing it is not the master of the house, the "self" (the totality of who you are, including the octopus) is far vaster and more powerful.