Hi everybody,

For maybe a year now I've been having really morbid and weird dreams. I mean stuff like having sex with my mother and then strangling her, having sex with a dead woman, sucking my own %&*$, shooting both of my parents while they are sleeping, suicide, etc. (can't remember more)

I'm 25 and I'm the only child in the family. I come from a really good house. My parents love me to death. They have been spoling me ever since I was a child. They are both pretty religious (church every sunday) as I was till the age of about 18 when I fell in love and moved pretty far away in order to live with my ex g-friend. My parents neither encouraged nor discouraged me but they were very, very upset and crushed. That relationship lasted for about 2 years after which I returned back. I was pretty devastated and so I started to abuse alcohol and drugs. I went back to school but couldn't keep up cos of all the partying. I dropped out 2 times. I took a year off during which I had a enlightening experience which put me on the right track. I had a pretty bad car accident while I was high and drunk out of my mind. That really put in perspective my whole life and so I returned and finished school. Now I'm working and I guess I'm happy except these dreams are driving me nuts.

Any advice on what's going on?

The problem would appear to be caused by the cognitive dissonace between your parents' lives and your own, between life as received from your parents and life as you have found it and find it; there is conflict in your mind between what your parents stand for and how they live and what you would stand for and how you would live.  You have lived intensely and had many experiences, and have come to conclusions at odds with those of your parents (sometimes I wonder if conservative people actually conclude anything, or whether their beliefs are merely received and forever settled, without the inconvenience of examination); you and they are so different, with such a great gap dividing you, that this is the great issue of your life.  Your waking life is going along smoothly, yet you are inwardly conflicted, causing your unconscious to thrust the issue before you when you are asleep, in these dreams.  

Do you live with your parents?  If you do, and since you are working, I would advise you to move out and make a separate life; I think that would cause you to be less conflicted, or at least help you to bear the inner conflict more easily; I think the dreams would lessen in intensity.

Do you feel that you are a "disappointment" to your parents?  Do they tell you that they think of you in this way?  This burden, if laid on your shoulders, is very difficult to bear.  Because of your upbringing and past experiences, you may well believe it, and it may well hurt you as deeply as possible, primally.  But know that, if this is the case, your being so different from them would inevitably cause conflict and disapproval.  We all have to make peace with our parents in one way or another, to come to terms with them somehow, even if it means erecting a Berlin Wall, going into exile, or just agreeing to disagree (which is what most people seem to end up doing).  They and you are very different from each other.  Accept that.  Whether they accept this fact or not, you are alive, this is your life, separate from theirs; indeed you have survived much and here you are still, working, functioning, believing your own beliefs, living your life psychologically apart from them.  Therefore, if you are living with them, I would say you need to move out.  If you are not living with them, make the most of your separate life and demonstrate your successful independence to them.  

You might well have these nightmares throughout your life, but it would seem that if the inner conflict, the cognitive dissonance is addressed, they will lessen in intensity and recede from the foreground of your dream-life into a more manageable position.

I write to you not as a healer but as a fellow-sufferer, a fellow human; I am a poet, musical composer, philosopher, daydreamer, and sufferer of nightmares.  I welcome you to our forum here, and wish you well.  Join us!  Become a part of us and make friends with us!  We will make your life better, and you will make ours better!

Namaste.

All my love, respect, and solidarity are with you now and always,

+Steven