Hi Eagle Woman,

If you look at the symbolism of the dream you have a room that is round as opposed to a square or rectangular shape. It's hard to put your back up to a wall where instinct would lead you if there was no way out, which would be to a corner - a sense of security, false security but we do it anyway.

Then you have some horrid monster, which you do not describe. Are you unaware of what it looks like but are aware of it's presence? Or is its description left out to cut the dream short? In any event, the important thing is you see your reflection in his eye and the horror is reflected back at you. Giving the sensation of double the horror, the feeling of confinement, no place to run and doom. Helplessness.

And then the silent scream... No sound, no way of vocalizing, it's paralyzing in itself to be unable to communicate the horror you feel in this recurring dream.

You say that you have had this dream for approximately 40 years.  I'm wondering if something traumatic happened when you were younger that you are repressing. Perhaps a death in the family, maybe a divorce or a separation, someones departure... there are a list of things... What my instincts are telling me is something happened when you were very young, it was traumatizing to you. Though that doesn't mean it was that bad... it just means that perhaps you were too young to understand and conceptualize the nature of what happened and no one did explain it or knew how to explain it to a young child.

I'll share a lil tidbit with you about me, when my uncle died when I was about a year and a half two years old, and I remember him clear as a bell I was petrified of death and became a hypochondriac as a child. My nose was always in medical books... and I would actually develop the symptoms of whatever I read. When I was in my late teens, maybe early 20's.. I knew I had to get to the root of it since no one in my family was a hypochondriac and I was able talk myself into bloody noses by just thinking it. I took a look at my life to see where it all started and it started with my uncle's death. I was too young to understand death, though I understood he was just a kid who had a yellow aura and black and brown spots around him... who had leukemia and I watched his body deteriorate and limb's get chopped off... and then one day he was no longer around and I would never see him again. And that my dear was an exercise I had to go through to understand how I became a hypochondriac from the age of 2 to perhaps 20. Once i understood it, I was able to get rid of the hypochondria because I faced it.

You can go through a similar procedure and go as far back as you can to when the dreams started and what set you off... or you can try and see the monster and make him reveal his face to you in your dream which might take time and practice to remember to do it in your dreams. If you manage to get the monster to reveal his face, then you have some control. Next time try to pepper spray him or something so you don't feel so helpless and he is now the one who is at a disadvantage. Think on your feet and be creative with it.  But I think either exercise will be helpful to you to get to the root of its cause and once you have that, you'll be able to stop it.

Sorry so long, but sometimes ones life experience could help another.

Let me know if you have any questions...

Angelique

Hi Eagle Woman-

And congratulations on your 11th year of recovery It's something to be proud of.

Now on to your dream. The way I trained myself to have some control of my dreams was I set an additional alarm clock to wake me up an hour before the alarm clock I was supposed to wake up to normally. I would groggily shut it off knowing I had an hour of sleep and go back to sleep with the thought that i would dream what I wanted to dream about and nod right off with a specific thing in mind. After some repetitious practice, it worked. Once I got the hang of it I used it on what I would call a cluster dream or recurring dream, though it wasn't really recurring because the dreams were different.. but always the same I'll call him a "monster" in my dreams and although I always retaliated eventually I got him back good. I guess you can say I bested him. Now when he appears, which is very rare, he comes as my friend and he helps me when he shows up. It took some time to get a handle on and practice, it didn't happen over night.

Remember, what works for one person may not work for another. Be creative and persistent and you'll get the results you're looking for as you well know.

Best of luck to you!

Angelique