Committing Violence in Dreams – What do Violent Dreams Mean?
Dreams are weird – they’re not real although they can seem that way quite easily, especially when you wake up in the middle of one that’s not been pleasant.
Violent dreams are worse – they can sometimes be nightmares, where you’re the person who’s being subject to terror or violence of some sort. And sometimes you can be the perpetrator of the violence, even if you’re not a violent person.
Dreams tell stories – kind of
Dreams aren’t meant to be taken literally. Some people think that they’re part of our mind’s way of processing what’s happened during the day and often it just needs to get something off its chest fast. Which means it will often use stories and shortcuts in the dreams we have.
Most of our dreams are fleeting and we remember little, if anything, about them even though it’s generally accepted that we have about 5 dreams every night.
As the night progresses, our dreams tend to get longer but the ones we remember aren’t necessarily the longer ones. As with most things to do with dreams, there’s not much logic involved.
There are lots of theories about dreams (maybe shrinks have worked out they can charge a lot of money to “interpret” them) and one of the most common is from Sigmund Freud who suggested that they manifest our deepest desires. Which means if you go along with his thoughts, violent dreams are just telling you something that you’d like to do.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to that – I think that they’re the same as violent movies and video games. Just an outlet for us to release stress and tension – fortunately very few people would go round massacring people the way they do in Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto.
Other people think that dreams are how our minds strengthen the paths that exist in our brain that help our memories to work well and that they’re often used in problem solving.
None of which particularly explains why we get violent dreams. Unless the stress of something recently subconsciously makes us want to go postal of course.
But a lot of the time violence in dreams has no bearing on violence in real life. It’s just there to make a point in the relatively short space of time a dream lasts.
Sometimes the violence is reliving past experiences – PTSD sufferers get this quite frequently.
Sometimes the violence is just symbolic of something else that’s happening in your life – a dreamed metaphor that your mind is using as a shortcut.
Common violent dream themes
If someone or something is injured in your dream, it could well be that someone (you?) in your life is hurting. This could be for all sorts of reasons:
Physical hurt if there’s been an injury
Mental hurt if a loved one has been lost or a relationship has ended
Internal hurt if there’s an illness
If there’s a death in a dream, again there are a number of possible reasons:
An actual death – that’s happened or seems likely to happen soon. Maybe someone you’re actually close to, maybe someone who’s been in the news that you relate to.
A break up – this could be in a relationship or it could be moving somewhere else so you’re “breaking up” with your current environment and probably some friends. This can also happen at the end of college where everyone goes their separate ways. It could also be a change of job.
The loss of something – a pet, a prized possession, anything else that you’ve lost in your life.
There’s no logic in the timescale for this either.
The things being dealt with in your dreams could be recent or they could be a long time ago. Or they could even be in the future like the science fiction film The Minority Report.
How much time you spend analysing your dreams is up to you – always assuming you can remember them or that you use a dream journal to keep track of them.
That’s the thing with dreams – most of them are fleeting. Almost as though our mind is moving things around and then filing them. Which is roughly what it is doing by most accounts.
But if your violent dreams are keeping you up at night – literally – then it’s worth getting your mind to find a better way to deal with the thoughts its processing.
One of the best ways I’m aware of to do this is hypnosis because it works well with the subconscious part of our mind, which is essentially the same part that’s causing your nightmares.
It’s a simple and highly effective process – download a track, put on some headphones, press “play” and let the carefully crafted words do the rest.
Dreams aren’t meant to be taken literally. Some people think that they’re part of our mind’s way of processing what’s happened during the day and often it just needs to get something off its chest fast. Which means it will often use stories and shortcuts in the dreams we have.
