We have compiled dreams from our readers into categories of common dream themes, and dream analyst Jane Teresa Anderson has kindly provided possible interpretations of those dreams (within the limits of the information provided about the dream).
Read more: What your dream is trying to tell you
“I dreamt that I found my 2 dogs dead. Someone had poisoned them. They came back to life after a while.”
The dreamer needs to work out what her two dogs represent to her personally. For example, they might represent loyalty. In this example, her sense of loyalty was poisoned briefly but then came back to life. It’s not about the dogs, it’s not about death: it’s about an aspect of the dreamer.
“When I was much younger I dreamt that my dad cut off my cat’s head with an axe, but the cat grew a new head and lived, but the new head was mutated and terrifying.”
Why did the father chop off the cat’s head? Was it an innocent cat, had it misbehaved, was there something wrong with it? More information about the dream is needed to understand it. If this were a child’s dream it may be about the end of innocence and moving onto those terrifying adolescent years. We change our views and beliefs about life (they mutate, like the cat’s new head). This is a dream about the ending of one way of thinking (one head) and the beginning of a new one, and fear of that change.
“I dreamt of the theft of my handbag after the death of a loved one.”
This is most likely one of many dreams processing grief after the death of a loved one. The key is in discovering what the handbag means to the dreamer. She might feel her handbag is something that’s always with her (so it’s perceived as stolen when her loved one who was always with her has died), or she might feel her handbag contains her security items (credit cards, keys), the dream revealing that she feels her sense of security has been stolen from her. She didn’t lose her handbag, it was stolen, so the emotion she’s processing in this grieving dream is one of being robbed of her loved one’s presence, or robbed of an essence of her life.
“I dreamt that we were selling the house we used to live in, but in the dream it was a double block, with the block behind the house being completely overgrown. It was only upon putting the house for sale that I remembered the house had come with a horse which lived on the back block, and which I then realised would be dead because it had been tied up and forgotten about for two years. There was a sense of extreme dread at the thought of going back there to discover the dead horse.”
The dreamer has suddenly become aware that she tied up some aspect of herself or her life about two years ago, and had managed to forget about it until now. Now she has a sense of extreme dread about what she will discover if she explores that loss. It relates to the time when she lived in her old house (even if that is more than two years ago), when she allowed this aspect of herself to be put out in the back paddock and be overgrown. What does she see as the personality of the horse? In dreams – and in life – it’s never really too late to bring something back to life, or to give it new life in a better way. It will be healing for her to face the dread, face what she ‘tied up’, and see what she can bring into her life now as a result of what she learns.
“I had a dream where for some reason I was in possession of my grandfather’s corpse. I didn’t kill him, but I had forgotten to make arrangements with the funeral director and I knew I’d be in trouble, so I was trying to get rid of the rotting corpse and overcome my disgust in order to save my own skin.”
It’s not about the grandfather. All dreams are about the dreamer. In the day or two before this dream the dreamer probably did something that felt like saving her own skin. It’s time to bury something, to make arrangements to let go of something that is well past its time, to get past a sense of self disgust (we can be extremely judgemental of ourselves deep down inside), and move on to the next phase of life. Think in terms of letting go and giving proper acknowledgment rather than ‘getting rid’ of a feeling or situation.
Dreams of death usually reflect endings – not actual deaths – but the endings that precede beginnings. They’re most likely about what we need to let die so that we can welcome change, or what we might be prematurely letting die and need to revitalise.
Jane Teresa Anderson is a Brisbane-based dream analyst, dream therapist, author, and frequent guest on radio and television, who helps dreamers resolve issues by gaining insightful perspective into their dreams.