How Dreams Reveal My Abuse Recovery

Dreams help me communicate with myself. Those things I hesitate to admit to myself often end up as my subconscious knocking on the door of my dreams to let me know something is wrong. I didn’t come to a complete realization about how my mind was trying to capture my attention until well into my first marriage. I began to read a few books on dream analysis. The parallels between my dream life and my real one suddenly became unavoidably obvious. I just needed to think metaphorically.

I recently had a dream involving my ex, who I divorced nearly two decades ago. Most people who read my blog know that I write about narcissistic abuse from a Christian and personal standpoint. I believe I am one of the few who do, though if you know any, please share! As I sat with the dream for a few days, I began to realize that I had come full circle in my dreams. Charting them over the last thirty years helped me see the progress I had made from victimization to healing. In ministry, I have discovered that quite a few women dream the truth at night, though they may deny it during the day when it is unsafe.

My first abuse dream was of the apartment complex we lived in while I went to college. Large concrete squares mapped out the sidewalks all around the married student housing in which we lived. I was walking around the complex in my dream when without warning, the squares began to shift. Underneath, an oily black substance was visible, as were snakes writhing within it. I had a tough time keeping my balance on the unstable path, jumping from one block to another, just trying not to fall in. It was a terrifying dream.

Much later, I realized that this dream represented how I truly felt living with my abuser. Typically, narcissistic abusers like to keep their victims walking on eggshells. I certainly felt as if my path was unsteady, and at any moment, I would plunge into some terrible abyss. The dread I felt in the dream perfectly mirrored the anxiety I felt every day married to my ex. I tried so hard to keep my balance within that relationship. To survive, I had to become a moving target, trying to become whatever he demanded in every situation. To fail meant falling into the snake pits. In real life, it meant screaming tantrums, broken furniture, and emotional terrorism.

The second dream I think of as representing my healing arc happened while I was in therapy a good decade after our divorce. It isn’t that there were no dreams in between, merely that they began to change as I began to change. This dream is genuinely horrific, and so I apologize in advance for any triggering it may cause. I know that it disturbed me for quite a while until I came to terms with what it represented.

For a little context, I lived with my ex in Kentucky on a farm for several years before I gained the courage to leave. I found myself traveling past a farm with similar fencing as the farm in Kentucky in my dream. A sign said ‘Old McDonald’s Farm,’ but I knew that Old McDonald was my ex. As I passed the farm, I saw him trying to repair the fence. To nail it back together, he would place the head of a newly hatched baby chick on the head of the nail, hold it steady with his thumb, and then smash both the chick and his thumb with the hammer. For me, this image’s horror has significantly dimmed, especially as I now know the interpretation.

Old McDonald references the nursery rhyme, of course. Only in my dream world, the farmer is doing horrible things to innocent little babies. As he injures them, he also injures himself. I take the baby chicks to symbolize the innocence of my children and myself. It is in my first marriage that I had to honestly confront evil. My daughters did as well, and from the person who was supposed to be their caretaker, protector, and provider, namely their father. But as he continued to destroy the baby birds, he also injured himself. I am not sure where my ex is or what he is doing, but when he does surface, it is clear that he is not mentally well.

It is in this nightmare that I began to confront what I lost in my first marriage. I also faced the real horror of the situation, made worse by the fact that he did indeed smash in the head of a stray dog that had wandered onto our property. That event does still haunt all of us to this day.

My final dream happened just a week ago. I was at first confused. A few elements of the dream did not make sense to me, at least initially. In the dream, I was somehow married to my ex-husband. We had children together, though not my daughters. Our minds often create alternative landscapes to the ones we remember. My ex brought home a young lion and said he was going to raise this tiger. In the dream, I didn’t argue about whether it was a tiger or a lion. He kept in an empty room where the children were allowed to come and go as they pleased.

In my dream, I didn’t hesitate to start making plans to leave. I knew that he was gaslighting me by calling the lion a tiger. It didn’t make much of a difference. I knew that either one would soon have the potential to kill the kids and me. I awoke and pondered for a bit. I realized that unlike the previous nightmare with the chickens where I remained frozen in terror, I didn’t hesitate at all in this dream. While my ex still occasionally makes an appearance in my subconscious, my subconscious is no longer held hostage by my ex. In my dream, I calmly and determinedly made plans to leave. When he objected, I turned a deaf ear. I wasn’t afraid or impressed by the threats or manipulations.

Men and women in abusive situations often dream. PTSD causes nightmares, a symptom I have indeed dealt with quite a lot. But it is so encouraging to see the tenor of my dreams gradually shift from paralyzing and horrific to matter-of-fact. I know that I have accomplished significant healing with quite a bit of help from Jesus, therapists, and authors that know what they are talking about. I know that I still have a way to go to establish healthy boundaries, face fears, and deal with the consequences of abuse in my family. But I am grateful that my dreams tell me the truth about where I am at. The subconscious does not know how to lie. It only knows how to reassemble the truth in such a way that we can’t ignore it. So don’t run from your nightmares. Use them to heal.

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