What do our dreams mean?

[deux soeurs]

The other night I had a dream and my sister was in it.  She looked beautiful, the way i remember her in better times.  Her hair was longer but it was her.  It scared me in my dream.  My BPD sister abused me as a child with words and actions.  When I though we were putting aside the abuse it continued.  She urged me to confide in her and she spilled ALL my secrets.  She promised she wouldn't tell our mom but she did.  Every dark secret I had.  She also added her own stuff to my reality, she never could get a story straight.  I found out about 15 years later and with the childhood abuse and betrayal of trust I have never fully been able to forgive her... .I think.  Anyways, in my dream I was scared but then I ran up to her.  Gave her a hug and told her she looked beautiful.  What the heck is going on in my head?

[polly87]

Hi deux soeurs,

Maybe it means that you are trying to deal with the past? That you now have the courage to do so despite your fear?

[deux soeurs]

Thank you for replying polly.  Interesting take... .IDK.  Have you ever dreamt about the person in your life with BPD?  I seldom have.

[polly87]

Yes I used to dream about my uBPD mother nearly every night during the EMDR phase of T. Those dreams were very violent and exhausting. I am glad I do not have them anymore.

[Kwamina]

Though you are currently NC with your sis, I think it's natural that underneath the surface, perhaps subconsciously, you might still be dealing with certain issues related to her. Perhaps these things are surfacing in your dreams now.

I have been NC with my own brother for 5 years now but I still sometimes dream of him. Sometimes I've found myself dreaming about things because I had finally reached a point that I was able to start addressing certain issues that I wasn't ready to do before.

I also remember having some very scary dreams about my uBPD mother and sister when I was younger, before I knew about BPD. In one dream my mom's face looked like some sort of demon and in another my sister was threatening to attack me with a sharp object. Now I realize that in my dreams I was seeing what I in real life was in denial about: there is something seriously wrong with my mother and sister and they are dangerous for my well-being if I don't take steps to protect myself. This is a harsh reality for me to have to accept, but it is the reality nonetheless.

[deux soeurs]

polly87 what is EMDR stage of therapy? It sounds awful having those violent dreams.

Kwamina is it healing when your dreams helped you address issues wither brother?

You are lucky you were able to figure out your dreams about your uBPD mom and sister.  I know dreams can help us that way. 

I do know I miss the side of my sister that that showed itself at times, before whatever I did or said triggered her BPD but that side slowly disappeared and the dangerous side seemed to take over.

[rotiroti]

Yes, I had dreams after I started healing after my r/s with my pwBPD ended. I had couple types of dreams:

1. Dreams where I saw her happy, beautiful, and laughing while spending time with me. Meanwhile I was very unhappy. This was around the time I realized that the r/s was very emotionally unfulfilling. Also this was around the time I was starting to let go of the hurt and anger.

2. Dreams where I saw my ex-fiancee and myself in third person. I was able to see how incompatible we were. Also around this time I was reviewing my relationship with her. Detaching from the emotions and really seeing it from an objective point of view.

3. This one was recent and I don't know what to make of it. I was a father to an amazing daughter. She was smart, kind, beautiful within and throughout... .I felt so proud to be her dad.

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I remember your post last week about trying to find out answers about your sister. Perhaps it's your subconscious telling you

[zundertowz]

Maybe this is how subconsciously you wish your relationship with your sister was or is.

[deux soeurs]

Dreams are interesting, aren't they?  In that dream, for a moment when I told her she looked beautiful, and she did in my dream, it was good times with my sister, the old feeling came back.  The feeling that never lasted and was always replaced with the BPD sister that I am estranged from now.

[GreenGlit]

Since I was a kid I would yell in my sleep. I speak Spanish at home, and most of the time my yelling was in Spanish. My mom is uBPD and interestingly 90% of my dreams were having fights with her. This yelling at night followed me all through college and now graduate school. I have been found to have a sleep disorder that predisposes me to acting out dreams, but I think it's interest that it almost always is about me fighting with my mom.

I take it to mean that I have a lot of residual frustrations with her - so many emotions I couldn't process properly as a child, and now a lot of resentment as an adult. I'm not surprised it comes out in my dreams, when the brain is processing all the stuff that happened during the day.

Are you thinking a lot about your sister? Many times I will dream about my mom even if I haven't actively been thinking about her, but something has been scratching at me for a while. It seems like you long for those moments with your sister when she was better - happier. I can relate.

[deux soeurs]

Hi GreenGlit, very interesting about your yelling in your dreams.  Even more because it mostly happens when you are fighting with your mom in your dreams.  Unresolved issues that we try to make sense of subconsciously, right?  I have had tornado dreams since I was a child.  A tornado (which has always terrified me) is going to touch down.  The basic theme is the same but the players and scenario are always different.  I always wake up or escape before it touches down.  I yell out at night, still.  My dreams are in color.  In therapy I learned the tornado is a common theme of people living with folks with a PD/ BPD/NPD.  The tornado is the havoc in our lives that we can never fix or manage.  It also represents the destruction these people do to us.  In my dreams, I always escape or wake up... .good I think!   I do miss my sister but I miss the sister that doesn't truly exist.  I mourn for the sister I can forge a true adult relationship with.  I miss the sister that understands boundaries.  Of course I miss the good times with the sister I thought I had but that person does not exist.  It was a mask she wore for a short while and the empty shell of my sister who doesn't truly have a sense of self is one I can not have in my life.  She becomes too toxic.  Oh I take blame in all of this but not in a mental illness sort of way.  Relationships are 50/50 but I don't lie, make up stories, I respect boundaries etc.  Just the regular things we are supposed to do.  Have I always been super kind to her?  No, of course not, I have "goaded" her on in frustration but my sister never knew and will never know who i really am.  I will never let my guard down with her again.  NC is how it has to be right now for my peace of mind.  Sad but true... .

[Kwamina]

polly87 what is EMDR stage of therapy? It sounds awful having those violent dreams.

Not that I'm polly  but EMDR = Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a form of therapy used to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kwamina is it healing when your dreams helped you address issues wither brother?

In an way it is, as long as I let myself experience all the emotions that these dreams evoke. At first I really hated these dreams but now I try to not fight them anymore and also try to see what the dream might mean and why I'm dreaming about this now.

I do know I miss the side of my sister that that showed itself at times, before whatever I did or said triggered her BPD but that side slowly disappeared and the dangerous side seemed to take over.

This is very though indeed. In a way it's like mourning a loss, in this case the loss of the fantasy sister who unfortunately more and more seems to be becoming something from a distant past. At what point did you feel your sister's behavior started changing? Was there a specific turning point after which she slowly started to change?

Accepting the reality of our BPD loved ones isn't easy because it means letting go of the fantasy family-member we might still yet long for. Do you feel you have been able to truly start accepting the reality that your sister has BPD and the consequences this disorder has for your relationship with her?

[polly87]

Thanks for explaining Kwamina and I am in many ways happy for you that you are not me!  

I'm glad my violent dreams are over now. I am having weird dreams now about the changes taking place in my life but they are not as scary as the dreams about my mother. Last night I dreamt I was being taken away in the back of a truck.

I think dreams are often about either our fears or our desires. Dreams in which you fight with the pwBPD in your life might mean that you want to speak up for yourself and you cannot do so in real life. And if you dream about happy days you would like to go back to that even if you can't.  

Deux Soeurs I think you might be on the brink of a break trough because apparently your mind is ready to process some memories, even if they are bad memories. I'm sorry your sister became dangerous. (I know what it's like - my uBPD mother became dangerous too.) I do hope you are getting enough rest despite the dreams.

[deux soeurs]

At what point did you feel your sister's behavior started changing? Was there a specific turning point after which she slowly started to change?

Kwamina I still don't know how to change the color of a quote.  About my sister, she is 7 years older than I.  When I was a young kid and she constantly teased and abused me emotionally I, of course did not know she was sick.  I just knew I didn't like her.  My sister went through great lengths of divide and conquer and made sure our mom never told me she was in psychiatric hospitals as she got older.  It wasn't until I turned 30, my sister and I had been friendly for 17 years, and our grandma passed that I learned the truth about my sister, who existed behind the mask, a person who shared every confidence I ever shared with her (to our mom whom I explicitly asked her to not tell) and she added her own spin on things and made things up as well.  I just wasn't able to get over that betrayal.  She tried to tell me she told our mom because she was worried about me but our mom told me she shared the information when my mom would say something like "deux soeurs" was such a good kid and then sis would say "oh yeah?  she did... .".  I believe my mom and brother.  My sister was trying to make me look bad.  As we speak she has spilled many secrets on a conduct disorders board.  Some things she wrote are true, some are half truths, some are lies.  All I know is she never writes about the awful things she has put our family through.  My father is the only that will speak to her.  I am touch with many old and new family members and feel blessed.  I mourn the sister that I thought she was but that sister never existed.  It would have helped if i knew she was mentally ill but that was hidden from me until I was 30.  Anyhow maybe one day there will be a magic pill to control BPD.  It is a horrible disease and I do feel bad for her and her family.  I also don't read read over at the conduct disorder website and that has helped to.  She can write whatever she wants for her audience of one... .

[P.F.Change]

Hi deux soeurs,

Dreams leave a lot of room for interpretation and it can be as  complicated as the people having them. One way of looking at it is to see every "person" in your dream as some aspect of yourself. Are you learning to love and see beauty in yourself even while acknowledging you aren't perfect? Is digging deep into your own personality scary?

Another way of looking at dreams is that the "people" do represent themselves and we are practicing ways to change our reactions and interactions with them. Are you learning to integrate your sister's positive qualities with her negative ones so that she is not "all-bad," or to be brave in your relationship by practicing healthy skills? Are you looking to reconcile what it means to have a beautiful sister who has ugly behavior?

Personally I think there is usually some truth in both of those approaches. You know yourself better than we do, and how the dream made you feel, so you are probably oNE ofor the most qualified interpreters. I used to have a lot of nightmares that were trying to teach me to deal with my trauma, and they got better aftwr I did therapy. But I didn't connect those dots for a long time. Occasionally I still dream about my mother and the frustrating aspects of that relationship... .and/or the frustrating aspects of myself. 

Wishing you peace,

PF

[Klo]

I rarely dream about my mother, but when I do, it is always the same sort of situation. There will be a serious environmental threat, and she will be unresponsive like she is brain dead. A former therapist told me those dreams make prefect sense given that I was the rejected scapegoat child in a very dangerous and chaotic environment.

[deux soeurs]

Dreams leave a lot of room for interpretation and it can be as  complicated as the people having them. One way of looking at it is to see every "person" in your dream as some aspect of yourself. Are you learning to love and see beauty in yourself even while acknowledging you aren't perfect? Is digging deep into your own personality scary?

P.F. Change, WOW!  I have never thought of that aspect of our dreaming.  Maybe that was it.  I do know the dream was so vivid.  At first, my sister was the mean toxic one I know lives behind her mask but when I told her she was beautiful, the mask melted away and it was the sister I long to have... .

[deux soeurs]

One other thing, I know she reads here and I know what her name is (as she would mine) and I don't care.  I don't hate her and I don't care about what she thinks of me as I know who I am.  I only know I can not have her in my life now or share anything personal with her ever again.

[rotiroti]

Any reason you picked the silhouette of 2 sisters/siblings as your profile pic?

[deux soeurs]

Any reason you picked the silhouette of 2 sisters/siblings as your profile pic?



rotiroti, haha, I never even noticed that.  Back in March, there was an altercation here on this website, my sister found out I post here and she wrote a lot of horrible things about me and also lies.  I reported her so my name was changed by the folks here.  I have no idea what deux soeurs means but I did not pick that name or profile pic.  I do have absolutely awesome, amazing twin daughters, so, that will be whom the silhouette represents!

[Rapt Reader]

This membership is suspended.

This member has used this site to communicate hurtful things to her sister. Her sister has used another website to communicate hurtful things back. There have been multiple warnings.

bpdfamily.com is a healing and recovery resource.