PARENTS

During the early years of your waking life it is likely that you were physically and emotionally dependent on one or both of your parents or, if either or both were absent, on an alternative mother or father figure. As you emerged into adolescence and adulthood, the chances are you became less reliant on them, yet memories of that early dependency usually remain with you on a conscious or unconscious level. Because your parents had such a great influence over you at a time when your personality was developing and you began to assert your individuality and independence, your feelings towards them will remain intense.

Dreams that feature your parents can have numerous interpretations but the key to understanding them depends on the feelings you associate with your parents, particularly those when you where a child and your parents were the center of your universe. When your dream parents are true to character, the message of your dream is usually easy to understand. For example, if your parents appeared in your dream with words of encouragement and love and they were, or are, this warm and loving in real life, then your dream may simply indicate that you are feeling insecure and in need of validation or unconditional love. Perhaps you dreamt that your parents scolded you about your recent poor performance at work and you have memories of them chiding you harshly over poor grades at school? If this is the case, it may be that your dream is highlighting your dissatisfaction at not living up to the standards your parents instilled in you.

If your parents appear together in your dream, this indicates the rules and codes you learned as a child that still speak to you from within.

If you are hurting, killing, burying or trying to avoid a parent in your dream, this suggests a desire to be free from restraints and values gathered from your parents. You may feel shocked by such a dream, but it is in fact a healthy sign of emerging independence as when your dream parents die or are beaten, you can inherit the power gained from what was good in your relationship.

Dreams in which your parents appear foolish, drunk or disorderly have a similar interpretation; they are a means of gaining independence from internalized values. Dreams in which your parents are crushing you are fairly easy to interpret, suggesting that you need to break away from childhood behavior patterns and develop as an individual. Dreams in which parents die or are dead already can be interpreted the same way. When a parent appears in your environment, home or workplace in your dream and there is no sense of tension, this indicates that you have learned to develop your sense of self and can accept your parents as friends.

Frequent appearances by one or both parents in dreams may be a sign that you have not thrown off an infantile overdependence on them. Jung cites a young man’s dream in which the man’s father appeared as a drunken driver, smashing his car into a wall. This was the exact opposite of the man’s real father, who was a most respectable person, and who was rightly—but far too greatly— respected by the son. What the unconscious was doing through the dream was dethroning the father in order to enable the son to achieve a proper sense of himself as a person in his own right, with his own unique destiny and values. So if your dreams regularly feature your parents, this may suggest that you are more dependent on them than is healthy at this stage in your life. Dreams in which your parents hurl abuse at you or behave inappropriately may therefore be trying to shock you into taking your mother or father off their pedestal so you can give yourself some much-needed emotional independence and freedom.

Whether or not your parent’s behavior in real life mirrors their behavior in its dreamland negative, reoccurring dreams about parents often raise the question of whether it is time for you to become more independent and strike out on your own, regardless of what your parents may think is best for you in waking life.

If you behaved inappropriately towards your parents in your dream, for example swearing at them, listing their faults or even murdering them, such a dream is likely to be a safety valve that enables you to let off tension that you may have been repressing in waking life. It is also likely to be an indication that you need to break free of parental control and take charge of your destiny. Finally, if an interpretation of the appearance of your mother and father still eludes you, it may be that your anima (if you are a man who dreamed of your mother) and your animus (if you are a woman who dreamed of your father) may be making an appearance; alternatively, it may be that another archetype has disguised itself as one of your parents.

Universal Landscape: Inner sense of authority; who we are as a result of the parents we had.

Dreaming Lens: Which parent was in your dream? What were you doing at the time? Where were you? What age were you? What age were they? Were they the same as they are/were in life? Were they imparting information to you? Were they abusive? Were you?

Personal Focus: The voices of our parents become deeply imbedded as parts of our personality. This correlates with whatever information they repeatedly presented to us during our formative years. If their messages were ones of criticism and limitation, they live on within us as those inhibiting parts of our inner monologue. If they were supportive and loving, the same would apply. Chances are that they were a combination of all sorts of messages, some positive and others negative.

Depending on where you are in your life, you may be more aligned with the challenges they presented than the gifts they gave. It is usually most effective to deal with anger and resentment before authentically moving into forgiveness. The quality of the interaction in the dream will clue you in on where you are in that process. While dreaming of your parents may inform your actual relationship with them, it is important to consider what the dream is saying about how you parent yourself.

The Dreaming Lens will tell you if you are holding yourself back or encouraging yourself to move forward. If the context of the dream indicates being stuck, then you may be holding yourself back on account of messages you were given as a child. If there is positive activity or movement in the dream, the presence of your parent(s) may be giving you insight into ways in which you are empowering yourself.

A celebration or gathering where your parents are present can be considered a moment of inventory; of taking stock of who you are by virtue of who raised and guided you. If you lack a life connection with the dream parent, consider that their absence created just as powerful a Character Aspect of the inner parent as one who was present. Allow the Dreaming Lens to inform you of what area of your self-identity is being expressed. Allow the emotional sense of the dream to indicate how well (or poorly) you are functioning as an adult.

You are connecting to your inner sense of authority; who you are as a result of the parents you had.

The voices of our parents become deeply imbedded in us as parts of our personality. This correlates with whatever information they repeatedly presented to us during our formative years.

If their messages were ones of criticism and limitation, they live on within us as those inhibiting parts of our inner monologue.

If our parents were supportive and loving, the same would apply. Chances are that they gave us a combination of messages, some positive and others negative. Depending on where you are in your life, you may be more aligned with the challenges your parents presented than the gifts they gave.

It is usually most effective to deal with feelings of anger and resentment before authentically moving into forgiveness.

The quality of the interaction in the dream will clue you in to where you are in that process.

While dreaming of your parents may inform your actual relationship with them, it is important to consider what the dream is saying about how you parent yourself.