Sleep paralysis
I suffer from sleep paralysis from time to time. I used to get it more often than I do now, and so if you know what are some of the causes of sleep paralysis are then you can probably deduce a thing or two about me. When you slip into sleep paralysis regularly, you learn to deal with it, you learn that the wave can be ridden out. For those that don’t know, sleep paralysis is a phenomenon whereby your brain wakes up, your eyes open and you are technically awake, but your entire body is still asleep, unaware of what is happening in your brain. You are therefore conscious but unable to move. Sleep paralysis gets frightening because it is so close to sleep that more often than not while you are awake, and paralysed, you are still capable of dreaming.
One incident five years ago scared the living daylights out of me while it was happening. It was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I woke up, but couldn’t move, and I could feel energy rushing through my body. It was a strange sensation, but I could hear it rushing through me as if I were standing underneath a very heavy waterfall. At that moment I was convinced it was a ghost and I vowed that from then on I would always believe in the supernatural. The fear was unreal. The presence of a “ghost” was something I’d experienced before, but never so emphatically.
In the past couple of years I’ve only experienced sleep paralysis maybe a dozen times that I can recall, which is far less than I used to do, and is a blessing believe you me.
The man whose face fell off
I was often scared by my dreams as a child. One that springs to mind makes very little sense at all. I was in a desert-like environment, and it was very hot. I was walking around when I bumped into Sharon and Tracey from the British sitcom Birds of a Feather. I was speaking to them when an old man, who could have been a tribal warrior or witch doctor, approached us. He looked sad and was seeking our help. I was wary of him, and then out of nowhere the skin on his face began to sag and his entire face fell off. I was utterly shocked by this happening, so much so that I woke myself up instantly. I was only seven- or eight-years-old, and so I told my mum about the dream but was unable to convey exactly why I had found it so terrifying.
Dreaming of shredding paper
I know exactly where this dream came from, and so it’s intriguing to note once more how images of fear can stamp themselves onto your subconscious. Actually, I don’t remember much about this dream at all. During my day at work, I’d tried to use a paper shredder. I took a wad of paper and tried to shred it all. Unfortunately the wad was too big and the shredder became jammed. For about a minute I felt an irrational sense of fear because I’d been so dumb and thought I might have broken the machine.
After that minute I thought about what was going on and realised there was no need to get worked up about it; I wasn’t going to get into trouble. I got one of the office girls to help me unjam the shredder and all was well.
In my dream I was using the same shredder but was being careful not to use too much paper. The feeling I had while doing this was one of intense joy (well, as much joy as it’s possible to get from using a paper shredder).
That’s all of them dream I remember, and it seems to be a reflection of a small moment of my day. Something learnt, nothing lost.
Trying to help my brother out
Dreams about family members are always rather curious. This one didn’t raise anything particularly new, but it’s interesting that I can trace its meaning without too much difficulty. I was with my brother and we were running through empty streets. There were people coming, marching along the road, and if those people would find us, they’d kill us. I had to protect my brother. I was frightened. We couldn’t find anywhere indoors to hide, and everyone else had deserted the streets, so I dragged my brother to a park bench atop a small hill and we crouched down and hid behind it.
The marching people came, and they sent a lookout to have a nose around. I was hiding with my brother behind the bench, desperately willing the lookout not to see us. A dog ran up to my brother with a ball in its mouth, and it dropped the ball. The lookout saw the dog and then saw us. I recognized the lookout even before he’d seen me: it was Laurie Osbourne, another Bangkok blogger and all round nice guy. He saw both me and my brother, and while he should have reported this back to the others, he pretended like he hadn’t seen us and I was thankful. The marching people carried on and we were left alone.
Some time later, on another day I think, I returned to the same bench, looking for something, although I wasn’t sure what. I was looking for something I had left there. There was a large television screen set up behind the bench, and it was showing the marching people as they passed the spot where we had been hiding. I was afraid my brother and I would be caught on camera, but for some reason we weren’t there.
I think this dream has to do with my brother and his life. At the moment, he is in a lot of debt. I was thinking before I went to sleep that if I wanted to, I could pay off his debts, although this would leave me without much money at all. My mother said that he needs to learn from his mistakes, and I think this is true, but I can’t help but feel like he does need protecting. Laurie is someone I’d associate with kindness and openness. I was protecting my brother in the dream; it wasn’t about saving myself. Laurie’s kindness in not having us killed could represent a sort of kindness that I feel my brother could use right now, but that ultimately would be an easy way out for him. I sometimes feel like people are out to get my brother; he’s had a hard time over the years.
Returning to the same spot (without my brother) and not seeing myself on the TV screen might be because I don’t feel like I have actually helped him at all in recent years. Maybe I was looking for some evidence of my helping him, but I couldn’t find it.
A dream about proving myself
In one of last night’s dreams I was playing football in a field with a group of people. It was a typical English field, but not one that I remember ever going to. The day was fairly overcast, and I couldn’t really see whom I was playing with. At one point I noticed that a guy called Ed Holden was in my dream. I went to secondary school with Ed. He was picking on in the dream me and being quite mean, and in the end, four of us who had been playing football started playing field hockey, while the others around us carried on with their game.
Ed was taunting me and I began feeling like I had something to prove. I kept missing the ball, but pretended like I was only practicing, as you do in golf. I got so pissed off with Ed that I launched the hockey ball so high into the sky that it went over the roof of a house. I watched as it bounced twice on the roof, and then came down the front of the house landing on the windshield of a car, again bouncing twice (four bounces in all). A great fear rose up inside me and the dream started to darken, both in the literal and figural sense.
I became aware that the house belonged to James Veale, who was my best friend in primary school. I was supposed to be staying over at his house, and now I was worried about what his dad would say about me cracking his car’s windshield (the car was red). Nobody had seen the crack at this point except me, and I thought maybe nobody would notice.
James’ Dad then opened the front door of his house and screamed: “It’s not just dirty! It’s CRACKED!” The fear I felt then was very real, and I did the only thing I could think to do, which was to fly away somewhere I could not be found. I hid somewhere dark, although I’m not sure where I was exactly.
This dream raised a number of issues. It was another dream with people in it whom I have not seen for many years. Ed Holden was someone I’d always liked, but I wasn’t particularly good friends with him. As we approached the end of school I thought he’d become a little bit arrogant, but he was a good guy. The one thing I still associate with Ed is a comment he said to me once about a girlfriend who had cheated on me. His comment was rather offensive, even though it was off the cuff. Having recently broken up with my girlfriend (who didn’t cheat on me), this could explain Ed’s presence.
Playing hockey was something I always enjoyed and was good at, but as I got older I began to feel more intimidated by other players, and my game slipped completely between year 11 and year 12. I was afraid to really play (especially with new people whom I was unfamiliar with) for fear of being made to look bad. My life at the moment is riddled with fear of failure in a world much bigger than myself. I usually put this fear to the back of my mind.
Attempting to prove myself to Ed in my dream may be me trying to prove myself to the girl who is most on my mind at the moment, as well as trying to show the world something about my abilities. Breaking the windshield and the subsequent fear could be linked to the fear I feel at the moment as I prepare to leave my job and maybe leave the country in which I live. I’m afraid to fail, and flying away was my way of hiding from the realities of life, which I have been doing somewhat by pretending that everything will be fine, when deep down I know there are many things that are rather uncertain right now. The dream was rather gloomy, so I’d say it represents something about my apprehensions about the future and about wanting to achieve, but being afraid to put myself into unfamiliar places for fear of failure or not being accepted. I think I also fear rejection by my ex-girlfriend, with whom I still speak every day.
I’m unsure why the car was red, or why the number ‘four’ made an appearance. Money, work, life, girls: those are four things I said were prominently on my mind just a few weeks ago. When I think of a red car, I think of something that stands out, particularly in Thailand where most cars tend to be dark in colour. Could the car be a part of me, wanting to stand out in an otherwise graying world?
A dream about spiders
My dreams have not been particularly easy to recall recently. This is unusual for me. I used to be able to remember three or four dreams a night in great detail. Either the way I sleep has changed or my memory is starting to deteriorate. I like to think it’s the former. What I am able to get from my dreams these days is more the general thrust of their being, rather than the fine print.
Last night, before I went home to sleep, I was in a bar and I went to the bathroom. While I was peeing I looked up and was surprised to see three quite big spiders. I was a little wary of them as they looked to have rather big fangs, and I feared one of them might start feeling edgy and jump no me. I looked at the spiders for a good, long minute, and they regarded me with indifference.
After the bar, when I got home and went to sleep, the first thing I dreamt about was those spiders. It was the same spiders, and I remember them being everywhere and absolutely terrifying me. In my dream they looked exactly as they did in the bathroom of the bar, but the fear I felt of them was elevated ten-fold. I couldn’t escape the spiders in my dream, but in the bathroom all I had to do was walk out the door.
I forgot completely about the spiders the moment I left the men’s room, but obviously something about that minute-long observation embedded itself in my subconscious. I would probably have paid them no more thought until the next time I glanced upwards while peeing in that same bathroom, but now my mind is forcing to remember them because of the dream I had last night. Why would my mind put so much significance on my seeing those spiders? I’ve seen bigger spiders before and not dreamt about them, so what was so special in this case?