Steven’s Comments (group member since Sep 27, 2013)

Steven’s comments from the Ask Steven Fox group.

One enters an endless hall of mirrors when talking about conflict in this case because we are literally discussing how the different parts of your own psyche disagree at the first level of dream interpretation. There is a very idealistic part of you concerned with universal truth that is defending itself from compromising what you believe in versus what you may have to do to satisfy other needs. The constant struggle is emotionally draining and upsetting.

At the second and interpersonal level, the clarity of interpretation decreases; however, it is likely that the dream is trying to gauge how necessary it is to defend yourself from others. I would take direction from the final outcome of each conflict dream as follows: (1) if the final outcome of the dream is negative, it is likely that the dream is urging you to be less defensive, and (2) if the final outcome of the dream is positive, the dream is supporting your protecting your ideals in that case.

Overall, the dreams can be seen as your subconscious trying to decide how far to negotiate or compromise your ideals, either within yourself or with others. The answer is usually both with the two levels of interpretation condensing into one another.

Thank you for the great dream question.

Interesting question. Dreaming of her husband involves an action part of her psyche at the first level. The abdomen is close to the solar plexus where self-esteem resides according to tradions of the East. Water in dreams is almost invariably emotion. Putting this all together implies that she was doing something that she felt really good about, but for some reason lost the stamina to do it, i.e., lost her guts and felt emotionally drained.
As a note, the interpreter always wants to make sure that there is not an overriding physical factor involved. One wants to make sure that the body is not trying to signal that she has some serious ailment. Or it could be something like cramps or stomache upset or menstrual troubles.
Sometimes the two different levels can condense which would be something like hoping to get pregnant and
then troubles occur or some variation on that theme. Thank you for the interesting dream.

According to my book, what do men usually represent in dreams?