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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 11 of 11. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
I have extremely graphic dreams. If I do not dream this every night, then for sure every other night. In every dream, I dream about dirty, nasty, FILTHY bathrooms. I have to go to the bathroom, so I start looking for one. I finally find one and enter. It is that kind of bathroom we had in gym/locker rooms...the little L-shaped cubies all connected together without doors. I schlepp to one...and I do mean schlepp...through quick-sand-like mud on the floor, sucking my shoes downward and oozing up over the top of my shoes and into my shoes. Of course I know it's not "mud". As I enter one of the cubies, it is just as bad. There is muck all over everything...the floors, the walls, the handles, the toilet. Even the toilet tissue looks like it was used and put back on the roll (omitting, of course, the many sheets of the connect tissue that are hanging down and embedded in the muck). In the cubie, there is now a fairly deep layer of urine floating on top of the muck,which flows into your shoes at will. What is IN the toilet is too nasty to even to into. In my dream, I retch. There is no way I can use this toilet. I continue to schlepp from one cubie to another, each one a little more vile than the one before. Then I wake up. I know that the whole bathroom scenario does not correlate in any way to my real need to use the bathroom at all. I dream this every single night, sometimes with just a slight variation in location or scenario, but still the same dream. I'd sure like to know what this dream indicates is going on with me. Any dream gurus out there?--your feedback is welcome!
Posted by fallsfall on August 28, 2005, at 11:28:07
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
Yeah, I know about the filthy bathrooms. And you search for the least objectionable one - none are even close to being "OK".
I wonder if it has to do with the world being inhospitable and dangerous even for our most basic needs. Plus there are so many value judgements attached to excrement - we have to "follow the rules" - such as we don't have the option of finding a cleaner place that isn't a bathroom. So we are really limited in our choices.
But I do find, usually, when I have the dreams that I really do need to get up and visit my bathroom (which isn't pristine, but it certainly isn't filthy like my dream!).
Welcome to Babble
Posted by JenStar on August 28, 2005, at 11:35:48
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
hi and welcome to babble!
I've had bathroom dreams before, where a bathroom is so gross I can't use it, or I'm "going" in a public place and can't "perform." Then I ALWAYS wake up and have to go in real life; it was somehow my brain being (thankfully, thankfully) smart enough to know not to go during my dream.But if you wake up and DON'T have to go, obviously it's not just your brain saving you from an accident.
I'm not sure what it means, then. Is there anything going on right now in real life - for example, a hurdle you're trying to overcome at work or in personal life, something you're afraid of doing, or something that seems impossible to accomplish? In the dream you have a physical NEED, but you're unable to gratify it because the facilities are so dirty - facilities over which you have no control, facilities which seem to be completely uncared for. Maybe in real life there is something you NEED to do, or really want to do, but some person, event or situation is holding you back?
How long have you had the dream? I hope it stops!
JenStar
Posted by Toph on August 28, 2005, at 12:02:56
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
Here's a far flung psychoanalytic interpretation. Elimination is one of an infant's first pleasures. It soon becomes a source of primative anxiety and neurosis as parents begin to impose controls and associate shame with the act. Sex involves the same organs and is instilled with the same feelings of shame, guilt and other conflicts - the drive vs. norms of conduct created by parents and society. Many of us are conflicted by our urges to be sexual and aspects of our unconscious that view it as dirty. The pursuit of a partner is, on the one hand, driven by the sexual urge as powerful as a full bladder while frustrated by the sometimes unpleasant mucking through sh*tty altenatives, some as unpleasant as used toilet paper. Finding a pure love partner can be as difficult as locating a gas station toilet you can actually sit down on. In the end, when you've made your way through all the crap, good sex is good clean fun.
OK, so maybe I had too much coffee this morning.
Toph
Posted by Tamar on August 28, 2005, at 12:36:17
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
Hi Aurora,
I agree with Toph… I think if you’re dreaming about bathrooms and you don’t wake up having to go, then it’s very possibly about sexuality.
Or it could be about needing to let go of something, or let something out, and worrying about the consequences of that.
I’ve also had a few bathroom dreams in my time, usually involving lack of privacy, which presumably reflects my own ‘issues’! There’s a lack of privacy in your dream too, since the cubies don’t have doors. But the lack of privacy seems almost secondary to the filth. The image of feeling your feet being sucked into the ‘mud’ is very graphic indeed. I think dreaming of feet is often about the journey through life. So if your feet are getting covered in yucky stuff and you’re not able to make easy progress, it seems to me that something is holding you back and causing you problems.
Becoming dirty in a dream can be a sign that you find yourself, or an aspect of yourself, disgusting and dirty. And it’s probably quite significant that you have this dream so frequently: that tends to indicate that there’s something in your life that requires urgent attention.
I would suggest that all these symbols together point to the possibility that you are ashamed of an aspect of yourself. Maybe you keep your feelings inside, and you might benefit from expressing your feelings more, but perhaps you are afraid to do so because you are afraid of what people will think, or because you are afraid people might take advantage of you. However, you might be starting to recognise that your fears of expressing your feelings and dealing with them is causing you problems. You might be realising that you can’t make progress until you start to initiate some changes.
Or I may be talking nonsense… I’m not an expert!
Tamar
Posted by Susan47 on August 28, 2005, at 14:28:09
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
WOW, thank God I'm reserved about that stuff even in my dreams!!! I've never, thankfully, ever had a dream like that because it sounds like a nightmare, not a dream at all. I agree with the first respondent, who suggested it might have something to do with the world not being safe enough to take care of even our most basic needs, just because that struck a chord with me.
My bathroom dreams have been more about being in public, unable to have privacy, or about being lost in a maze of bathrooms, not needing one so much as just being in one and knowing I would need it when I got there. And never somehow being able to find just the right one!
Posted by Poet on August 28, 2005, at 20:35:48
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
Hi Aurora,
I've had dreams where I flushed the toilet and it ran ove. My therapist's interpretation was that I am trying to get rid of something emotional- trying to flush it away, but I'm not ready to, so it comes back.
Maybe your clogged toilets are clogged emotions that some part of you wants to let out, but you're not ready to? You search from toilet to toilet, but never find one that you can use.
I hate recurring dreams- I have one that I am in prison. Yeah, I know, it's probably I'm locked in my own mental prison, but I hate it all the same.
Poet
Posted by Gabbix2 on August 29, 2005, at 19:49:37
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
I have almost the identical dream, that is so strange. I keep pushing open doors or walking into other stalls looking for something clean, the floor is always wet and the walls are covered with.. uh, stuff.
There's a thread on Babble somewhere about dirty bathroom dreams, it's odd how many of us have them. Yours is the closest to mine I've ever seen though..
Posted by Shortelise on August 30, 2005, at 21:40:31
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
Needing a place to relieve yourself, wanting to, but not finding a place where you feel ok to do it?
Feeling too dirty to relieve yourself?
Nasty? What does nasty mean to you?
I'd try the gestalt thing with this dream: I'd be everything in the dream: you know, I am the feces, I am thick and gross and I stink. I hold others back, revolt them, dirty them.
Then, I am the toilet, I am so dirty no one can use me, I am useless.
I am the toilet paper, mangled and hanging in the filth.
I am the cubicle, the bathrooom itself, and any other room or object, including my shoes.You see what I mean? Going through a dream in this way can really open it up. But I'd rather do it in therapy than alone.
What do you think?
ShortE
Posted by Gabbix2 on August 31, 2005, at 13:42:01
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS, posted by aurora_2323 on August 28, 2005, at 10:56:09
https://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030506/msgs/225132.html
Hey Aurora here's a link to the old thread about Nasty Bathroom dreams
Posted by Dinah on September 4, 2005, at 15:28:42
In reply to RE: DREAMS ABOUT NASTY BATHROOMS » aurora_2323, posted by Gabbix2 on August 31, 2005, at 13:42:01
Perhaps Dr. Bob could create a position of Babble historian for you. :)
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