Dreams: What Do Inadequacy Dreams Mean?
First of all, what do we mean by inadequacy dreams? An inadequacy dream would be one in which you dream that you are either:
- too fat
- too thin
- too old
- too young
- too unattractive
- too sick
- too forgetful
- not smart enough
- not tall enough
- too tall
- overqualified
- under qualified
- and on and on and on!
Basically, any dream in which you disappoint yourself, scare yourself, or fail to meet your expectations is an inadequacy dream.
Here’s a recent inadequacy dream submitted for analysis: Dreaming About Forgetting
I am a 52 year old mother of 2 boys (one’s 12 and the other is 21). I had a dream a week ago that has stayed with me and is just very upsetting. I dreamed that I was holding a baby girl and that she was my baby. She was crying and had a fever. So I took her to what appeared to be a doctor’s office. The nurse working at the window asked me my name and I told her. She asked what was wrong with my baby and I told her that she had a fever, didn’t seem to feel well and was crying a lot. Then the nurse asked me my baby’s name and I couldn’t remember it.
I felt SO frustrated and scared in the dream (and when I woke up and ever since). I was trying so hard to remember the name and kept thinking, “How can you forget the name of your own baby?”
Most of the time dreams don’t stay with me. I usually remember them for a day or two but this one won’t leave my mind. I keep feeling how frustrated and scared I was.
Now I’m scared that this means I’m losing my memory or that I might have problems with Alzheimer’s or something. I’m just really in a bad place right now because of this dream. Please help me sort this out so I can get rid of this feeling. Thank you.
P.S. Oh, by the way, this is strange – but somehow I know that the baby’s name was Victoria. It came to me just as I was waking up from the dream.
First of all, relax and throw out any left over fears and anxieties! Very often dreaming about forgetting things is simply a sign that we need to slow down and start paying more attention to things. It’s possible that you recently forgot something or almost forgot something and the frustration of that incident carried over into your dream.
Forgetting things is a very common thing – it happens to people of all ages, young and old. It isn’t a sign of losing your memory or even of getting old – most of the time it’s simply a sign that you’re too busy or that you aren’t paying as much attention to details as possible. Sometimes, in our work and at home, we get kind of lazy and don’t pay as much attention to details. This leads to forgotten cellphones, keys, and sunglasses!
Most people just laugh at the situation – but a certain age group (between about 35 and 55) almost panics. We tend to think, “Dear, God, please don’t let me be losing my mind!!!” We don’t just hit the panic button, we jump on it.
Yet, if we pause and take a deep breath, we’ll remember that forgetting things happen at all ages. After all, what about the time we forgot our school lunch, the time we forgot the dates for the history exam (!!!), the time we forgot to take the right notebook to class – etc, etc, etc. If we would be reasonable, we’d realize that forgetting things isn’t anything new!
I do a lot of research and reading for another one of my websites, Out of Bounds. It’s all about mental fitness, sharpening your mind, improving your memory, and just staying sharp. I always recommend challenging the mind to keep it on it’s proverbial toes. Doing a lot of the recommended tips given on Out of Bounds will help you to not only stay sharp – it’ll give you confidence.
Right now, I’d say that a recent event (something small – like forgetting your keys…) has sort of smacked your confidence around – hence the dream. Unfortunately, the dream only compounded the problem!
Rest assured that I’m certain the frustrating feelings will subside right away.
Other Inadequacy Dreams
If you’ve had inadequacy dreams, realize that they stem from a particular insecurity. If you dream that you are overweight, for example, you either…
- Have been feeling like you need to lose weight.
- Have a deep-seeded fear of becoming overweight.
Another interpretation for this type of dream – if you’re certain that you have no insecurities whatsoever – is that you “emotionally feel” whatever inadequacy is portrayed in the dream. For example, if you dream you are incredibly ugly – yet don’t feel at all unattractive, you could have recently acted “ugly” and have guilt over your actions.
If you dream that you are overweight – yet you know you are a perfect size – you may feel like you’re “carrying too much weight” at the office, at school, or at home.
Finally, don’t ever let a mere dream shake your confidence or your swagger. Dream Prophesy is all about USING your dreams as self help and self improvement vessels. It’s the whole reason I put the website up in the first place! We can take our dreams and use them as springboards to improving our lives. If you dream of a particular inadequacy – put a little extra effort into chasing away the insecurities and watch your confidence soar!
Keeping a Dream Journal
If you have a legitimate interest in your dreams and truly want to uncover what they’re trying to tell you, the first thing you need to do is buy a dream journal. You could probably even find an old notebook around your house that would work beautifully – without spending a red cent.
Most people think they will simply remember every detail of their dreams without writing down the details right away. Unfortunately, this just isn’t the case. Many times, important details are forgotten. In mere hours, large chunks of valuable dream details… just ripe for dream analysis… are lost forever.
It’s like priceless dream symbols flying out of the bedroom window! Opportunities for self analysis, self growth, and self help lost forever.
Not good.
Another benefit of keeping a dream journal is that you’ll be able to see trends. If you dream about lost loved ones, snakes, losing things, death, or clowns on a regular basis – it’s information that will prove valuable to a dreamologist (dream interpreter).
Dreaming about snakes once in a while will hold a different analysis, for example, than if you dream about them 2 or 3 times a week.
Whether you want to use the information to interpret your own dreams or you want to have the information, in full detail, handy for a dream interpreter such as the one on Dream Prophesy – a dream journal is absolutely KEY.
Below are top 10 most important things about keeping a dream journal:
- Keep your dream journal and pen near your bed. You’ll want to get the dream out of your head and onto paper as soon as possible. If you have to search around the house for the journal or the pen, you run the risk of “losing” valuable details.
- Keep your dream journal away from prying eyes! Even though the dream about Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt (or both) may actually hold an entirely different interpretation than expected – you might not be able to explain that to a certain someone!
- Write down every person who appears in your dream. Even if it’s someone you think isn’t at all important, write them down. If you’re unsure who, exactly, the person was “supposed” to be – go with your gut feeling. Sometimes dreams are confusing, to say the least.
- Write down the feelings you experienced in the dream. How you felt during the dream is extremely important to its analysis and interpretation.
- Write down how you feel when you first wake up. Are you anxious, sad, mad, confused, elated? How you feel, initially, also carries a lot of weight in dream analysis.
- If you remember any particular phrases or “key” words in the dream, jot them down, along with who said them. You’ll know which words or phrases are “key” simply because they’ll stand out.
- Right before you fall asleep, remind yourself to remember important details about your dream(s). Doing so will help, over time, train you to better remember your dreams and help you to retain the information for longer periods of time.
- If you can’t remember an entire dream or you’re foggy on certain details, don’t sweat it! Write down what you can remember. DO NOT assume or try to fill in blanks with what you “think” happened in the dream. If you don’t remember, you don’t remember. Think about it this way, if it were truly that important and if it were extremely “key,” you’d probably remember! Just write down the things you remember.
- Write down colors you recall from the dream. Colors in dreams are very important! I’ll be adding a dream color chart to Dream Prophesy in a day or two. You’ll be able to see the different interpretations for the different colors. Write down each color that you remember. If you’re wearing a white top, write that down. If someone in your dream is angry at you and they’re wearing purple, write it down.
- Remember the importance of Dream Symbols. When examining your dream and writing down the details in your dream journal, be sure to list any objects and/or animals that you recall – cats, pillows, birds, toasters, turtles, flowers, etc.
Start keeping a dream journal as soon as possible – it’ll change the way you look at dreams. The information in your journal, combined with the tools and information you’ll find on Dream Prophesy will help you analyze your dreams. Dream analysis can help you in more ways than you can even begin to imagine.
It can open up a whole new world for you – so grab your pen, you won’t want to miss a thing!
What Does it Mean to Dream About Losing Things?
The majority of dream interpretation requests I get have to do with 1 of the following types of dreams:
- Dreams of dying
- Dreams of a lost loved one
- Snake dreams
- Dreams of falling
- Dreams of being lost
- Dreams of losing things
I thought we’d take a good look at one of these dreams today: Dreams of losing things. Many people want to know what it means to dream about losing things – some wonder if it’s a sign that they’ll be losing something (or someone) in their life. First of all let me say a resounding NO, these dreams do not tell the future or imply that you’ll lose anything or anyone in your waking life.
Dreams deal with what’s going on in our lives – or with what has gone on in our lives. Dreams are where we sort it all out.
When we dream of losing things, its almost always because we are (in our waking life) overwhelmed and are currently being pulled in too many different directions or are trying to do too many things. These dreams often have to do with us, personally, more than things we lose. They’re just symbols for the bigger picture.
It’s our brain’s way of telling us: Too many pots on the stove! Something’s going to happen if you don’t get it together. Dreaming of losing things often means we are “out of touch” or “out of control” in some area of our life.
Many times, life gets so hectic and twisted that we lose touch with who we actually are. We try to be so many things to so many people that we sort of lose who we truly are. We forget the things that truly matter (or at least should matter) in life. At the risk of wading into the deep end of the pool, dreaming of losing things often reflects that we’ve “lost a part of ourselves.”
If you dream that you have lost something, examine your heart and life the very next day, while the dream is still fresh in your mind. Have you lost touch with yourself lately? Are you too busy? Are parts of your life sort of spinning out of control?
As I point out in the article, Dream Prophesy: When Dreams Come True, dreams simply tell us that The stage is set for something to happen. Whether it does or not is almost entirely up to us.
Dream Analysis: A Plate Upside the Head Doesn’t Spell Future Headaches
I dreamed about 4 nights ago that my husband and I were fighting so bad that I hit him in the head with a plate. We were yelling and yelling and he was so unreasonable and was saying such mean things that I felt like I had to just shut him up. I am not a violent person and actually don’t even fight with people that much. I argue with my husband sometimes but all marriages have that. But I never hit him with plates. Why would I be so violent in my dream? It is really troubling me. I can’t get the image of the plate and his cut head bleeding so much blood out of my mind. It makes me sick and I don’t know what to do. Is it a bad omen for something happening to one of us or to a big fight. As you can see I am really a wreck over this. Please help me.
First of all, rest assured that there is no omen involved. People often think that, but dreams can’t tell the future. They do, however, often indicate something that is currently going on or something that has gone on. A dream such as this one indicates that there is something “below the surface.” More times than not, if we dream about an open wound (or surgery, pulling teeth… that sort of thing) – our mind is trying to “dig” beneath the surface for something.
In this case, I would be willing to bet that you have been trying to get something across to your husband for a while – something that he either isn’t accepting or simply isn’t “catching.” It could be hints you’ve been dropping for a new sofa, something around the house that you want him to take care of, or something on a grander scale. It could even be a case of wanting him to listen to you or pay more attention to you.
The hit in the head with the plate was pretty much your subconscious mind’s way of saying, “Now I’ve got your attention!!!”
As far as dream symbolisms go, I think that the fact that “so much blood” came out of the wound indicates that you fully expect to be able to get through to him – in your heart you believe that you’ll get to the source of the problem. If, in your dream, you had hit him on the head and nothing had come out, I’d worry that you might be fighting a losing battle and that (down inside) you knew it.
Think about how this relates to your situation. I’d be willing to bet that a light bulb has already appeared!
Again, this is absolutely not an omen for anything. If, by coincidence, he cuts himself shaving or you have an argument about what movie to see Friday night – know this: The dream did not predict or cause either one. Dreams rely on what happened yesterday, not tomorrow.
Sweet dreams!
What Do Fairy Tale Dreams Mean?
Have you ever had what I call a “Fairy Tale” dream? One in which everything seems more surreal than usual. Things are bright and sunny, pretty and larger than life. If you had to describe it, you would probably use the words “like a fairy tale.”
In these dreams, you may or may not be a prince or princess and there isn’t always a castle and moat! Yet there’s something distinctively “fairy tale” about the dreams.
So exactly what do these “fairy tale” dreams mean? In a word: ESCAPE. That’s not to say you want to escape your life altogether but, make no mistake about it, there’s some element of your life or a particular date on your appointment calendar that you do want to escape from.
Oddly enough, the people who have this sort of escapism dream are the ones who are going along, acting as though everything is great, and coming off as though they haven’t a care in the world. The girl with a school assignment that she’s sweating bullets over acts as though it’s a breezy cake walk. Because she’s in such denial, the stress builds up. She’s a perfect candidate for an escapism dream such as fairy tale dreams.
The man who refuses to face his relationship problems, trying to cover them up any way he can is another candidate.
Sometimes just admitting that we aren’t perfect and that we have worries and insecurities can free us up to find solutions. Whether the solution is studying harder, preparing more, or talking things out with a loved one – the solution is always a HEAD ON approach and never a HIDE FROM approach.
If you’ve had a fairy tale dream recently, ask yourself what you could possibly be trying to escape from. It could be any of the following types of situations:
- an upcoming test
- a dental appointment
- meeting someone in particular
- work evaluation
- a project at work or school
- a confrontation
- vacation
- an interview
- etc!
Meet your fear and reservations head on – admit them, then prepare for them. Create your own fairy tale ending.
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