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!
Dreams About Death: What Your Dreams Mean
A recent dream request:
I keep having dreams in where death itself is after me everywhere i turn its there. & this really scares me. can you please help me figure out what these dreams mean?
Dreams about death are always troubling – very much so! It’s important to remember, however, that these dreams aren’t actually about death as much as they’re about change or transition. Death in dreams is also often a dream symbol for loss.
Often, people will dream about death during the following changes in their lives:
- change of schools (from grade school to middle school, from middle school to high school, from high school to college – or a change of schools as a result of moving)
- change of job
- a move
- divorce
- parents divorce
- a friend moving away
- change of teachers
- change of boss and/or co-workers
- loss of a pet
- loss of a friendship
- starting a new relationship
- ending an old relationship
As you can see, any sort of change sort of brings about a “loss” of sorts – a new job also means the loss of an old one. A new relationship often means the “loss” of an old one, etc. Death dreams generally just represent this change.
We often will dream about lost loved ones during times of change or transition as well. Basically, anything that symbolizes change to us will symbolize change to us in our dreams.
Please don’t ever be afraid of death dreams – they aren’t negative dreams. In fact, ancient dream guides often stated that to dream of death was a great sign that something wonderful was about to happen to you! These dreamologists believed that to dream of death meant that the dreamer was moving on to a new, exciting experience in their lives.
Nothing scary about that!
Dream Interpretation: Why It’s So Important and How to Approach Dream Interpretation
Our dreams can have a great impact on our lives and offer us wonderful insights into our minds. All we have to do is analyze them and find out exactly what it is they’re trying to tell us. Dreams can hold valuable secrets to our lives and the dream symbols can help sort through many problems and dilemmas in a way no self help book in the world could hope to.
I hope you’ll bookmark Dream Prophesy.com and subscribe to our e-mail alerts and/or rss feed so you can learn how you can interpret your own dreams and learn how they can help you get more from life.
Below are a few guidelines for interpreting and analyzing your dreams:
- Make the meanings of the dream symbols in your dream line up with your real life. If you are terrified of snakes, a snake dream will have a different meaning for you than it would someone who keeps snakes as pets and loves them the way the rest of us love our cats and dogs.
- Submit your dream to Dream Prophesy.com for your own personalized dream interpretation and dream analysis. Our contact form is on the site. Unless you mark your dream as private, we do share the dream with our readers. This way, many people are helped by your dream interpretation.
- Write down your dreams, as soon as you wake up. It doesn’t matter if it’s a regular dream or a nightmare. Even the most, seemingly, insignificant dream can hold a wealth of information and insight. Don’t worry about trying to analyze it at that exact moment – simply write down what you remember.
- Even more importantly, write down how you feel when you first wake up. The emotions you have at that moment are the emotions you were experiencing in the dream and are absolutely vital to the dream interpretation.
- Make sure you write down all of the symbols in your dream. These are things such as knives, brooms, cats, birds, snakes, planes, and even people you recall. Basically, anything or anyone you remember is a dream symbol.
At the end of a week, go back and examine your dream journal. If you see a series of troubling and upsetting dreams, you can rest assured that your mind is troubled about something. Your mind is begging for you to find a solution to the drama and the trauma so that it can find peace again.
If your dreams seem to be a series of fear and panic, you are experiencing a great deal of worry and concern in your life. There is at least one thing you are afraid of happening (or not happening). When the worry is resolved, your dream self will be less anxious!
Again, please use Dream Prophesy.com as a guide and resource as you begin to study and make sense of your dreams. If you have a particular dream or dream symbol that you want interpreted, use our search box to find articles and posts related to this subject. If you still have questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me or use the contact form.
Dreaming About Ex-Boyfriends, Girlfriends, Husbands, or Wives
A frequent dream analysis request on Dream Prophesy goes something like this: “What does it mean to dream about an ex? Does it mean I want them back?!” Most people seem astonished to dream of their ex because, in their conscious state, the last thing they’d want is to have the ex back!
More times than not, when you dream about an ex (girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife), it isn’t really THEM that your dream represents. Usually (though not always, of course) it’s the period of time that your mind is revisiting – your ex just happens to be there. In the same way that our AWAKE mind revisits the past, through memories, sometimes our ASLEEP mind does the same.
If we’re going through a stressful time in our lives and seem to have more on our proverbial plate than we ever asked for – our mind will take us to a “simpler time” – if an ex happens to be there, it isn’t necessarily a compliment to them. They just happened to be in the picture at the time.
However, if it becomes a recurring dream, the analysis may be a little different. Here’s an example:
Trudie was married to a man named Carl, a wonderful man who she was crazy about. His only vice, her e-mail said, was that he was a workahaulic. He worked 12 hours a day and, when he came home, all he wanted to talk or think about was work. Other than that, they were happily married and had a comfortable life.
However, she began to dream about her ex-husband regularly. In her dreams, they were always having fun – doing things they used to do together (fishing, hiking, going to movies…). She was beginning to think that her subconcious mind wanted Mr. Wrong back instead of Mr. Right!
She was reliveved to find out that her subconcious mind was simply giving her a message – she missed doing the things she once did and a part of her wished that her second husband had as much fun with life as her first one did. After all, she said, it was the only thing he ever got right!
Without mentioning the dreams or husband #1’s name (of course), Trudie told Carl that he needed to lighten up and enjoy life more. The whole business of work-related subjects being the only words out of his mouth had gotten very old, very fast. She made arrangements for them to go fishing one weekend and Carl fell in love with it so much, she now kind of wishes he’d give her a Saturday OFF the lake!
Examine your dreams and see if there’s a hidden message, such as the one above. 9 times out of 10 there isn’t a specific message – your subconscious simply wanted to take a stroll down memory’s lane… and you-know-who just happened to be there!
When You Dream of Bad Things Happening to Someone You Love
Although this is a common type of dream, it’s one that few people really want to think about – let alone try to find the dream interpretation!
Have you ever dreamed that something bad happened, or was about to happen to someone you love, as you watched? A recent reader recently sent me a dream to analyze that involved her watching as her husband was robbed by someone dressed as Richard Nixon.
How amazing is that?!
Anyway, she said that she watched as her husband handed over all of his money to “President Nixon.” She wanted to help her husband, especially since at one point it looked as though he was about to be hit on the head with a bat, but she was frozen in place.
When analyzing dreams, I often go with my initial gut reaction and this time I felt 110 percent confident with it. After complimenting her brain on its creativity (!!!), I e-mailed her back something along these lines:
While we often dream about something happening to our loved ones as a reaction to being worried about them (even more than usual) – we often dream these types of dreams when we’re upset with them – even incredibly angry at them! This dream would be that type of dream. The fact that the husband was the only one in any sort of danger indicates that he alone is on the recieving end of negative feelings. The good news is that since he wasn’t actually harmed, the feelings weren’t terribly bad!
Something else that’s interesting is the symbolism of money. The fact that the husband had to give all of his money away, while the wife retained her own purse and possessions indicates that the negative feelings spring from a financial disagreement, difference of opinion, or even resentment.
The only thing that mystified me was the Richard Nixon mask. I kept wondering why him? I went over a few things in my mind, such as what he represented:
- Trickiness (“Tricky Dicky”)?
- Dishonesty?
- History?
- Maligned?
I simply e-mailed her my thoughts, ignoring our ex-Presidentfor the time-being. I got an e-mail back within a few hours. It was filled with exclamation marks, because she thought I’d nailed it.
Apparently, her husband had recently spent a great deal of money on purchase that she felt was frivolous. She explained how they’d argued, how she had wanted a kitchen hutch, how he had stormed off to sit and sulk in McDonald’s for 3 hours (I love this guy! – I pointed out how lucky she was that he drowned his anger in milkshakes as opposed to something else!).
Then, she said the magic words that solved my Nixon mystery – she said that on the day he’d gotten his bonus check, he called and said he’d be home a few hours late, that he had to “pick something up.” She thought the something was the kitchen hutch she’d been eyeing for months. SO, when McDonald’s Mike (not his real name) showed up with a golfer’s dream set in the pick-up rather than a wife’s dream, she was floored. She said she met him outside and lit into him. She told him that it all felt like a “dirty trick” – aha! That’s where the Richard Nixon mask came in! Tricky Dicky strikes again.
It reminds me of the time my oldest two daughters had a HUGE fight when they were younger. The oldest one told me the following day that she’d had a dream that her younger sister was attacked and eaten by a crocodile. I asked, “Awww, are you upset by the dream?” (I was ready to reassure her that it was just a dream, and that nothing like that would ever happen.) My speech wasn’t necessary, though, because when asked if she was upset by the dream, she just said, “No, not really.” Then she smiled and went outside to ride her bike!
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