11


Disaster Strikes

“Fire is falling from the sky. Lava is everywhere. The earth quakes.”

—Dewi, 18

If you dream about being in a natural disaster or being in a war zone, you’ll probably wake up as shaken as Dewi was from her nightmare. Your catastrophic dream may involve rushing to escape a flood or tidal wave. Maybe you’re in the middle of a volcanic eruption, or fleeing from lava, a firestorm, or a lightning strike. The ground beneath you might split apart in an earthquake. A tornado, typhoon, or hurricane may howl around you. Kids have had dreams about nuclear attacks, holocausts, World War III, chemical attacks, acid rain, mustard gas, napalm, and other explosive and toxic nightmares.

Your dreams might be filled with chaos and violence. As with all nightmares, these dreams get our attention. They force us to hear the message: “Alert! Alert! Things are in bad shape at the moment. Do something.”

Dreams about upheavals of nature can be the most frightening dreams ever. To many dreamers, it feels like the end of the world has arrived. Dreams exaggerate and overdramatize. The circumstances of our waking lives are usually not as serious as they are pictured in our dreams of catastrophes. But we need to understand the dream images and use them to improve our waking situation. You saw in chapter 1 “Oh No, It’s After Me!” that when some annoying person or situation plagues you, you might dream about being chased or attacked. When you feel as if your life is coming apart, you are more likely to dream about a widespread catastrophe.


To dream about a disaster is to feel in a personal waking crisis.

Dreams about disasters are fairly common. Nearly 40 percent of kids said they had disaster dreams, and most of them had these nightmares often.

The place where you live might be in danger of certain types of calamities. Do you live in an earthquake belt? Is your area periodically struck by a hurricane? Do tidal waves loom near the coast where you live? Are tornadoes common in your part of the world? The physical storms in your environment become the likeliest pictures of personal emotional storms in your nightmares.

When people live in war zones, or when tragedies such as terrorist attacks occur close to home, people are even more likely to dream about similar situations. And, with the TV news, radio emergency bulletins, and Internet captions, we are becoming more aware of disasters and warfare in places far from our homes. These can become symbols of personal crises in our dreams.

Each nightmare has something to teach you about your inner emotions. Frightening as they may be, these dreams can help you develop your abilities to cope with the crisis in your waking world.

Natural Disasters

Feeling Shaken

Whether or not you have actually gone through an earthquake, you may dream about one when events in your life are in turmoil. These dreams point to a change in your life, one that seems dangerous. Like Dewi, some dreamers fear being burned from fire, hurt by falling debris, and falling into an abyss that opens in the cracking earth.

In general, earthquake dreams are often puns for a situation in your life that is coming apart or breaking up. Is there a divorce, a split, taking place in your family? Are you breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend? Are your grades falling apart?

Destruction in an earthquake dream usually represents your fears of emotional damage. However, sometimes earthquake and volcano dreams are signs that your physical or psychological health is getting bad. This is rare, but if you suspect this might be true for you, get some professional advice from your doctor or counselor.

If you have this type of disaster dream, you probably know what waking-life situation it represents. But it’s important to ask yourself what feels at risk right at this moment. Remember that situations change.

Did you do anything in your dream to escape the destruction that was underway? Seventeen-year-old Hal dreamed about floods, world wars, and nuclear holocausts, but he saw people as disappearing rather than dying: “The world becomes a survivalist social structure where I excel and thrive.” Taking positive action in dreams can help you feel more able to cope with the waking-life situation as well as the dream. Saving yourself and others in disaster nightmares is desirable.

Is there any possible benefit from the change going on in your waking life? Time may show you that what seems unbearable at the moment might become a benefit in the future. Look for it.

Great Waters

If you dream about floods and tidal waves, you are probably telling yourself in vivid pictures that things are overwhelming; it’s too much.

When you dream a tidal wave is about to crash down on you, or that floodwaters surround you, or torrents of rain hit you, you are likely to wake up scared. Such dreams occur when we feel overwhelmed, even hopeless. The girl who dreamed “There was a flood in my backyard” felt the threat to her well-being was close to home. Dreams about great waters often stand for feelings of great sadness, tears of despair. They often occur in emotional crises. They express the dreamer’s feeling of being in an emergency.

At times, nightmares of great waters arise when there is a physical cause. Certain physical conditions are accompanied by the accumulation of excess water within the body. Many people dream of overwhelming waters when they have colds, bronchitis, or pneumonia. One woman with pneumonia dreamed she was drowning in an upside-down submarine. Such dreams will stop as the person gets better. A man who had suffered three heart attacks had a dream about surviving three tidal waves. He stands on a cliff watching the huge waves approach. He fears being swept off the cliff into the deep waters. Although the third tidal wave swirls around his ankles, the water recedes. His dream combined the emotional threat of being overwhelmed with the physical water retention that patients with heart conditions often have.

Dreams about excess water are a normal response to feeling overwhelmed and sad about some situation.

Did you make an effort to help yourself in the dream? You don’t have to get in over your head. A girl had dreams of seeing an immense tidal wave approaching, but it did not always reach her. A woman in a difficult marriage had dreams of being swept away by raging waters. In her dreams, she struggles to cling to trees and save herself. Finally, in one of her dreams, she manages to swim to an island and safety. The fact that she managed to survive in the last dream gave her greater strength to deal with the painful waking situation her dream represented.

Whatever type of turmoil or sadness you may be currently experiencing, remember how important it is to take positive action. It may seem strange to try to change your dream, but with practice it can work. Remind yourself as you fall asleep to try to make any bad dream better. While you’re awake, think about your dream and what it might mean. Imagine yourself staying afloat, swimming, breathing, surviving. Time may improve the waking situation. You can get support. Coping with your nightmare helps you grow and develop. You can move away from it toward joyful new adventures.

Great Winds

If you dream that a tornado is coming, like many kids do, you are warning yourself about an emotional storm on the horizon. Wind was once thought to be the breath of a god or goddess, bringing divine creations to life. Fierce winds, along with thunderbolts and lightning, were believed to be the god’s anger. When you dream about destructive wind, you might be feeling blown away by strong emotions:

What is making you feel storm-tossed at the moment? Is there something in your present life that feels as if it’s “gone with the wind”?

Did you take action in your dream to protect yourself or others from the overpowering winds? Remember that in dreams you might be able to ride the wind, and fly high over troubled waters to safe harbors. Absorb the energy of your dream whirlwinds to help you deal with your waking-life difficulties. Perhaps these are the winds of change for you. They can bring something new and positive into your life.

Volcanic Eruptions and Firestorms

If your disaster dream involves fire or volcanic eruptions, as it did in Dewi’s dream at the start of this chapter, it is probably expressing feelings of anger in other people or in you. A dream about a volcanic eruption is often a dream pun for explosive anger.

Many cultures have worshipped fire for its warmth, as protection from wild beasts, and for cooking food. But destructive fire – lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions – was thought to be the fury of an angry god or goddess. The burning ash and lava, destroying crops, livestock, homes, and villagers, were believed to be a punishment.

In dreams, fire is often associated with one of three conditions: anger, passion, or physical inflammation. When you dream about firestorms or volcanic explosions, any of these three conditions may be involved.

Anger Our language is filled with references to the heat of angry feelings – “I’m burned up”; “I’m about to blow up”; “I’m seeing red.” In dreams, these words become vivid images of volcanic explosions, rushing lava, and burning towns. Did your teacher criticize you unfairly? Did a parent explode in fury at you? Did a close friend burst out with remarks that made you “burn”? Has there been a destructive quarrel recently in your waking life? Anger in real life results in dream damage by fire:

The damage caused in dreams about fire expresses the emotional damage you or other people experienced as a result of rage.

Passion We also use images of fire to express feelings of love and desire. We may describe an attractive person as a hottie, or say we are hot for someone. In dreams, these statements become literal. Many teenagers dream about houses or buildings on fire when they feel the heat of passion. A girl from England dreamed about volcanoes, the sky filled with rusty colors, with wildfires and a “hot fence” surrounding her and her friends. Was she feeling protected from violent anger around her, or was she dangerously close to runaway passion? Such fiery images picture both the warmth of desire and the risk of getting hurt in a close relationship. Don’t be surprised to see the flames of passion light your dreamscape. It’s a natural reaction.

Inflammation and Fever Dreams about fire can result from excessive heat in your body. People with headaches sometimes dream about their hair being on fire. Children who were victims of severe burns drew pictures of scorching sun and summer beaches with burning sand, echoing the burning sensations on their skins. As the dreamer’s health returns, there are often dreams about buildings being repaired or new ones being constructed.

Sometimes, dream fires stand for more than one of these things. Once my wrist was badly injured from a break that was misdiagnosed as a sprain. It took extensive surgery to rebreak the wrongly aligned bones and insert screws to hold them in place. The night before surgery I had a vivid nightmare that I was in a city where a huge fire is burning. People panic, afraid of being trapped by the fire. I take refuge in an underground cave and, although I can hear a gigantic explosion on the surface, I survive safely under the earth. This dream dramatized both the heat in my inflamed wrist and the furious anger I felt toward the doctor who had made the misdiagnosis.

Whenever you dream about destructive fire, ask yourself if anger, passion, or physical heat is the cause. Find ways to beat down or redirect the fire in your dreams as well as in your waking situation. Understanding yourself helps you make better decisions.

Big Freeze

At times the problem in our dreams is not too much heat but too much cold. Dreams of ice and snow, hail, and wintry freeze often stand for waking-life chilly emotions that numb the dreamer. When you dream about bitter cold in any form, you might be portraying frigid emotions in some other person or in yourself.

Emotional Freezes A girl dreamed that her girlfriend slips on ice and, when she gets up, her whole head has turned into a block of ice. Her dream suggests that the girlfriend “slipped up” in some way and that her own reaction was to become icy cold to her. A woman who was grieving the death of her son dreamed he comes to her and helps her throw rocks into a frozen river so the water can flow again. She hugs him and asks why he has come. He says, “Oh, Mom, I thought you needed some help to break up the ice in your heart.” The woman awoke, able to shed tears. She felt encouraged by this dream in which her deceased son helped her. If you dream about frozen land or water or people, you probably feel frozen by some person or situation in waking life and need to allow yourself to flow freely.

Physical Freezes Parts of the body may feel abnormally cold when there is restricted circulation. When my wrist was broken, my ring and little fingers were cold and numb because a nerve was compressed. In a dream during this time, I am driving through an area with ice-covered trees. The tiniest branches are coated with ice, and the wind blowing through them makes an eerie sound. Suddenly the car jams. I am afraid to be stuck in this cold awful place. Here my dream compared my chilly fingers to ice-covered twigs. The wail of the wind was probably my moan of fear.

If you should dream about cold, assess whether the source of the dream is from chilly emotions in your waking environment or from a physical cause. Are you feeling cold and loveless? Frozen with grief? Icy with fear? Find ways to melt the ice and cold in your dreams. Think about how to thaw out icy feelings and invite warm loving ones into your life.

Living in a War Zone

Mankind has created disasters to equal and sometimes exceed the upheavals of nature. Kids often dream they are suffering the effects of a war.

If you dream about war, you are probably going through some hard times in the waking state. When heavy quarrels go on and on, kids sometimes get weary from explosive anger in those around them or disgusted with their own eruptions of fury. It feels like a state of war:

The poisonous gases and other toxins in these dreams usually refer to the noxious effects on the dreamer of angry arguments or feelings. Some dreamers see themselves walking through rubble and the remains after a major disaster. When dreamers explore the ruins of the aftermath of a war or manmade disaster, they are surveying emotional damage caused by the waking-life turmoil.

A girl dreamed of being a sergeant in Vietnam who has been shot and left on a hillside to die. She thought she might be reliving a past life. A boy described his dream about an invasion of Atlantis that destroys the city by fire. There is no way to know whether such dreams are truly past-life memories, but we can be sure they are expressions of chaos currently taking place in the dreamer’s life. When we dream about warfare, we act out the struggle of humans to rise above anger and hate. We are battling the flaws in ourselves, and in the people and circumstances that surround us.

If you dream about war, it’s a good idea to review any angry feelings you have at the moment, or think about any anger aimed at you. Remember the importance of attempting to protect yourself and others when you study your dreams. Imagine ways to get help, to save yourself and others if you can. Think over how to resolve or cope with the waking situation the dream represents. Is there anything you might learn from this period of inner or outer conflict? If you are in danger from an actual war, you probably can’t change these circumstances in waking life. However, if you try, you might be able to change your dreams about it.

When inner calm returns, dreams can show us scenes of overwhelming beauty. You may wander through lush gardens or blossoming trees, bathe in healing waters, be touched by warm sunshine, feel a cooling breeze, or watch spectacular sunsets and moonrises. Perhaps you will glide down ski slopes with pleasure, swim in underwater grottos, or join in a round dance. Such dreams are sometimes accompanied by heavenly music. At times we are gifted with dreams of beauty during a personal crisis. They support and encourage us. Whenever dreams of beauty come to you, welcome them.