Alright, so this morning, I woke up with one of those dreams that just sticks with you, you know? The kind that makes you sit on the edge of your bed for a minute just going “huh?”. I dreamt I saw someone get shot. Yeah, pretty intense stuff. It wasn’t like a movie, it felt… real-ish, in that weird dream way.
My first step, after getting some coffee into my system, was just to try and replay it in my head. Who was it? What was the setting? Most importantly, how did I feel watching it? In the dream, I was just an observer, felt a bit helpless, shocked mostly. The person who got shot, it was someone I knew, kind of a friend, let’s call them Alex. And the shot, it seemed to be to the head. That detail stuck with me.
Trying to make sense of it
So, I started thinking, what does this even mean? My brain immediately goes into problem-solving mode. This is my usual practice with weird dreams. I don’t just let them float away if they feel significant. I dig in a little.
I remembered reading somewhere, or maybe hearing it, that dreams like this aren’t usually literal. Thank goodness, right? My first thought wasn’t that Alex was in actual danger, but more like, what does Alex represent to me right now? Or what does “getting shot” represent?
I considered a few things that usually pop up when you look into dream symbolism for this kind of stuff:
- Feelings of betrayal or anger: Was I mad at Alex? Or did I feel like they’d let me down somehow? I mulled this over. We hadn’t had any big fights, but maybe some small, unspoken thing?
- A desire for change: This one felt a bit more plausible. Sometimes, a “death” or a violent act in a dream can mean something is ending, or that you want it to end. Maybe it was about a change in our friendship, or a change in how I see Alex.
- Needing to change perspective: The head being the target got me thinking. The head is all about thoughts, intellect. Was this dream my subconscious telling me I needed to change how I was thinking about Alex, or a situation involving them? Or maybe even how they think about things?
- Unresolved conflict: This is a big one for these kinds of dreams, apparently. Was there some kind of tension, even a low-level one, between us? I had to be honest with myself here. There was a little thing, a disagreement a while back that we never really hashed out.
Connecting it to my life
So, I took these general ideas and tried to apply them to my current situation with Alex. This is the key part of my “practice” – it’s not just about knowing what a symbol could mean, but what it means for me, right now.
I realized I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated with a certain way Alex approaches things, a specific mindset they have that’s been affecting some mutual plans. It wasn’t anger, more like… a feeling of being stuck because of their perspective. And yeah, that unresolved disagreement, it was tied to this exact mindset.
The dream, with the shot to the head, suddenly felt less like a random horror show and more like my brain’s dramatic way of saying, “This way of thinking, this specific aspect of your dynamic with Alex, needs to end or change.” It wasn’t about Alex literally, but about a part of our interaction, or a perspective.
It wasn’t a premonition of physical harm, but more like a spotlight on an emotional or mental conflict. The dream was showing me an “inner conflict” that I was observing, something that was probably mirrored in my waking life interactions with Alex.
So, what did I do? Well, I didn’t call Alex and say “I dreamt you got shot in the head, we need to talk!” That would be weird. But it did make me decide to approach that lingering issue with them, maybe try to talk about our different perspectives in a more direct way. The dream sort of gave me a nudge, a feeling that this part of our dynamic was “dying” or needed to, for things to move forward in a healthier way.
It’s funny how your brain processes things in your sleep, isn’t it? For me, that dream was a pretty heavy-handed metaphor, but once I sat with it and went through my usual process of trying to connect the dots, it actually offered some clarity. It’s all part of the ongoing practice of trying to understand myself a bit better, even the weird, unsettling parts.
