"I'm hoping you can help give me some insight into a recurring dream I've been having. For years now, I've been dreaming about snakes. It's almost always the same scenario. Usually I am at home in bed and I wake up to see a giant snake staring back at me. I'm always terrified and feel helpless to fight it off. Other times, I will be in the house and realize a snake has somehow gotten in and I will have to find a way to get it out. I'm always alone and I never confront the snake - I'm generally frozen in terror.
I get that this must be some kind of anxiety dream, but beyond that, I'm just not sure . . ."
Thank you so much for sending me this very interesting dream, and thank you for being patient, as I'm running quite behind on the blog right now! For my other readers, if you'd like one of your dreams interpreted, please feel free to email me at Rachel.Beezy88@gmail.com and I'll get to it as quickly as possible!
I hope I'm able to introduce some ideas to help you understand the possible meanings of these recurrent dreams. I've written before that I believe that dreams have meanings which are extremely subjective, and that your personal thoughts and feelings about the images in your dreams play an important role in understanding the meanings of symbols. I mention this again because I believe that the various meanings of a snake in a dream are influenced greatly by our personal impression of the animal- some people find it repugnant, or terrifying, while others are fascinated by it. I would assume that you fall into the group which finds snakes terrifying, but of course, I can't be sure as I don't know you personally!
It's wise of you to read this dream as a reflection of anxiety, as it likely is, but an anxiety of what? Having a marked fear of snakes, or a deep-seated repulsion of them as animals would likely cause your brain to place a snake in your dream in order to reflect the negative associations with the animal. Snakes are sneaky, cunning, dangerous animals which creep silently into warm places, like beds, and lie in wait for their unsuspecting victims. If you were raised in the American west, as I was, snakes were a legitimate thing to fear, as an encounter with a rattlesnake could be fatal. So, in dreaming of a snake hiding in your bed, are you dreaming about an unknown danger, or a danger that seems to perpetually loom over you? Perhaps.
Freud tended to associate anything cylindrical with a phallus, particularly if, as snakes do, that cylindrical object found its home within a hole or burrow. The fact that the snake often appears in your bed with you implies to me that it is possible that you may be experiencing anxiety of a sexual nature- maybe even some sort of phobia over the phallus?
Beds are also symbols of a safe, secure place in which we imagine we will find peace. So again, this might lead back to a more generalized sort of anxiety over the loss or potential loss of security, in one or all of its forms. The dreams that you have in which you find a snake within your home lend a little credence to the possibility of this fact, as dreams about a house are actually dreams about the self. How a house appears to us in our dreams is often indicative of how we see ourselves within the world, and to have a snake invade that space would lead me to believe that perhaps the snake is representing a trait of yours, one that you may use to sabotage your own success.
The tricky thing about finding meanings in recurrent dreams is that unless the dreams are identical, there are more symbols employed and thus, more possible answers to the questions posed! While these dreams are obviously quite similar, with this level of detail, it is difficult to decide whither or not they are expressing the same emotions or concerns. And of course, there are the converse, positively associated meanings of the snake: transformation, wisdom and renewal. It is certainly possible that, if you are usually interested in snakes in your waking life, that in your dream, you are confusing a positive thing like change with a negative threat to your life style. Only you can say for sure which of these meanings provides the ultimate answer to the meaning of your dream!
I hope that this free dream reading has helped! Please feel free to email me with comments, or leave them here. If any of my other readers would like their dream analyzed for free, email it to me at Rachel.Beezy88@gmail.com.
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