DREAM OF A BLIND WOMAN
May is a young woman, blind from birth, but training for a professional career. Among her dreams is a recurring nightmare which reflects some of the distress she has had to cope with in her growing up. She thinks it began at about 8 and has recurred several times a year ever since.
Dream report: Lost in the Tide
I’m walking alone down a sand dune and across a beach on flat sand. Everything seems calm, till I sense and hear big surf waves coming at me from all sides. They engulf me and I lose touch with the ground. I feel as if an undertow is pulling me one way and a rip the other way. I’m floating, and panicking, because I have no sense of direction where there’s any land. I’m lost.
I wake up scared with my heart racing, and sigh with relief to be out of it.
I’m actually a good swimmer but I did have a real experience at 7 years old of being swept out on a rip, screaming, and had to be rescued. When I was young I used often to have panic attacks when I got physically lost at school, or out shopping, or visiting other homes than my own.
Recently, however, May dreamed a different ending.
Before the tide engulfed me, I found a cliff, by some kind of echo-location, and I was able to climb up, using my arms and upper body strength to haul myself over the rocks up to the top.
I think this new ending reflects a new inner strength in me, as I am learning to handle a difficult situation; I am becoming more self-reliant. I’m also learning martial art skills for self-defence. Most of my dreams involve water. But I remember another nightmare in which I was floating away from my family in a bubble of air, and they couldn’t hear me. I’m a very feeling person and my dreams emphasise my emotions.
May is a remarkable young woman, with supportive friends and parents, rapidly developing her talents and skills, so the nightmares are decreasing. Water seems to be a primary metaphor for her emotions, which can quickly become overwhelming when she loses touch with her surroundings. Water is also a medium in which she can feel changes of pressure, direction, rough or calm touch, etc, as a metaphor for changes in her surroundings.
In these dreams we can notice how significant other senses become to replace the lack of vision.