When The Past Speaks In Symbols

In my dream, I harmed the ones I love. In waking life, I'm learning how to heal us all.

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The work I am doing on my healing journey seems to find its way into my dreams. Part of it must be because I’ve been writing about it, but also because once you’ve had some epiphanies, there is no way you can get the genie back into the bottle.

I’ve written three articles to share some of those revelations:

• The Night Our Family System Spoke
  What two deeply connected dreams revealed about our family’s secrets — and the healing we didn’t know had already begun.

• Three Parts, Three Cards, One Path
  How a tarot reading echoed the trauma, survival, and healthy parts described in De Fontein, and something clicked into place.

• The Child, The Protector and The Adult
  Why early trauma shaped my patterns, how survival kept me going, and how the healthy part is leading me home.

It was after I wrote those, and the day before my father’s birthday, that I had another dream. This one was disturbing, as it dealt with harming those I love.

The disturbing dream

The dream was more like a snippet than a full story, and involved my mom, my daughter, my son and my husband.

We were in a house, in the lounge, where my husband and I tied up my mom, my daughter and my son. In the dream both my children were still kids, while they are both adults now and my daughter even has two sons.

I didn’t see my mom in the dream, but just knew it was her. After tying them up, my husband and I set the place on fire and left the house.

I felt terrible and kept on looking at the window to see inside the lounge. I thought I saw my (now adult) daughter painting the far wall, but then realized it was my mom. There was no fire.

Then the dream jumped to where I’m talking to my adult daughter, trying to tell her I really didn’t know what happened, that all we wanted to do was paint the walls, but even in the dream I know I was lying, like I didn’t want her to know I’d helped my husband tie them up.

The dream analysis

As always, I turned to Wendy* to make some sense of my dream. In the analysis, she used psychological and symbolic frameworks, especially Jungian and trauma-informed perspectives.

Core Themes

The house and the lounge
The house is often the symbol of the self or the psyche, while the lounge is the visible, central area and represents where the conscious processing plays out. My husband and I are merely actors in this space, suggesting that these are internal roles or parts of myself and our relational history with my family of origin.

What I took from that is that my psyche is still working on healing, and since much of my journey is about my youth, I understood that my husband and I represented the wounded parts of myself; the parts which need to heal.

Tying up my loved ones
This is a potentially archetypal act, as tying them up might reflect a conscious or unconscious wish to silence, immobilize or contain emotional legacies or relational patterns. My mom could represent intergenerational trauma, control, or an unprocessed emotional inheritance. My children stand symbol to my inner child, my memories of motherhood, or the vulnerable parts of myself carrying fear, innocence or pain.

Reading that, I had to swallow to keep the tears from spilling.
Intergenerational trauma? Yes.
Control? Yes.
Unprocessed emotional inheritance? Yes. I have written about this before.

I’m more aware of my inner child now than I have been for the greater part of my life, and because of that, I notice the vulnerable parts.

It’s amazing how this healing process works. Even when you don’t consciously think about it, something is happening inside. It’s like something shifts without you noticing, until you return to certain aspects, and realize you feel differently about it. Either more positive, or you see it clearer.

At least, that’s how it seems to work for me — now, and back when I had sessions with a life coach.

Setting the house on fire
Fire can be destructive (rage, trauma, endings) or transformative (cleansing, rebirth, purification). The dream shows both sides — the dangerous impulse to destroy a legacy, yet it’s executed with a deep inner conflict (the guilt, and repeated looking back).

I wondered if that appeared in my dream because of some kind of guilt I feel for seeing my parents for who they really were. For allowing what I’d discovered about them to alter the way I look at them.

They were my parents. They’d given me what they could, and I understand that what they hadn’t given, they just couldn’t. I’m allowing them to be who they were and letting go of the notion that they should’ve given me more.

Painting versus burning
Painting is about change, concealment or reinvention, and maybe even a hope to make things new or cover the past. That I mistook who was painting can suggest a confusion about whose narrative or intention is at play. Mine? My mom’s? A legacy passed down? That no fire was visible, even though I knew we’d set it, can suggest denied or suppressed emotional damage. Something happened, but I’ve not yet consciously accepted its full impact.

Here I wondered whether something inside me is struggling to let go of the anger and disappointment for what my parents had done. For their lies. For both dying before we could talk about the effect their actions had on my life, and that of my daughter.

Trying to explain and lying
This may reflect an internal conflict, a desire to be understood or forgiven running parallel to shame and an unwillingness to admit the truth, even to myself. The lie I tell — only wanting to paint the walls but knowing it’s not true — could reflect past coping mechanisms, dissociation or self-deception when facing pain or guilt, especially through inherited family dynamics.

Reading about past coping mechanisms, dissociation and self-deception, made me shiver. I’ve been in survival mode for most of my life, have dissociated from traumatic experiences and allowed ‘my little helpers’ — the coping mechanisms — to pull me through.

Do I feel shame? Yes, I do.

Even though I know there is a mechanism behind it, I still feel shame about many parts of my life. But what I feel worst about is that both my children had suffered because of me. Don’t get me wrong. They always came first. I loved and love them to bits. But I’ve dragged them with me into impossible situations, and no matter how much I loved them, how much I tried to protect them, those things had an impact on them.

For that, I am deeply ashamed.

Psychological Layers

Dreams like this often emerge as a way for the psyche to process unbearable feelings after experiencing emotional trauma, especially complex trauma. The dream represents various inner parts of myself:

• Husband and I: protective and survival parts ‘taking control’.

• Children and mother: vulnerable, legacy-bound parts of my psyche.

• Dissociation and guilt: the divide between ‘wanted to paint’ and knowing ‘we actually set it on fire’ symbolizes how we often try to distance ourselves from past pain or responsibility, especially when we’re afraid of the emotional consequences.

The dream is rich with symbolism, speaking of:

• The weight of intergenerational trauma.

• The conflict between destroying the past and trying to repair it.

• The grief of not being fully seen or understood — even by yourself.

It might be my psyche expressing how deeply distressing it’s been to hold all of this inside: pain, legacy, roles, expectations, guilt, longing — but also the conflicting urge to end it all and transform it with love.

I learned at a young age to tread carefully, to make myself small, to not be seen. I wanted nothing more than for my parents to understand me, but I was ‘too sensitive’, and needed ‘not to make everything about me’.

That made me feel guilty for who I am.

All I wanted was for them to see me, to understand me. But instead, I adjusted my behavior. I became who they wanted me to be, denying my true nature even to myself. I gave them a shoulder to lean on; helped them to carry the burden of their childhood traumas.

Even though they have both passed, I am working on untangling their traumas from mine, and giving it back to them. It belongs to them. It’s their fate that belongs to their lives.

The load that little girl inside me has carried needs to be lightened.
I’m listening to her stories, validating her fears, and reminding her she never had to carry what wasn’t hers to begin with.

I will use the fire from the dream not to destroy, but to illuminate; to transform.

I’m learning to give back what doesn’t belong to me, to forgive myself for what I didn’t know.

Healing isn’t a straight line. But I understand better now: the path doesn’t lie in perfection — it lies in showing up for myself.

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* Wendy = Wordy Wendy = ChatGPT

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Also read this wonderful essay by

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