# Enneagram and dreams



## meridannight (Nov 23, 2012)

Umber said:


> @Octavarium But they had they idea that dreams mean nothing because of this,


whether because of this or something else i agree with it. dreams are many and varied and trying to assert meaning to them is like trying to assert meaning to random coincidences that happen in your daily life. it's nonsense. not to mention a person dreams a lot more dreams that they can actually remember. it's just brain circuits firing off as your body is relieved of processes imposed in the wake state. dreams always occur. even if you don't remember them. and most dreams that you dream you in fact don't remember. since they're not being encoded into memories. you only remember those prior to just waking up.

some people just want to insert meaning into everything (and that is a personality thing in itself). just because it's a complex phenomenon doesn't mean there's some higher meaning to it.


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## RepairmanMan Man (Jan 21, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> I don't think dreams like that would indicate type 7, because they're not really about type 7 fears. Going by that method I'd have typed myself as a 4, because my dreams are incredibly dramatic. I wouldn't limit yourself to thinking that sixes have to have specific types of dreams; maybe type 6 themes come up in your dreams in less obvious ways, or maybe your dreams have more to do with your MBTI type (I'd be interested to know what you think of this: Introspective to a Fault: Dreams and the Inferior Function) or maybe they have nothing to do with typology at all.


I'd be inclined to say my dreams are cognitive function related, if anything. I'll take a look at the link and leave a later response if I find anything to say about it.



LeaT said:


> Well, if I were to interpret your dream, I'd suggest it implies you are running from the past perhaps, or some event or person, and it is liberating. As you say, it's fun and you have quite a few ways to run away such as flying. The ability to fly in a dream is usually represented as a sense of freedom and control.
> 
> Does this interpretation match up with your current health level? You've mentioned your past briefly before and from what I can understand, it wasn't overly pleasant. It it thus even possible to interpret the dream as 6w7 if I may, in the sense of accepting, moving on and leaving things in the past and see what you have now instead of what used to be and let it control you.
> 
> What do you think of this? Of course, this is all conjecture based on what I know of you from the forum but I tihnk dream analysis is interesting, for sure.


I take my dreams as sort of the "inner barometer" for my mental health. As long as I'm flying by the morning, it means there are no serious issues going on in my life. (Like for instance, when I was in high school, I used to fly but get caught in the telephone wires a lot, and I interpret this to mean that I wasn't fully in control of my own life, and consequently could only "fly" within certain parameters).

I'm really not running away from anything IRL; at least if I am, it hasn't changed over the last 14 years or so. Dunno what it would be, especially since I tend to dwell in the past quite a lot. Thanks for the interpretation, though.


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## CataclysmSolace (Mar 13, 2012)

I tend to have lucid dreams most often when I have them. I particularly enjoy dreams with or without nightmares. I rarely have nightmares though; I always conquer nightmares when I experience them. If something is bothering me enough, I can work it out in my sleep/ dreams.


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## Feathers Falling (Sep 5, 2012)

My 3 friend just had a dream where he stole a powerful sword from a depressed, dark lady in a shop, then used that sword to lead people into a war and vanquish strong enemies. The whole way through he would look behind him and see the lady still sad and depressed and in her dark corner... He felt strong guilt while dreaming... then at the end of the dream he succeeded and won the war, and received respect and acclamation. But the guilt from stealing the sword was so strong that it wasn't worth it. 

My dreams as a 7... I rarely have nightmares or bad dreams. My normal dreams are usually video-game type dreams, where I'm questing with a group of friends and exploring and adventuring. But when I do have a bad dream, I can actually start crying while dreaming... the bad emotions are so strong and scare me. 

My ex phobic 6 had PTSD so he always had really bad dreams about being shot and people taking advantage of him and killing him or his loved ones, or he would have to kill... A mixture of his bad childhood and going to war...




In conclusion, I think Enneagram DOES in fact affect your dreams. Your own emotions and thoughts are the puzzle pieces that make up dreams. So since a persons fears affect them so deeply to the core as we see with enneagram, it's only natural to assume that your dreams would be affected as well. However, I also think many other things like life experiences and sickness can affect your dreams.


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## Recede (Nov 23, 2011)

I think dreams reflect how you feel more than anything else. The prefrontal cortex which controls rational thought is essentially asleep when you're dreaming, but the areas of your brain that process emotion are still active. When people dream about tornadoes or volcanoes or monsters chasing them, it's a reflection of some kind of inner turmoil or fear rather than anything literal. You experience an emotion, and since the brain cannot rationally explain that emotion while the prefrontal cortex is inactive, it makes up mostly arbitrary images and stories to try to explain it. The more specific and powerful the emotion, the less random the dream will be. 

So I think dreams can reflect some aspect of our enneagram type to the extent that our type causes us contextually specific feelings. Since the enneagram is centered around basic fears and desires and often involves certain attitudes toward the world, it's not unrealistic to think that type can influence our dreams. @cata.lyst.rawr's story about the type 3's dream of guilt from stepping on others to serve his own goals is a good example of how one's enneagram type can sometimes set up a specific context for certain emotions to occur, which can then be represented in dreams. Most emotions we experience, however, are not type related, so it would make sense that most of our dreams have nothing to do with our enneagram type.

My dreams often involve either running from some kind of monster or natural disaster, or freedom and escapism. One time I had a dream where I decided to quit society and live as a homeless, unemployed person so I could do whatever I wanted. It worked out for me because I had a supernatural power of being able to turn invisible, so I could just steal food whenever I needed it. I also often have frustration dreams, such as being unable to find something or dealing with frustrating people. Last night I dreamed that some guy, who was a "judge" (actual word used in the dream) and also my roommate in the dream, was really getting on my nerves, rigidly accusing me of something totally ridiculous that I obviously would never do. I interpreted this dream as a fear or expectation of being harshly judged.


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## meridannight (Nov 23, 2012)

Silveresque said:


> I think dreams reflect how you feel more than anything else. The prefrontal cortex which controls rational thought is essentially asleep when you're dreaming, but the areas of your brain that process emotion are still active. When people dream about tornadoes or volcanoes or monsters chasing them, it's a reflection of some kind of inner turmoil or fear rather than anything literal. You experience an emotion, and since the brain cannot rationally explain that emotion while the prefrontal cortex is inactive, it makes up mostly arbitrary images and stories to try to explain it. The more specific and powerful the emotion, the less random the dream will be.
> 
> So I think dreams can reflect some aspect of our enneagram type to the extent that our type causes us contextually specific feelings. Since the enneagram is centered around basic fears and desires and often involves certain attitudes toward the world, it's not unrealistic to think that type can influence our dreams. @cata.lyst.rawr's story about the type 3's dream of guilt from stepping on others to serve his own goals is a good example of how one's enneagram type can sometimes set up a specific context for certain emotions to occur, which can then be represented in dreams. Most emotions we experience, however, are not type related, so it would make sense that most of our dreams have nothing to do with our enneagram type.


this makes sense. great post.

i suppose it would be more reasonable to speculate that the recurring dreams might have some type-related connection rather than others. emotional makeup within a type does have some distinct patterns to it, so this way it would make some sense. 

for example i've experienced sleep paralysis quite a few times in my life. usually when this happens i wake up right in the middle of the dream, and i think it has mostly been a scarier dream though not necessarily a nightmare. also, i think this has happened to me in times where i've been under stress in personal life rather than in times of peace. 

i've also realized things i wanted to happen in real life in dreams. but yeah, this has happened only when there's been a significantly strong emotional investment in the thing.

so that much there appears to be some pattern to it, but i'm not fully sold on the idea. too many unknowns and variables, and no established constants to approach even an approximation of a theory.


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## Tater Tot (May 28, 2012)

Dreams are so unreasonable lol. I went through a phase where every night I would dream I was going down a waterslide, and once I got to the end of the waterslide I woke up.

Also probably like once every two months, I have a dream that I'm a secret agent working undercover in a hotel. Same characters and same type of hotel every time. I'm always swinging from the chandeliers and running up flights of stairs and crawling through vents and crap. It's so random.


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## Naia68 (Jan 28, 2013)

I dream a lot of tsunamis - being on land and not being able to outrun the wave. I've read that this dream is caused by feeling emotionally and/or spiritually overwhelmed. This rings true for me.


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## DoctorYikes (Nov 22, 2010)

I've always been a pretty vigorous dreamer -- Sleep paralysis, hypnopompic/agogic hallucinations, lucid dreaming, vivid epic-scale dreams, etc.

You could say I have quite a few nightmares, but like someone mentioned before -- I enjoy them. Just more vivid, entertaining horror-themed dreams. Don't recall feeling helpless in a dream, though I'm sure it's happened at some point. Closest I come to feeling helpless is feeling ineffective. Fighting back vigorously to little discernable effect (Pretty rare, though).


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## Coburn (Sep 3, 2010)

I don't think dreams relate to type.

On a side note, most of my vivid dreams usually involve me playing out different scenarios of the same situation.


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

I often dream about not having enough money to buy stuff I want. :frustrating:

And in my flying dreams, staying airborn is always a struggle. 

Though I also dream about video games a lot, which is usually fun. 

Don't know how they would relate to my type, whatever that is.


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## Aquamarine (Jul 24, 2011)

As an enneagram type 7, my nightmares are usually about losing something/someone that I cherish, having no freedom, being embarrassed in public and being caught in and surviving a natural disaster.

Last night I dreamed of extracting my frozen heart and throwing it at a brick wall, resulting in the heart itself and the entire wall to smash and crumble down. I stood there and looked on emotionlessly as everything get destroyed. I woke up for a while and went back to sleep again.

My second dream is about going back to the old me from 10 years ago, and having no memory of the present. The innocence, hopes and freedom feels so liberating, and for once, I recovered the ability to feel openly and freely without any negative implications. A woman came and handed a very realistic-looking glass globe into my hands, and she used her wand to remove the glass layer. I watch as everything in the globe expand and surround me. When I looked up again, the woman is gone.


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## soya (Jun 29, 2010)

LeaT said:


> In general, the recurring theme in my nightmares is the feeling of being chased, usually in a house or similar building complex, and how there is an unknown supernatural element chasing me with interest to kill me.


I have this trend too. Often the dreams take the format of a movie or video game in which it's humans (or sometimes just me) surviving against something else - supernatural beings, often zombies or aliens.

The most recent one was set in some weird suburban environment where I had to enter a courtyard building with several doors that turned out to be a sort of labyrinth, filled with traps, riddles, etc. - and the "enemy" was hidden, but would speak to me through some kind of speaker system that was set up in the whole complex. It was strange.


Other themes: 

idealized fantasy world dreams that seem to have little plot - just kind of a vibe of being immersed in a beautiful forest or something like that. easily the best dreams! i've had a variety of dreams on this level, and many of them seem inspired by books i've read or films i've seen. wizard of oz and things like that.

romantic/sexual dreams, typically involving females. sometimes involving androgynous or genderskewed people. those are fun. occasionally i have dreams where people i know are the opposite gender in the dream, or some feature of theirs is changed like their hairstyle or skin tone. i have no idea what that's about. the person always has the same personality as they do in real life, they just appear different in the dreams.

dreams where somebody i love dies (interestingly i have never recalled any dreams in which i myself died - i always end up watching someone else die and it's very traumatic - probably because losing loved ones is a great fear of mine)

nightmares involving being strapped down and tortured by an evil dentist - having my teeth pulled out and replaced with shards of glass and things like that (lol, i think this is probably a common theme - fear of the dentist)


...oh, and I'm not sure I have an answer as to whether enneagram has anything to do with dreams. Since the enneagram does deal with our fears and fixations, I assume some connection might be there, but who knows how significant that might be?


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## Feathers Falling (Sep 5, 2012)

It's so strange but I've been having a lot of dreams about dying lately... but they're not bad dreams!!! They're actually really peaceful, calm dreams. Let me explain:


Dream 1: I was fighting in a war. I needed to be deployed to an area where one of my troops/friends was located.. he was alone. It was in a desert area and there was a sand storm coming, but he couldn't get out of it. He was going to die, and there was nothing anyone could do. So me and a few others on my team, all close comrades, went to him out in this isolate desert canyon area. We weren't going to leave him alone. When we got there by helicopter, we met him, sat together in his Humvee, and all calmly waited for the sandstorm. It was a really peaceful feeling... a fulfilled feeling. A happy feeling. Like all was right. The sand storm came, and we sat there as it covered us.... I woke up.


Dream 2: I was in some kind of house. The world was going to end soon, there was a meteor coming towards it. Looking outside the world was dark and the sky was red. Impending doom in a few minutes. I sat on the bed and waited for it. I felt no anger, no sadness, no frustration.. I felt calm and at peace. I didn't feel like I was going to lose out on what else life could have offered. I felt I had enough, and I was ok with ending. I sat calmly on the bed and watched the window as the meteor touched earth far away... Red enveloped the earth, and finally me... I woke up.



And I've had several other dreams like these recently where at the end of my dream I calmly wait for death.. But I'm happy and I don't feel any loss, anger, or sadness. I literally wake up feeling calm and relaxed and very peaceful. This is so strange for me.. I think it's all tied in with the fact that I've done a lot of soul-searching and self-acceptance lately, and I've lost all of the restlessness I've felt all my life. The restlessness of 7. The fear of not having enough. The fear of not being able to experience what you want to. I think I've finally faced all those fears, and have stopped letting them control me. I've stopped running from my fears. I'm happy and satisfied with what I have. I don't anticipate the future, thinking I'll be happier somewhere else doing something else. I feel I have enough.

Dreams are awesome <3


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