Dream analysis: I dreamt I was self-harming, cutting my arms along the pattern of my tattoos

Psychoanalyst Michael Murphy explores the meaning of your dreams

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I dreamt I was self-harming by cutting my arms - some of the cuts following the pattern of my tattoos. Previously, my analyst passed away suddenly - I didn’t continue with another analyst. In the dream, my mother came into my bedroom and saw the cuts. Referring to my analyst she said: “I knew he was useless”. I’m a nurse, and in the dream, I then went to work and tried hard to hide the cuts from one of my nurse colleagues.

This man acknowledges a link between cutting and carving symbols onto the skin when he says: “Some of the cuts followed the pattern of my tattoos”.

He tries hard to hide these cuts/tattoos from a nurse colleague. Do medical professionals in hospital sport such images of self-mutilation?

The dream suggests you’re ashamed of them, which is embodied in the figure of your mother coming into your private space and referring to your analyst as useless because he wasn’t able to stop you. But this tattoo drama is hiding something more serious.

Cutting your arms is a harmful way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger, or frustration. Any form of self-injury is a sign of bigger issues that need to be addressed, so the dream is bringing to your attention that instead of hiding your pain, you need to reach out for appropriate help.

You say your analyst passed away suddenly, which means he abandoned you mid-analysis. Don’t let your anger at this betrayal prevent you from continuing analysis with someone else.

The fact that you sent this dream to Feelgood means that as a nurse you too are open to being healed, and being a wounded healer can make you surprisingly efficacious, even with frowned-upon tattoos.

Understanding your dreams can help bring about important changes in your life. 

I’m out on an evening walk. The weather is glorious and there are wildflowers everywhere. I spread my arms and start to fly over the fields. It’s a wonderful feeling as I leave all my troubles behind.

What a wonderful dream of summer wildflowers occurring in the bleak midwinter, perhaps triggered by the Christmas break. It’s also a compensation dream of freedom trying to bring balance back into your psyche after the imprisoning lockdown months of the Covid pandemic.

Your understandable wish in this dream is to be above the fray, to get away from it all, to escape, to take flight, and leave all your troubles behind. It could also suggest you’re trying to get above yourself through having unrealistic ideas out of all proportion to your actual abilities.

This is a dream of the impossible because human beings can’t fly. So the dream is asking you to remain grounded, face up to reality, and accept the limitations we all live with.

As adults we have the power to change things if we don’t like them, so confront whatever needs to be changed and put a practical plan in place for 2021. That’s how you’ll really soar.

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