What Does These Common Themes Mean?

Question

I'd like to know what some of these recurring elements in my dreams mean?

Being in my hometown - Although it's been 7 years since I lived there, I often find myself back there in dreams. The people and events are current, but the time period is the past. It doesn't matter if the dream is good or bad, I can't recall any dreams that took place outside my hometown.

Dead grandparents - I have had countless dreams about my dead grandparents over the years. Many times they are resurrected, or I have an opportunity to save them, or they are sitting in a chair talking to me as a corpse. I've also dreamt that I dug up their bodies and preserved them, while trying to bring them back to life through magical powers.

Being heterosexual - I'm gay and completely out of the closet. Everyone knows, and almost everyone I work with is gay. So I don't have any hidden issues. But in many of my dreams, I am heterosexual. Why?

I do a lot of running in dreams too.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Answer 1

> So I don't have any hidden issues.

I have to jump on this one. Everyone, gay or straight, is going to have some issues with sexuality. Maybe very minor issues, but if you deny them then they go into your shadow side and the unconscious works on them, so they come up in dreams. Being heterosexual could be a symbol for identity issues of any type.

Whatever your grandparents mean to you, I think you're trying to bring that into your life. It might be their values, or some emotion you associate with them. Really have to know more about your relationship to comment intelligently.

Hometown I'd guess has to do with resolving issues with family of origin and/or childhood. Again, context is everything. Looking up generic "meanings" in a book is very likely to be misleading.

Answer 2

You are strongly connected to your past so much that you dream about the people and places that shaped you as an adolescent. But you are trying to escape the past, you don't like it because you couldn't be yourself. Learn to reconcile the past with your present. You wouldn't be the person you are today without the influence of your past.