21 September 2017

In the dream, I’m in a house. It’s not mine but I’ve lived there a while and plan to be there for a while. I’m holding a gun. It’s an old-style hand gun, from the 20s or earlier. I’m holding it and walking around the house because I know there is an intruder but have no idea where he is. It seems the place is a group home. I have the sense that I’m guarding teens in a group home.

As I move through the space, the gun needs to be continually reloaded, even when I don’t fire it. There are two levers that need to be engaged systematically and throughout the dream I just keep reloading, reloading, reloading. Walking around the house, with the gun aimed and ready, looking for the intruder.

Eventually, there is a confrontation. There are 4 or more men in a room and we shout at one another. We all have guns. Somehow I say something which convinces them to leave and they turn to go. I shoot off the gun as one guy is standing there, maybe because he’s not leaving soon enough? The bullet hits him right in the thigh and he shouts, “You shot me!”

My reply is something about, “Well, if you weren’t here in my house when you weren’t supposed to be then you wouldn’t have gotten shot.” Then they all turn and leave.

That was the dream.

My analysis: This is a very interesting dream because for many years I’ve had dreams of being shot or shot at and the solution is always to give encouragement and “shoot out” positive acknowledgements in real life. This is the first time that I dreamed I was actually holding a gun and using it to protect others. So it indicates some progress on this issue where I am somehow getting better at exchanging negative criticism for positive acknowledgements now.