I have been having wierd nightmares all week. I dreamed that some friends of mine and I were in a restaurant in Paris. A crowd of mean looking people chased everyone out of the resturant. We ran to a house (I had deja-vu-like I'd practiced this before). Anyways, we had to get from house to house like a maze escaping through a trap door in each house. It was terifying. Someone was always close behind us, or so I felt.

Thanks for your time,

--Signed SuperGirl

Dear SuperGirl -

Chase dreams typically reflect how we are responding to an anxiety that we are feeling in our waking life. Common chase dreams involve being pursued by some attacker, who will hurt, rape, or possibly kill the dreamer, with the dreamer then experiencing all the commotion of running away, hiding, out-witting and out-manuevering the would-be attacker. Chase dreams often end with the dreamer awakening just before being caught or found. Because we awaken directly from them, chase dreams are commonly described as nightmares.

To understand your dream better, allow yourself to recall it as best you can, and try to think about the “crowd of mean looking people” who came into the Parisian restaurant. What do they remind you of? What associations come into your mind when you think about them and allow yourself to feel how you felt in the dream? Is there any specific memory that sticks in your mind or is recalled by this process? Was the crowd all men, or were there women among them? Why is this dream set in a restaurant in Paris?

If you can answer these questions, you may be able to assess whether your dream is reflecting a specific anxiety that you hold or if it is a broader concern that is being represented. In the latter case, you are female, and it is common for women, because of their weaker physical strength vis-a-vis men, to experience chase dreams which reflect a sense of vulnerability toward men in general. On the other hand, you may wish to consider whether there is any specific situation you are involved with in your life that is troubling you. Who were you with at the restaurant before the mean-looking crowd arrived? It is possible you are perceiving qualities in the crowd you were with (meanness) and feel you want to escape from that type of association or influence in your life.

That the dream was emotionally upsetting reflects the genuine level of discomfort this anxiety causes you. The fact that the avoidance process felt familiar to you in the dream - you had a sense of “dejavu” while escaping - suggests that you are not a stranger to these feelings and try to avoid them on a regular basis. This often occurs when we try “not to notice” or to minimize particular feelings or perceptions we possess within us. You also wrote that you have been have been having these “weird nightmares all week.” Whenever a series of dreams initiates seemingly “out of the blue,” you are advised to look for the specific precipitating cause - which would have occured in time typically just before - within a few days - the series began. Once you have identified the specific cause of the dreams, you can work with dealing with those feelings on a conscious level, and you will find that your nightmares will stop.

A willingness to listen to all feelings - be they difficult or pleasing - is the singlemost important quality to possess when exploring the meaning of dreams. I might add that your willingness to listen to your dreams indicates that you already are receptive to listening to your feelings.