DREAMCATCHER: Alex Hossack and Catherine Aubrey interpret your dreams

Rachael's Dream: The dream began with me back at the family home where I had murdered someone having planned to do so. I was hiding in the utility room at the back of the house.

Someone, who felt like my current partner Colin, but not with his face, was telling me to hide from people and the Police who were looking for me.

‘Colin’ told me to hide at Geraldine’s house down the road. Geraldine was my childhood friend. I began to sneak along the fence pushed up against the wall. I still had the gun.

I had not reached Geraldine house but was half way there at Mrs Booth’s house before I realised that I was getting away with it so I ran the rest of the way to Geraldine’s and hid there.

Dream Interpretation: This is a deeply troubling dream that suggests an unresolved long-standing problem as the dreamer returns to people and places from her past life.

The planning and carrying out of a murder, indicates a desire to end something which she does not trust herself to express in her ‘conscious’ life. She is ‘safely’ expressing this in a dream state disguised by metaphors and symbolic images.

The victim remains anonymous however, which indicates that the dreamer does not want to readily acknowledge her feelings publically and is finding justifications not to do so, symbolised by being told to hide by ‘Colin’.  There are several references to ‘hiding’ and running away to ‘hide’.

To be angry enough to use symbols of murder suggests that the dreamer is carrying residual anger from a previous situation.

The dreamer is anxious about facing up to her thoughts and actions and is concerned that she may be held to account or blamed for them. She is still trying to ‘get away’ with it’.

The gun is not overtly expressed in the dream which again is indicative of hiding the feelings she is uncomfortable with. She continues to hide throughout this narrative from the possible reality of losing something or someone significant in her life.

The dream ends without resolution, represented by a return to ‘hiding’ and the unwillingness to publically acknowledge the possible end of a situation or relationship.

If the dreamer would like to provide feedback about the interpretation, please send it to ACDreamcatchers@mail.com.

Interestingly, we have found it is not always possible to interpret your own dream, probably because it often represents the sublimation of feelings or thoughts that we are trying to avoid in our waking lives. However, with a little assistance from the dream interpreter, the symbols and themes can start to make sense and help us to move forward.

If you are interested in having a particular dream analysed, please send us an account of your dream to the following email address: ACDreamcatchers@mail.com

We only have space to interpret one dream a week which will be selected from those received. Please refer to the guidance provided to describe your dream as this will enable us to provide a full interpretation.

Guidance for the Dreamer:

• Record your dream in writing as soon as you wake up with as much detail as possible.

• First of all ask yourself who is in the dream.

• Where are you, what is happening to you and what is happening around you?

• Record how you are feeling about what you and/or others are doing.

• Are there particular symbols or objects in the dream that are unusual?

• Are there any sounds and is the dream in colour or black and white?

• Are you watching yourself in the dream or are you experiencing it first-hand ie: through your own eyes.

Alex Hossack and Catherine Aubrey are Public Service professionals with years of experience as practitioners and managers in the Criminal Justice System.