The lively bed of sea urchins in the psychologist's office. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm living in a mansion, and I run down the stairs because I want to check out a book at the library. I keep running in my mansion, and I eventually arrive at an elementary school. I accidentally walk into a large locker room which is empty. 

I see a little boy and a black kitten showering together, and I hear someone say something along the lines of, "Watch out for that little boy. He's attacked so many kittens, he's forgotten them. So when people ask if he's seen the missing cat, he can convincingly say he doesn't remember."

The little boy and kitten disappear, and the locker room is empty. 

A series of little girls aged 5 and under then come up to me and start biting my arm. I shove them off of me. Finally, an older girl of about seven comes up to me and bites me really hard--it's painful. So I grab her by her jacket and the seat of her pants, and I throw her from off the side of the school roof. She hits a table really hard, and I know I'm in trouble. 

I run back to my mansion, but I end up in the school psychologist's office. There's a bed of sea urchins all over a cloth canvas that stretches across the office. 

The counselor gives me a tangerine crayon and a coloring book picture of a lion to fill in. She starts coloring it, but I would do it differently than she is. So I get up to get another crayon. I cross the cloth full of sea urchins, although they stick to my clothes, and wrap around a pen I grabbed along with my new crayon. I'm talking to the counselor as I do all this.

She frowns. "Can you please stop talking?"

I'm really offended that she's asked me to stop talking, but I've been annoyed by someone talking too much too, so I stop. But I just think she's a bad counselor. 

INTERPRETATION

I'm in an anxious kind of mood lately, so I think these are just little fears that I have all thrown together. I'm scared of being in charge of abusive people who need disciplining and injured beings who need extra special care afterwards (like the little boy with the kittens), because I am not good at disciplining people who are misbehaving--even if they're only children. It's only too easy to get in trouble by being insensitive with the discipline (like with the little girl I threw off the side of the school building)!

I also fear being considered annoying (I'm talking too much in the dream), which stems from traumatic childhood experiences like this one: when I was about six, I thought I had a best friend, but at the end of the year, after an entire year of believing this little girl loved me as much as I loved her, she tattled on me because I said something she didn't like to a teacher I wanted to like and impress. I knew that someone who loved me like I loved her would never do that, because I never would have done that to her. So it was a betrayal that should have taught me that a lot of people are only friends out of convenience: you share the same time and place, but not the same feelings of love and loyalty for each other. It also should have taught me that people can be on the fence about a relationship, and it only takes a very little thing to tip the scales one way or another. I've had to relearn these lessons as the years have gone by, even though I've been on the other side myself.