Life on the Spot! Life and Leisure in Doha, Qatar

“Dreaming is the subjective experience of imaginary images, sounds/voices, words, thoughts or sensations during sleep. Dreaming is associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a lighter form of sleep that occurs during the later portion of the sleep cycle, characterized by rapid horizontal eye movements.”

According to Sigmund Freud, dreams are an outcome of our repressed thoughts and feelings and wish fulfillments, our forbidden thoughts and unconscious desires. I learned too in Psychology that all of us dream whenever we sleep, it’s just that we don’t remember our dream all the time, thus sometimes we say that we didn’t dream of anything when we slept.

“A nightmare is a dream occurring during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep that brings out feelings of strong, inescapable fear, terror, distress, or extreme anxiety. They typically occur in the latter part of the night and usually awaken the sleeper, who is able to recall the content of the dream.”

Yesterday afternoon, we took a nap and I had a nightmare.
I knew it was one because it really scared the hell out of me. But it was what we call “bangungungot” in Filipino. A kind of dream or nightmare where you seem awake because you seem to be aware of what’s happening around you, you see the things in your surroundings, only that you lay there helpless especially the scary part starts to happen. Here goes mine:

A middle-aged woman around 5’5” to 5’7” tall came out of our cabinet three times. But I really only took notice of her when she started talking to me. She was calling out “Mavis (my name) Jean (my mom’s name), is this yours?” I didn’t know what she was referring to but she was speaking in Filipino. She was wearing a black blazer and a brown-striped blouse. The moment she started talking I got really scared. I started screaming and I was trying to wake up my husband who was sleeping beside me. But no matter how hard I tried, he couldn’t hear me. I was trying to shake him but I couldn’t move either. I was so terrified then suddenly the woman disappeared. But after sometime, she came out of the cabinet again and did the same thing. I screamed and screamed then I finally woke up. I was so relieved to get out of that nightmare. When I woke my heart was beating fast and I felt exhausted. I had to wake Tian and tell him about my dream.

Last night when we went to visit our friend’s house, I had to tell everyone about my dream. Everyone had the same reaction, telling me that it was indeed scary and asking what it could possibly mean. I texted my mom and my friend and got the same reaction. When I went to bed last night, I tried to shake off my fear. I was afraid that I would have the same dream. I couldn’t get myself to sleep, then I decided to stay beside my husband, only then I was able to sleep but I had to cover my face. Until now, thinking about it still gives me the chills. But it makes me wonder whether it was simply a scary horror dream or something that has a meaning to it. If I were to consider the premise of Freud’s Psychology, I wonder what kind of repressed thoughts or feelings are being represented by the image of a middle-aged woman coming out of the cabinet.