The dreams.
If I want to go home, I have to cross the forest. Sometimes I am on a bike, sometimes on foot, but the only way home is through a forest. Except that I know there is a brown bear somewhere, lurking, waiting… and I might see her, or she might see me.
Still, I cross it, and usually I get to the other side without seeing her.
I had this dream sometime in late 2023 or early 2024. The same dream repeated for weeks, over and over again, every night. It was strange, but around the same time, there was a report from a truck driver of seeing a brown bear in our forests, so I assumed it was just a fear I had because I had to cross the forest daily.
I was petrified of being in the forest every day, so the dream made sense in a way.
During that time, I was cleaning my email and found some old passwords and usernames I used for various websites way back in the early 2010s. One of them was a website dedicated to chats about dream interpretations. I saw I was a user back in 2013, so I clicked.
I’ve been having repeated dreams of having to cross the forest on a bike to get home, but there is a brown bear in there somewhere, and I am afraid.
I was in absolute shock, as you can imagine. A decade ago, I had a very similar dream to the one I’ve been having now, and again, it didn’t occur once, but it was recurring and almost the same. What in the absolute fuck?
This got my attention, but not enough for me to analyse it because I wasn’t convinced it had any meaning. It was simply strange. A few days later, I woke up from a dream that was the missing piece.
I am driving away in a car, out of the forest and mother bear, accompanied by her cubs, is chasing me. She is fast and angry and showing teeth. She almost gets me.
There was no doubt anymore. Mother bear had something she needed me to know about, and I decided to listen. I won’t share what I was thinking about during that time, because I still don’t know how connected that dilemma was to my dream, and it is something I am still thinking about. But the dream stopped, and she would only occasionally, from then on, appear in my dreams with different messaging.
In one dream, brown bears were reported to be in danger on the news, which was most likely triggered by the real news of brown bears being hunted in Slovenia because they attacked people who colonised their home (yes, I said colonised).
In another dream, she was a statue, and for the first time, I saw her up close. And then another night, I observed her walking with her two cubs in the forest, peacefully.
And then she disappeared. For months, I didn’t see her or the forest.
My dreams before analysing them through the Jungian lens were happening in nature, mostly forests, with mammals being at the centre. Tigers, jaguars, elephants, brown bears, and sometimes snakes. Afterwards, I found myself in old houses and hospitals, which makes sense since 2025 was the year I was hospitalised three times.
I didn’t like dreams that were outside the forest. There were UFOs and warnings about wars, ghosts in houses, mass executions and Nazi-like atmosphere, dreams within dreams, predictions within dreams that then happened in the same dream, a few baby dreams, and optical illusions or themes of deep distrust of people.
Although I won’t share everything I’ve learnt from these dreams because it includes a lot of family dynamics, here is the main lesson I am getting from all:
Boundaries.
I need to set boundaries, keep them and choose myself. I have been the scapegoat for as long as I can remember, because as the older child, I had to take care of everyone, and my father trusted me with the tasks. I learned how to say “yes, of course” to everyone, and I also learnt that people take advantage of me because of this.
My youngest sister shames me for being unemployed, even though she never asked why I can’t work or what diagnosis I have. The middle sister uses me to babysit, and if I complain or decline, she threatens that I will never see my niece again.
I keep quiet because a) I know that I was an awful sister when I was a teenager and am now apologising through being a doormat, b) I know they carry trauma from being abused by our mother, later being raised by a single father who was absent and working all the time, and the youngest one hasn’t seen her mother since she was 1, and c) I can fix us.
When I was a child, I would create these monthly plans for my mother that included what she would drink, eat, how she would work out and when, and how she would treat us. I believed that if she followed my plan, she would stop drinking and beating me, and we would be a happy family.
Even when our dad got custody of us, and we moved away to the other side of the country, I was creating these plans.
I can fix us.
Last year, in 2025, I realised I cannot. I cannot force my father to call his youngest daughter and invite her to spend more time with him; I cannot force my youngest sister to understand that our family can be changed, and she can feel understood now; I cannot convince my other sister that being a pick-me who thinks having a man, a house and another baby will make her happy.
It is so easy to look around and feel like things could be easily fixed, huh? How are people not seeing that things could be fixed and perfect? Why is no one listening to me?
Because they don’t see these problems, just like I don’t see what they see in me. I finally decided to keep my side of the street clean and allow others to keep their side as dirty as they want.
Every time I tell my father that he should make more effort to be close to us, because he lost so much time when he was working and avoiding being at home, he just says, “But this is in the past, and I cannot change the past, so I am giving everyone freedom to do what they want.”
On December 27th, 2025, I had the following dream (an excerpt):
My sisters and I are at home when my dad’s ex shows up unconscious or drunk, and we put her to bed. She has brought food with her, and I try to stop others from taking it because it feels wrong. Then my dad comes home with a new, younger girlfriend and treats the whole situation like a joke, laughing while I get very angry and call him out for moving on so fast. No one takes me seriously. At one point, he says that “families in our neighbourhood are so peaceful and calm”, and I reply, “they are lying and pretending”. Then I notice a poster with some kind of instructions about being nice or how to hug, showing raised hands that turn into an embrace, alongside the phrase “no chance.” A brown bear appears in the image as I’m reading it.
“They are lying and pretending”, as a response to my father telling me that everyone else is peaceful and calm, as his response to my anger at his dismissal of how his actions affect others.
I cannot fix us.
When I was dreaming of mammals (non-human), I was afraid, but nothing is more fearful than dreaming of people whom I cannot trust. These “building dreams”, as I like to call them, because they are always inside some place (house, hospital), have made me more afraid than any encounter with a wild being before.
I know this is an evolution, and I learnt something from my brown bear dreams, but I want to go back. Brown bear taught me that I am in desperate need of crossing the forest, trusting myself, acting upon my instincts, and, in my opinion, being a mother bear to myself.
She wasn’t chasing me to attack; she was chasing me to finally get me to listen to her when she was repeating over and over again that I needed to cross the forest to get home. If I want to be safe, I need to cross the scary forest and risk facing her without any weapons and protection, but once I do, I will be home.
As I said, there are many things I won’t share because they are private, but much is still unknown. I am still learning about Jung and reading his books, which are just not my cup of tea, so I rely on Jungian podcasts mostly.
But I am evolving and meeting new beings, entities, facing new fears and exploring new symbols.
The reason I am writing this post after weeks of putting it on the side is the dream I had last night that inspired me to write down my experience so far:
The entire family is playing a game of hide and seek that gets too far when we think that a family member killed someone by accident. I am angry, and her friend says that I don’t have to pretend it’s fine, but I continue because I don’t want her to be upset with me.
Everyone decides to go down to the city, but I am too slow, and I stay behind. Someone mentions something about child sexual abuse right before I start walking in the direction they went in.
Then I see him, standing in the darkness with a long black coat. We are walking now, hand in hand. I am a child again. I can feel his claws digging into my skin, and I know that if I look at him, he will know I know who he is, because I will see his red eyes. So I continue smiling and acting as if I trust him, because that’s what you do when the Devil is holding your hand.
I had never dreamt of Satan before, but when I woke up, I knew this was the man who groomed me when I was young. It wasn’t his face, voice or presence, but I knew in my heart it was a “memory” of something that was happening decades ago.
I don’t know what this dream was about and what the lesson was, besides the repeated theme of pretending everything is fine. This one should be fun to analyse.
The shadow work.
I found this fascinating podcast on Spotify called Creative Codex. I listened to most of the Jung episodes, but one stood out… Jung’s Digging Method.
It is an approximation of a meditation method that helped Jung reach his imaginative unconscious. It’s been a while, but it is a way to meet your shadow self and/or darkness, or something.
Anyway, the point is I gave it a try, and while it was short, it was powerful.
I find myself in the middle of the field, near a stream that I frequently visit when on walks by myself or with dogs. I find a nice spot and start digging. The sun is shining, but it’s not hot, just nice weather that offers good lighting and some warmth.
I keep digging a hole when I hit a door. I enter the door and continue digging and going deeper and deeper into the soil.
At one point, I decided to start digging horizontally on my left side and use my hands to dig out the soil. Soon, I can fit my entire body in it, and as I am lying down looking up at nothing, I start to panic.
I feel trapped. I don’t want to dig anymore. I am desperate to leave that hole.
I was so claustrophobic that I never returned to this meditation again. I am interested in how deep I could go and what I would find, but every time I tried to repeat it after this session, I started feeling uncomfortable. I would toss and turn and itch.
It was really uncomfortable.
The synchronicity.
This one was wild and absolutely one of those moments in life when you question everything you’ve been taught.
I will again refrain from sharing the details because it will reveal too much, and also, I don’t want to be mocked.
I had this dream for a while to go to this place abroad. If I managed to get to this place, I would have achieved something that no one in my family has. It would prove that I am worthy, and that people in my life who are judging me for being a failure would have to swallow their words. Kind of like that meme, you know, that says “and then they will all be sorry”.
That would be the moment of making everyone sorry to have doubted me.
But it would also require more work than I have ever thought I could handle, and my confidence would have to grow exponentially. It would take years for the first step to even be made, and I would have to give up a lot of who I am.
I would have the status, though, and I would be worthy.
It was a specific goal in a very specific country in a very, very specific city at a very, very specific building. It was all so fucking specific.
I contacted the right people, wrote down an extended, detailed plan, created a goddamn vision board, and started planning for the next 2 years because this goal was long-term and oh so worth it. I would prove my worthiness, but I needed time. I was ready.
Then, on a random morning, I decide to check a family member’s Instagram page. You know, to get the newest tea and to snark about them, because I do love a good gossip session (before you judge, just remember that this is how we used to connect and alert each other of predators (I think)). Such a lazy morning, with a cup of cappuccino in one hand, hair barely brushed, and still yawning.
A regular morning.
I click on their latest post and start reading. They are now married (get that bag, girl), and he is being transferred, so they are moving to my very specific country, to my very specific city. The person who is living this luxury life (not on her dime, but that’s tea for the family) is moving to my fucking dream city that no one fucking goes to in his job!
No one goes to this city! Out of millions of cities he has been working at for his fancy work, he is transferred to this city? My city??
Instant tears, shaking and a feeling of failure. I was beat and she won the game that she had no idea she was playing. I wasn’t even playing against her. I was playing against everyone in my family. And I lost before I could even start.
Things like that don’t happen by chance. I know it did, but they really don’t happen by chance. This was too specific, too personal, and too rare. When I calmed down, I decided to journal about it.
There were three things I realised after analysing this synchronicity:
- While I was raised a secular atheist and never doubted what I knew, this proved that life is mysterious. No, this wasn’t god or orchestrated by something up there, but it showed that when I allow life to shock me into opening my mind to the unknown, I can learn about my inner self in ways I could never have if I did what my psychiatrist recommends.
- I didn’t want this very, very specific goal because it was an extension of me, or a creative way to express myself. The second I realised she got there (not there there but to that city), I didn’t want it anymore. The city and the building both represented a status, and just her being there, close to that building, was enough to show that I never wanted it. Even if I got my exact goal, she would’ve been there first, and this wasn’t what I signed up for. When I prove my worthiness, I will prove it by doing something no one here has done before.
- I wasn’t free when I attached myself to this vision. This was a goal that fed my ego, not my soul. It was a way to put on yet another mask, not to bare my heart and be vulnerable. I wasn’t proving my worthiness. I was proving that I will do whatever I can to prove to others I am not worthy, because they know they can control me, and I will do anything to entertain them. If I am impressing others, I am actually being a bigger failure than if I do what my heart wants and fail at what I love.
I don’t remember ever experiencing such a strong, heartbreaking synchronicity. It felt like my identity was challenged. I finally created an identity I believed would be good enough for others, when it was taken away by someone who had no idea they were doing it.
The tears of shock were proof of how unimaginable this was. Out of all the countries, this one. Out of all the cities, this one. Out of all the people, me.
For a moment, I actually wondered if someone was sending me a message. That’s how strong it was. My atheist self was shook. At the end of the day, coincidences do happen, and I just managed to experience one that was rare.
It helped me not follow a false path. To not obsess over a false dream. To not work on something that wasn’t mine. To follow my north star.
The conclusion.
Even with this minimal experimentation I began last year, I think I managed to open a door to a realm that I didn’t know existed. One where I learn from symbols and not words, and where stories make as much sense as facts.
It’s strange and weird, and I don’t know if it’s true, but it works. Maybe that is what makes it true! It works, even when it doesn’t make sense; it somehow helps and brings answers.
When I got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I was told that DBT was the only tool proven to work. So I purchased workbooks and books with exercises, prompts and lessons. My psychiatrist said it is the only thing that works, and she knows best. Why would she lie? Would she hide tools from me?
It’s not that learning about Jung made me distrust my psychiatrist. It’s what made me distrust psychiatry, because I stopped looking at myself through the lens of what my diagnosis was, and finally saw myself as a human.
Antipsychotics helped when I was barely keeping myself alive, but no one told me that the tools and resources to heal (and are you ever really healed?) are inside of me.
Analysing my dreams gave me more knowledge of how to manage my symptoms than all the sessions with my psychiatrist, therapist and psychologist combined.
I have all the answers; all I need to do is look within and ask questions.
Tanja
