Sunday, May 4, 2003		Dream Theme

Dreaming of bedbugs
Vinaya K. Manhas

DREAMING of bedbugs crawling all over your bed or crawling over you or biting you, is enough to give anyone the creeps. In most cultures, dreams of bedbugs are not considered auspicious. The reason for such a belief is that it is a blood-drinking insect. Moreover, it is considered devious because it hides in bed of the very person it bites.

As per Indian thought, to see a bedbug in your dream is indicative of illness and unknown enemies. It is a forewarning of bad times. It means that you have many enemies who are out to destroy you and are busy conniving against you. Your health may also suffer a setback. If a businessman or a tradesman sees such a dream, he is warned to be very cautious. Close allies may undergo a change of heart and betray you for their own selfish ends.

As per western thought, dreaming of bedbugs indicates sickness and bad times. It means that the times ahead shall be unhappy and depressing. Seeing a large number of bugs is an indication of a fatal happening in your family. Should you kill the bedbugs and find water ooze out of them instead of blood, it is a warning of a serious illness which shall not be fatal. Dreams in which you see yourself throwing water on bedbugs crawling over walls, carry a similar interpretation. If the water does not have any effect on them and their numbers continue to increase in spite of your every attempt to kill them through any means, then the illness could prove fatal.

Psychoanalytically speaking, dreams of bedbugs signify the presence of people in our lives who are causing us difficulty by feeding on us, i.e. being dependent on us. These could also denote our feeling of being misused by people known to us. It could also be an indication of our perception of threat. We may be feeling powerless and insignificant.

A 38-year-old man often dreams of sleeping on a beautiful and clean bed. He feels very relaxed when he lies down on it. As he falls asleep he can feel something crawling over him. When he wakes up he finds that bedbugs are crawling all over him. He jumps out of the bed and shakes them off. They fall but he cannot see any on the ground. He turns to the bed but cannot see even one bug on it. But he cannot get himself to sleep on that bed again.

The bugs do not bite him in his sleep, which is the most significant aspect of the dream, as they are basically parasites. That he sees them crawling all over him means that he is disturbed by some people whose presence in his life he regrets. He perceives them as being parasites but in reality they are not, thus, although the bugs frighten and intimidate him they do not bite him. As he shakes them off they disappear and the bed is totally clean. This indicated that his perception of the situation is not correct but he is not willing to accept his mistake and change his way of thinking.