A snake bit me on my right hand!

Ever since I started counselling, I have had rather vivid dreams, and last night I had a particularly powerful dream that I can’t quite shake off.

In ‘Warming the Stone Child’, Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks about the need to pay close attention to your dreams as you walk the path of self-transformation and growth and so I am studying this one closely, maybe you could even add to my interpretation with your own insight and experience.

I know that dreams are unique to the dreamer and there is no way you can cover them with a blanket interpretation or one size fits all reflection. The symbols within the dream have both universal and personal significance.

I believe that the reason why my dreams are so significant of late is because my psyche (bless it!) is working extra hard right now! Trying to right itself, heal and move towards wholeness. I am facing feelings that I have avoided for so long and as I feel the feelings they heal.

Last night I had a dream that I was in a room with a friend. She was moving towards a large snake that was hanging from the ceiling. The snake was huge and was white and bright orange. It looked like the snake was wrapped around the lampshade. My friend moved closer and closer to the snake and I screamed to warn her about the snake. The snake reached down and when I looked down it had already bitten my right hand. My hand hurt and there was a deep scar on my hand. I was terrified to find that there was another blue snake on the floor, this one was even larger than the one on the ceiling but I managed to avoid it. It lay still on the floor to the side of the room.

Another friend arrived to take me to the hospital and the next thing there were nurses around me looking at my hand which felt numb almost but still had the deep scar with no blood or bite marks. Yes very strange indeed. I woke from the dream feeling afraid and uneasy but went back to sleep and was then very anxious this morning when I got out of bed.

Now I have always been afraid of snakes and images of snakes. When I was very little around the time of the abuse, I used to dream of huge black snakes wrapped around me on my bed and I was paralysed with fear. Very interestingly, I have read today that dreaming of a snake on your bed can be related to being sexually overpowered and threatened. This would make perfect sense as I was being sexually abused at that time and was feeling overpowered by my father.

But last night’s dream was different, I am sure of it. I wasn’t alone; there were friends and nurses and the snake had more distance from me. Although it bit me, I had a support system around me.  Also the snakes were brilliantly coloured and not black. In fact, as terrifying as they were, they were also strikingly beautiful.

I am reading about how snakes can represent a positive symbol of healing, transformation, knowledge and wisdom. There are of course many interpretations of a snake dream but for me the dream represents self-renewal and positive change. There is something deep within me that is helping me to find my way towards wholeness. Maybe being bitten illustrates how painful this transformation is. I have also read that the serpent can deliver the antidote to numbing yourself and avoiding what needs to be done to get to the next stage in your life’s journey. So maybe my dream is about awareness of things that were locked tightly away in my unconscious. I am now consciously aware of things that were hidden and avoided because they were too painful.

Also significant is that in my dream I avoided the really big snake that lay on the floor and survived the bite. The bite was painful and terrifying but all it did was leave a deep scar on my right hand. The abuse has affected my life profoundly, it has affected the way I do things (I am right-handed) but the essence of me remains unchanged. Oh my goodness I am really running with this (hahahaha). I will stop!

if you have anything to add, I would love to hear it.