Why do I still live with my parents in my dreams?

It sounds as though the pain you felt living at home or the issues you had with your parents are unresolved.

Consider working with a talk therapist to get through these feelings.

Thank you for the answer but I have long accepted my parents for who they are. I know they love me to the best of thier abilites and did the best they could raising me. I am just a very differnt personality from them and that is ok. I don’t think this is the answer.

@Paxan8, while you may feel you’ve accepted your parents, may really believe it, unfinished family business often needs to be dealt with at a much deeper level. I completely agree with @marinelife and suggest you try therapy and see what comes up.

Isn’t it odd what we dream about? Sometimes, I can track it back to something seen, read, or thought of the previous day. Occasionally, they include something, someone, or some place I’ve never experienced.

This morning, I woke up from a dream of being back at Mom’s house where we were all making sandwiches, and I was rooting around in the refrigerator and pantry for another jar of mustard because someone used up the last and left the empty jar on the counter. Sometimes, I dream of being with former co-workers, and we are working out of Mom’s house. I just chalk it up to having spent 18 years living under that roof. Even though that was long ago, it is 18 years of stored memories.

If it is important to you to attempt to control dreaming about your parents, @marinelife and @Austinlad have provided advice on a place to start.

Subjects in our dreams can mean other things than what we actually obviously see in them too. It’s our brains way of ‘defragging’. We process, compartmentalise and analyse in our sleep.

You could try some creative visualisation as you dose off. Or, you could try to get to the crux of the issues of why your dream-you never moved on. And, don’t try to reason this out like your answer @Paxan8, because there isn’t much rational that goes on in the subconscious, sleeping brain. We’re pretty much at its mercy.

I had an old boyfriend I used to dream about when my current relationships were going wrong. It wasn’t until I met up with him again and just chatted with him that the dreams stopped. (I think my brain was using him as an escape image, but when I met up with him again, I was reminded why I broke up with him and had recategorised him and no longer had those dreams about him.)

Do you go home to your parents much? Spend time there, to be reminded of what made you move out at the age you did? That might help, maybe. Or go through old photographs and relive some moments in your mind. It could help you process and finish with the old house.

dreams are mostly made up of things you’ve seen before. High emotion to something will also be a factor. you have to talk to your om to straighten things out.

It’s an anxiety dream. I would expect the dreams to be coincident with stress in your life. I suspect that for you, your parent’s house is the very image of stress and anxiety.

I think that, when you dream this again, you may want to enter the dream and point out to yourself that this is a stress image, and then ask yourself what is really bothering you. Tear down the parental image as if it were a poster on a wall, and replace it with what you want to be working on.

When you were a kid, did anyone ever say to you, “don’t ever forget where you come from”? That’s the first thing that came to me when I read your post. That and thinking perhaps the dream gives you contrast so you can appreciate the life you have built for yourself now even if sometimes you question how good it is. Just throwing stuff out there immediately came to me so take it with a grain of salt.

i moved out my parents’ house at 21. absolutely could not wait. i have certain dreams of the time i spent there, but it was the best move i could ever make. it was so liberating. i did what i wanted to do when i wanted to do it and came home to my lakefront studio when i pleased.

now if i could just get my 21-year-old to get out the house like i did back in the day. he is too comfortable here.

I had angry dreams about my parents (which took place in the house I grew up in) until I went into therapy. In the dreams I allowed myself to shriek and make accusations, which I never dared do in reality.

The thing is it’s not a dream is my whole dream life. I always live with my parents and alot of times I am still in HS even thoguh I am in my 30s. I am always wondering what I’m doing since I don’t know why I’m 30 and still in HS. But I can never quite make the connection that this is a dream so I can change it around.

Have you felt unaccomplished since you left HS and started making life choices for yourself? Do you feel guilty for not doing better in life to please your parents? I think you may be going back there in your dreams for the desire to change the way you’ve lived your life. If you accept your life as it is now and start enjoying it more maybe your anxiety will cease. I hope you feel better as I can’t imagine how stressful it must be for you.

I could be totally wrong, but it’s just a suggestion.

Thanks @ninahenry but no, I am a very accomplished woman. I have far surpassed anything my parents could have imagined for me. They are very proud of me and have told me so many times. I am so much happier with my life now than I was when I was younger, which is why this is bugging me so very much.

@Neizvestnaya, no. I think we all tried to forget where we came from back then :)
But no I have keep myself very grounded even though I have accomplished quite a bit.

I had the dream again last night where I bought a house and I was trying to move out of my parents house, but I couldn’t remeber how to get to my new house. Also, I can’t remeber where one of my classes in school is so I keep skipping it and now I’m worried I’m not going to get my dipoloma. My dreams are like stories that advance every night yet never seem to finish. It’s like a soap opera you can tune in 2 years later and still know what’s going on.

Are you able talk to some kind of therapist about this? That’d be my only suggestion as it seems really intense and that it’d need a lot of breaking down before anything could change.