Whatever loss might really mean

[beandelphiki]

I've always wondered how I would feel if a member of my immediate family - my mother, my father or my sister - died.

Most people probably wouldn't wonder. But I never felt much of anything when various members of my extended family died. I very rarely "miss" anyone - and I'm still not entirely certain I experience that emotion the same way that

Comments

[beandelphiki]

Well, in my dream I think I registered it as a psychosomatic reaction to the panic and anguish.

Interestingly, I just did a Google search for "losing teeth" in dreams, and it's apparently a very common dream-theme. (I never would have guessed that!) I don't generally like "dream interpretations" (no way to standardize), but I think sometimes getting a general sense of how other people have interpreted their own, similar dreams helps.

A loose summary of what I just read:

-"Losing teeth" dreams often have the dreamer losing many teeth one by one, and the dreamer feels intensely helpless as it happens.

-This dream is associated with: loss, fears of death and mortality (loosing adult teeth being associated with old age and infirmity), anxiety about a life transition, fear of looking foolish, upset over not being able to have a child (apparently this dream is commonly had by women with fertility problems, or who are approaching menopause), financial worries (teeth being somehow associated with money), fear of abandonment by others (losing resources), and fear of giving away some deep secret.

-Generally speaking, teeth in the dreamscape are associated both with health and with your sense of overall competence in the world.

(...Wow.)

So...I'm guessing that the teeth thing was related to my mother dying in the dream, and possibly to being afraid of how I'd get on without her.

Also, I think this was particularly meaningful to me because of how much money and effort my parents have put into my teeth...i.e., I was watching something my mother had done for me(to help me in the world) crumble to dust as if it had never been.

That was probably more answer than you were bargaining for. *koff*

[siegeengine]

no, that's really cool. I was thinking that I'd heard of the losing teeth motif somewhere before. It actually does relate directly to what you were dreaming about.

[beandelphiki]

And y'know, it just strikes me as rather bizarre how universal it seems to be, when I would never have consciously associated "losing teeth" with death. Huh.