Vomiting

Vomiting is a difficult and humiliating experience for many people, especially children. In dreaming, in may occur in the midst of almost any kind of dream. While it is often associated with illness in waking life, it appears in dreams when our lives are most out of control.

A woman in her early forties reports dreaming: I am on a playground. I am a child, about eight years old. The merry-go-round is going faster and faster. I am enjoying it. A man I don't recognize is pushing it. He stops and walks away. I vomit on my yellow dress and am very sad.

This dream is fascinating for numerous reasons. First, the dreamer imagines herself in an earlier stage of life. This is an indication that her memories of childhood will be essential to interpreting the dream. In the dream, a man walks away and she vomits. The dress turns out to be significant because it is a dress she was given the summer her parents divorced.

In her waking life this dreamer was just finishing what she had called the "infertility merry-go-round." She and her husband had been deeply hurt and disappointed by the experience of not being able to give birth. They felt out of control of their own lives. The vomiting dream seemed to stem from anxiety about her future in a potentially childless household.