Why Disturbing Family Dreams Emerge During Spiritual Awakening (It’s Not What You Think)
When disturbing dreams or images involving family members emerge during our spiritual journey, they often trigger deep shame, disgust and confusion. These experiences, while deeply unsettling, serve as powerful messengers from our psyche, indicating areas requiring healing and integration. I’ll do my best to explore this sensitive topic with compassion and understanding.
Have you ever had an image or dream about your parents, guardians, or your own children that carried a disturbing incestuous energy—where you woke up feeling disgusted and wondering if you were seriously going crazy to even have such a dream? In Jung Psychology, this is known as psychological incest (also called covert or emotional incest), it refers to a specific dynamic within parental relationships where there’s a non-physical but emotionally enmeshed bond.
Many of my clients, when going through spiritual awakening and advancing in their healing work to incorporate higher aspects of their being, have experienced psychological incest. In some cases, real physical incest has occurred, leaving energy that remains stuck in the body. Even after 30-plus years of healing work, some haven’t been able to move that energy from their energy field so they come to me feeling like something supernatural must be going on. Some clients believe they are possessed or just pure evil for having those thoughts and haunting dreams. And its partially true that there is a level of possession here but not the kind you may think….the possession could be astral parasites, entities, past lives, or your psyche and spirit letting you know its time to do the emotional healing work of separating from your parents/ guardians and becoming your own individual self. For the purpose of this post, I’ll focus on the emotional healing aspects.
As previously mentioned, these psychological incest experiences may come from past lives emerging into the psyche, becoming conscious to bring healing opportunities. Sometimes it’s generational trauma we’re working through to allow more light energy into our energetic and physical bodies. And sometimes it’s from this life—when nothing physically happened, but the psyche is working through the attachment we may have to a particular parent, guardian, grandparent, or even aunts and uncles.
It’s important for us to understand this as we go through our healing and spiritual process so we don’t punish ourselves or think we’re crazy or have a demon attached to us. As this is not always the case. This doesn’t mean ignoring what our dreams and thoughts are telling us as they slip through the subconscious and unconscious—they’re coming into consciousness so you can address them. The sooner you work through it, the less chance it has to drive you crazy or allow attachments or astral larvae into your energy field. Some people when they wait years to address this, the level of attachments require a lot of time because having those dreams and thoughts and then believing you are evil, disgusting, and you go into self-hatred will open up your energy field to allow many many attachments of all kinds.
Consider that if you have emotional enmeshment between you and your parents/guardians, or between you and your children (or a specific child among your children), and have these thoughts or dreams, it means your spirit wants you to work on releasing these unhealthy bonds.
If your parents treated you as a partner or spouse—which sometimes happens when a parent looks for you to act as support/equal or to replace a partner who may be an alcoholic, drug addict, or someone who works away from home and rarely returns—and you were the oldest child, you may have had to act as a partner to mom or dad.
If you were put in the role of a partner/spouse as a child, what role did you have to play? What age-inappropriate emotional and/or physical responsibilities were you given? How did that affect you in life? What hidden resentments might you have toward either or both parents?
So below I’ve included just a few major key points to consider as you navigate through psychological incest (whether in your dreams or intrusive thoughts) – its important to contemplate the development of this energy imprint, how it has affected your life and what the healing may look like for you.
The Multi-Dimensional Nature of Trauma
- Past Life Imprints
- Ancestral memories surfacing
- Karmic patterns seeking resolution
- Collective trauma Slipping into our Psyche
- Generational Patterns
- Also Family / Ancestral memories imprinted in our genes / dna
- Inherited emotional patterns
- DNA activation and clearing may bring these from the unconscious to the conscious for healing potential
- Current Life Dynamics
- Parent-child emotional entanglement
- Guardian-child boundary confusion
- Role confusion and reversal
Some of the Signs of Psychological Incest
Emotional Patterns:
- Being your parent’s confidant
- Carrying adult responsibilities too early
- Feeling responsible for parent’s emotional wellbeing
- Acting as a surrogate partner
- Excessive physical or emotional attention
Examples of Common Scenarios:
- Single parent dependency
- Absent spouse compensation
- Addiction in the family
- Immigration/isolation contexts
- Cultural factors
How Does The Energy of Incest Impacts Adult Life
Relationship Patterns:
- Difficulty with intimate partnerships
- Confusion about appropriate boundaries
- Codependency tendencies
- Fear of abandonment
- Attraction to unavailable partners
Personal Development:
- Delayed emotional maturation
- Identity confusion
- Difficulty with self-assertion
- Guilt about personal success
- Chronic people-pleasing
Spiritual and Energetic Impact:
- Blocked chakras
- Difficulty grounding
- Energy field distortions
- Spiritual bypass tendencies (this is a big one and for many is completely hidden from their consciousness so they dont realize how obsessive they can be with certain mystical / spiritual perspectives)
- Entity attachments
The Healing Journey
The healing journey depends on everyone’s individual needs. Most likely, this is a long journey of self-discovery and awareness that will lead to major breakthroughs. The healing modalities can vary from Transpersonal Healing, Sacred Plant Medicine, Energy Healing, Traditional Therapy, Meditation and Mindfulness, to Constellations—whatever calls to your soul and spirit can help you start or continue this healing journey.
I highly recommend doing some serious ancestral healing, as many of the traumas in the family are encoded in your DNA potential, and the gifts normally cannot be activated until the trauma that shadows them is released. Working with inner child healing, shadow healing, parts healing, and even life coaching to learn to set healthy boundaries may be required.
Moving Forward
Remember:
- Healing is a process, not a destination
- Integration happens in layers
- Support is essential
- Self-compassion is crucial
Creating New Patterns:
- Establishing healthy relationships
- Building strong boundaries
- Developing authentic selfhood
- Honoring your journey
The emergence of these incest themes during spiritual awakening, while challenging, represents an opportunity for profound healing and transformation. By approaching these experiences with understanding and proper support, we can transmute these patterns into stepping stones for growth and evolution.
This journey requires patience, commitment, and often professional support. The goal isn’t just personal healing but breaking cycles that may have persisted for generations. Through this work, we not only heal ourselves but contribute to the collective healing of family systems and humanity as a whole.
