Why does my wife murder friends and family?

Why does my wife murder her friends and family in her dreams?

I was talking to her about this the other night. I've always known about them but never really asked in detail about them but this is what she tells me. It's been a couple weeks since we had the talk but here goes.

She murders her friends, family, me in her dreams.She can remember back when she was one years old and can remember having them at least back then. The dreams start out in the act and she's murdering someone she knows. They are very vivid, the person is scream for their life. My wife is terrified on the inside but she can't control the dream, she can't stop herself from killing them.

The killings are always the same way, repetitive dreams. She never kills someone in two different ways. She's murdered me, and continues to have the same dream over and over. She said that she now blocks them out but knows she still has them.

My wife is the nicest person, she isn't violent. The dreams disturb her and we talked about them but I don't know enough to determine why she could be having these repetitive murders of her friends and family that she can't stop or control... They even got to the point where she knew she would have one, expect it, isn't surprised when they happen and still can't do anything about them..

[edit on 4-1-2010 by SeeingBlue]

Wow. I can't even begin to imagine how hard this must be for you and your wife.

It's going to get suggested anyway, so I'll go ahead and mention it first. Has she talked to a therapist/psychiatrist/psychologist/doctor about these dreams? I'm no physician, but perhaps there's a medical issue that needs addressed. I think I would check this out first.

I don't put a lot of stock into dream interpretation, I kinda just think dreams are a way for our brains to clear out the junk that accumulates throughout the day....kinda like a flushing the toilet (sorry, but it fits the analogy). So maybe your wife has some unresolved anger issues with you and your family?

Good luck with this. Hope everything works out for the best!

reply to post by smyleegrl


Smyleegrl beat me to it. Our dreams are a way of processing thoughts that we don't process during the waking hours. You said your wife is a lovely, nice person- and I bet she is. This could possibly be due to that. In other words, she is a nice, passive person who doesn't confront her anger or frustration in her waking hours so her brain processes it as release for her in her sleep in an effort to flush/reconcile any hostile feelings. If she is a very pleasant person, perhaps she doesn't address her disagreements and instead keeps them sealed which brings them out in her dreams.

Bless her heart, though. I'm sure that's disturbing. But it isn't terribly unusual. When we can't/don't deal with feelings in our conscious hours, our subconscience will try to work them out, sometimes to an extreme, dramatic level. Try to work with her and ask her to express herself more when she is unhappy with you and her family. Support her to be more vocal when any of you do something to upset her.

[edit on 1/4/2010 by AshleyD]

Just be to clear, it's not just me and my family. She murders everyone with no discrimination. I can't really says if she's even murdered anyone from my family but me. She's killed everyone in her family though.

The thing that I think is the most weird is that she the killings are repetitive dreams and she never kills someone a different way. Always the same dream.

reply to post by AshleyD


I can understand what you're saying and I'm sure it's true but for the case of my wife I don't see this being the issue. She loves to talk. I hear about all her angers and frustrations, especially towards other people. We don't argue much, and we're good about expression whats wrong, whats right and what we need to do for each other to correct the issue.. It's just hard to me to see this being the case, unless it's something in the past the she doesn't even remember?

reply to post by SeeingBlue

It's just hard to me to see this being the case, unless it's something in the past the she doesn't even remember?

It's possible. Or perhaps, even as much as she talks and as much as you think she is open with you, I'll share a little 'female secret' with you. A lot of women, especially wives and mothers, can be highly resentful of something our loved ones do and we harbor it. We love our spouses, children, and family and have a bad habit of burying things when something really upsets us. Women do have a tendency to be 'martyrs for the family' so to speak. It goes along the lines of motherly/nurturing love and our desire to just keep the peace and being there for others without asking much in return.

So it's possible she feels resentful in some way or buried something in the past. Not trying to bash my own gender- just trying to tell it the way it is. Women are notorious for being talkers while at the same time resorting to the 'No. It's fine. Really.' reaction when it's really not fine. It's kind of a paradox because women are more prone to expressing their emotions and feelings while at the same time being reserved.

Nothing unusual in that. And it is probably not even anything serious- just her mind trying to work itself out. When I was a little girl, my parents were very serious disciplinarians to the point it really was unfair. My brother and I were often punished not because we misbehaved but because we were just being kids. It wasn't unusual for us to be sent to bed because we accidentally spilled our milk at the table or what not. Or for a specific example of the way things were, when I was around 5 years old and about 40 lbs, I accidentally dropped my 25 lb xylophone and case on the way to music practice and my mother spanked me for being clumsy. Or the time my father spanked me because I forgot to feed the dog once (one of my chores).

My parents were GREAT and loved us dearly but their overreactions really upset me for years. Around the age of 10 I started having dreams of my mother killing me. Please keep in mind, she was not abusive AT ALL and is possibly the most saintly women ever. But because I didn't tell her that her discipline methods really bothered me, the concern manifested itself in my dreams. FINALLY when leveling with her, telling her how it upset me, and telling her my dreams, it leveled off and the dramatic dreams stopped.

So your wife is probably going through something like that. There is something that is bothering her, either consciously or subconsciously and her brain is trying to process it. Even if your wife appears very talkative, remember that women sometimes still don't say it all. So just as an experiment, at least try for a few weeks to have your wife really speak her mind.

I love my husband and vent frustrations all the time to the point I'm sure he think I have everything off my chest but I don't. lol It's just the way of women. We might grumble about the little things like you not taking out the trash or the way you tracked in mud but might not talk about the stuff that is REALLY bothering us. We might even use the little occasional nagging concerning petty things to cover up something deeper that is stressing us. The 'little talks' you guys have might be indicative of deeper feelings she has about something that is bothering her so try to get her to open up.

reply to post by SeeingBlue

She murders her friends, family, me in her dreams.

isn't surprised when they happen and still can't do anything about them..

She murders everyone with no discrimination

she can't stop or control

Always the same dream.

Since this is ATS and more obvious causes and solutions have already been proposed, I'll suggest the less obvious: she may be a previously mind controlled manchurian candidate who is gradually becoming aware of her programming.

The "Greenbaum Speech"

AshleyD pretty much nailed it, but I propose some added caution!

Do not let your wife get onto anti-depressants or other brain chemical altering drugs! We all have deepseated anguish and pain, but our conscious mind keeps it under control. When we begin to tinker with that fine chemical balance, things go haywire.

All anti-depressants come with warnings for that very reason. There are many documented cases of people becoming homicidal or suicidal after beginning these drugs.

I have 2 personal experiences with negative results. A newcaster friend of mine was murdered by his wife in our hometown, and they were not having any problems at the time. She got a simple prescription to help her with some anxiety and a few weeks later she killed him in his sleep, and she claimed to not even know why??

My first wife came home one day and asked me to move out. We weren't fighting, or having any problems, and we had just had our 10 year anniversary. Several months later (after the divorce) she told me that she had been taking anti-depressants to help her overcome some shyness at work (she was a bank officer). She knew I didn't like them, so she didn't tell me. The longer she took them, the more disconnected with her life she felt! Over the next couple of years we stayed friends, but her personality continued to change, and she had violent mood swings, and she wound up moving home with her mother!

One common denominator between these instances, is both women were taking the medication prescribed by a family practitioner (not a psychiatrist), and in both cases the medication was prescribed WRONG! There was no "ramp up"period, and there was no constant contact or therapy sessions to measure the success or failure of the prescription. In the case of my wife, the doctor even made the huge mistake of switching her medication several times in midstream without any ramp up or ramp down, and against all the accepted practices and published warnings of doing so!!

In conclusion, I hope everything works out for you and your wife, and I would take a deep look at the sources of stress and heartache in your wife's life that you may not realize are there.............BUT DO NOT LET A REGULAR DOCTOR CONVINCE HER TO TAKE DRUGS TO HELP HER SLEEP OR REDUCE HER ANXIETY!! Therapy...yes, Psychiatrist....yes, Help from Hubby and family....yes, DRUGS=NO!!

You can rest assured that neither of us will be taking anti-depressants. We both know the dangers and are not interested in having anything to do with them. I'm a big believer in balancing ourselves and repairing ourselves, something a pill can not do.

She hold a deep hate towards her dads side of the family as the last name was split before she was born. She doesn't talk to that side of her family or go to the reunions.

There isn't many issues at her parents place though. They pretty much let her do whatever she wanted growing up, gave her whatever she wanted. Her dad did work construction and was gone often. That made her upset and she worried about his safety and had dreams of him having accidents.

Other than those there hasn't been any real dramatic events that I know of.

I will try to work this out though. I know it has to be some issues she needs to let go and sort out.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Agreed. Ive seen too many people on anti-depressants end up going off the beam so to say. I am firmly against any kind of those drugs, unless if it is an extremely serious case with certain circumstances.

I would just relax, talk about it and just stay calm. From what the above posters said about dreams being the opposite of daily life, I agree with that to. Basically I would just talk about it and stay relaxed. Dont get drugs involved.

I also read some articles recently about the human conscious speeding up and is continuing to speed up at a faster rate than normal and the human mind is struggling to take in so much at once. I cant say that is a fact but im just throwing that out there. The more information, true or not, is always helpful.

Thanks for all your help. It's not a problem. She lives with it, has for a long time and basically ignores it now, but I just thought it was kinda absurd.

Do many other people of dreams like these?

It sounds like she is being offered a dream to help her resolve something internally. Dreams, especially repeat dreams usually indicate some type of learning opportunity presented to us.

I've studied dreams for over 20 years and learned at a young age that confronting the issues in my repeatative dreams ended them. Be it a fear, being attacked by the same monster over and over again, by facing the fear in the dream, it resolved the fear and the cycle of repeating ended.

We do things in our dreams that we normally would not do in reality. The dream reality can force us into situations that we wake up and go OMG I would never do that! Yet we did it, in a dream.

I am still trying to understand why that occurs, and I think its deeper then just surface influences and may be totally unconsicous fears/desires we are facing. Hopefully it happens to service higher learning.

My wife used to have repeat dreams where she was being chased and killed over and over again. It was the only dream she dreamt. Now she has moved past that dream and finally one day she told me she had such a wonderful dream that she wanted to go back to sleep just to continue it.

That is how the dream expeirence should be, so pleasant and fun we want to go play in that realm rather than be frightened of it.

Hopefully she can resolve the issue that the dream is presenting so she can explore new dreams that may be more fun and enjoyable.

My thought is that she may have a strong, deep-seated feeling of obligation to her friends and family members. This self-imposed sense of obligation makes her feel as though these people have power or control over her life. Her subconscious takes away that power by acting out the ultimate power play: murder. By murdering these people she asserts total control over them.

I know she is more complicated than I can ever understand and I will never understand her life like I do my own, but hopefully I can present these possibles and experiences to her so that she might understand the dreams for herself and solve them.

You say she cannot stop herself in the dream.

In dreams, every person in them, everything in them, is ourselves. The people she's killing, she's also animating, controlling. She is the killer, and she is also the victim.

She is not killing her sister. She's killing herself with a picture of her sister on it. She isn't killing you. She's murdering herself with a picture of you laid on top. When she's you, she screams and begs herself for her own life.

Every part of that dream is coming from her. Even the part that is stopping her from changing it. She is the thing stopping her from changing the dream.

This may seem not-nice, but it is absolutely imperative for a person to understand these points before they have any ability to intercede on their own behalf with themselves.

What is she telling herself? Why is she stopping herself from changing the dream. Why is she giving herself this dream over and over? What part of her brain is trying to tell her in symbolic form is obviously important to herself. It just isn't important to the part of her that is awake during the day. The part of herself that calls itself "me" and "I."

reply to post by Aeons


She's not one to fully understand that yet. She describes it like there are 2 of herself. One inside the other and she can't control the one on the outside carrying out all the actions. If she does manage to lucid dream she can make changes but the outcome is always horrible.

I added to the original post that she says she can remember as far back as 1 years old and has been having them since at least then.

[edit on 4-1-2010 by SeeingBlue]

If she has bin dreaming this even at one year old then it has vary little to do with the present time.

She is not in control of herself.

I imagine that her solution to this is off base. Lucid dreaming to fight oneself is unlikely to have an effect.

Integration is the primarly goal here.

Some suggestions -

Change Point of View. Currently she is the first person killer. Become the first person victim. Become the first person controller of the dream.

Don't stop the destruction. Revel in it. Become the victim and submit to oneself. Choose to die.

Be the killer - ask the victim why they are doing this to you. Yell at the "controlling" person of the dream why they are doing this.

Choose to focus on something that isn't immediate in the dream. Look at the eyes of the other person. Pay attention to where you are. where is she? What's there? How did they get there? Don't focus on the act or the horror. Find something else to read in in it.

Let the dream play out, then grab the tail end of it. Where there is two bodies, make them one. Turn the killer and have it expand itself to the whole image of the mind. Arise out of a dead body as a baby.

The whole dream is about control. The use of it, the lack of it, the dominance of it, the inability to manifest.

The lesson of this dream is not to control it - which is surely what she is doing. The lesson is to give over to it. Embrace, and integrate.

[edit on 2010/1/4 by Aeons]

If I may say it may have to do with a past life intension than the present.

Also if she was born in the 70 it may have to do with another factor.

[edit on 4-1-2010 by jsettica]

Well, that´s weird. I guess it could be worse. She could be a sleepwalker.