THE DREAM I was in a car in the passenger seat. I had this goldfish I was teasing and torturing the poor creature with a stick. This reminded me of when I was a child and did something similar. This is something that makes me cringe with embarrassment nowadays.

REAL LIFE My brother always makes me cringe when he tells the story of me torturing this poor goldfish when I was a child. Recently my brother has been very irritating. I want to say how annoying he is. But I fear that he will start talking about some personal stuff which will make me cringe with embarrassment.

DREAM ANALYSIS People tend to associate dreams with things which happened in the dreamers distant past. They then start to come to false conclusions about deep traumas. This dream features something from the dreamers past but its meaning linked very much to the here and now.

The dream was about something which happened many years ago. The dreamer had tortured a goldfish when he was a child. This was something that the dreamer was deeply ashamed of and hated when people mentioned it. He would cringe and die with embarrassment. But this embarrassment was the meaning of this dream.

Just recently the dreamer was getting very annoyed by his brother who would never consider his feelings. He would mention without thinking how the dreamer had teased and tortured a goldfish with a stick. The dream therefore seems to link to this exact feeling "I hate it when my brother embarrasses me. He does not realise how humiliated I feel. He has been really winding me up recently."

So it seems that the dream is about these recent problems with the dreamers brother. It's not about the dreamer torturing a goldfish many years ago.

Notice how you can pick up on little details in a dream. The dreamer is in the passenger seat. That can often have a meaning in a dream. If you are in the drivers seat then generally you are in control of the direction you are going. If you are in the passenger seat others are dictating where you are going. The passenger seat seems to hint at this feeling "I am never in control of the conversations. My brother talks about whatever he wants and doesn't mind embarrassing me."