Dream About confined to the kitchen

Ian Wallace Interpretation:

Dream: Your kitchen is really hot and humid, and you seem to be stuck inside it with no way out. It is very cramped, with a large wooden table in the centre, and the furniture is often heavy and oldfashioned. You are finding it very difficult to move around and have to manoeuvre past pots and pans that are boiling over. All the work surfaces are sticky and messy, and the cooking smells can be quite overpowering. You seem to be preparing lots and lots of food but none of it seems to be for you.

Meaning: When you dream that you are confined to your kitchen, you feel you are stuck in some sort of nurturing role in your waking life. The rooms in your house symbolize the different parts of your character, and the kitchen reflects your ability to nurture yourself and other people by creating nourishing and fulfilling experiences. Although you would like to move on from this role, it seems as if there is no way out and you may feel quite hot and bothered. Furniture in dreams often represents habits and behavioural patterns, so old-fashioned furniture shows this may be a habitual obligation, which is weighing you down. Tables usually signify relationships so it seems as if you are feeling obliged to look after other people. Finding it difficult to move around suggests these obligations are cramping your style and this is leaving you feeling frustrated. The boiling pots and pans reflect these simmering frustrations but you are finding it difficult to let off steam because you are afraid of upsetting other people. Preparing food for others but not yourself shows that you are helping others to become fulfilled at your expense. This is a recipe for disaster because you would far rather be cooking up your own plans and ideas. Although you unselfishly take care of others in the hope that they will notice and appreciate your efforts, you sometimes wish other people would just look after you for a change.

Action: The message from this dream is that you are finding it difficult to look after your fundamental needs because you spend so much of your time looking after the needs of other people. Although you are accustomed to doing this and do it habitually, it often leaves you frustrated that no one seems to be taking care of you. Constantly providing for others, however, can also sometimes be a subtle way of trying to control them. Instead of always pandering to everyone else’s needs, just try letting go for a change and see what happens.

Background: The kitchen is the room where we transform raw ingredients into nourishing experiences to sustain us. A lot of the imagery we use to describe our creative efforts is based on kitchen and cookery language. We speak about ‘having something on the back burner’, ‘coming to the boil’ and ‘cooking up a plan’. When we feel that our efforts are going unnoticed in any part of our lives, we also use cooking language to express our frustrations. We might say that we are ‘simmering with anger’, ‘reaching boiling point’ or being ‘left to stew’.