Ian Wallace Interpretation:
Dream: You are engaged in some seemingly harmless and routine activity when you suddenly find yourself being attacked. Your assailant appears from nowhere and strikes a potentially fatal blow before you even have a chance to register what is going on. The weapon is usually something that just comes to hand such as a kitchen knife or hammer, with the attacker giving you no warning of their murderous intentions. Even though your injuries could prove fatal, you are more concerned with the motive for the attack and why you, an apparently innocent victim, have been singled out.
Meaning: If you dream you have sustained a potentially fatal injury, then you are probably experiencing a situation in your waking life where you feel terribly wounded emotionally. This emotional wounding usually occurs because of a sudden severing of a close partnership or romantic relationship. Your assailant seems to appear from nowhere because you just didn’t see this coming and it has taken you completely by surprise. Although you felt that everything was healthy in your relationship, it now feels as if your life has been ripped apart. The weapon used by your attacker is often an everyday object because the discord was apparently triggered by a minor disagreement, perhaps over some routine domestic event or work situation. Your main concern is usually not the severity of your injuries, but why you were actually attacked in the first place. Although you may feel that you are the innocent victim of an unprovoked assault, it may be that you have been quite complacent in the relationship and haven’t picked up on a number of signs that forewarned of increasing unease. These warning signals may have been quite subtle but being more aware would have enabled you to tackle the situation in a more effective manner. Being singled out reflects your anxieties about being left alone by this split in your relationship or partnership. If you experience death in a dream, it usually signifies a fundamental transformation, and your potentially fatal injuries suggest that you have to transform your life by just moving on.
Action: The message from this dream is that you may be leaving yourself open to disappointment by becoming too complacent about a particular relationship or partnership. It can be tempting to become paranoid and suspicious about your partner’s intentions but this can make you feel like even more of a victim as you constantly check up on them. Instead of assuming that your partner will always be there for you, try connecting with them more honestly and intentionally. The more respectful you are of the bond between you, the less likely it is to be suddenly broken.
Background: It is very fortunate in our modern age that the threat of a potentially fatal injury is extremely remote, but many of the words and phrases that we use when talking about separation still use quite violent imagery. When we talk about financial dealings, we speak of funding being subject to ‘savage cuts’, having to part with a large sum of money as ‘costing an arm and a leg’ or a particular public service ‘being axed’. In emotional trauma, we say that we are ‘feeling really cut up about it’ or it being a real ‘slap in the face’.