One of the most distressing types of nightmares that the adopted abused child might experience is dreams of abusing others. Your adopted child might be afraid to talk to you about these dreams because then you might think that he is going to become a child abuser himself. As long as your abused adopted child is distressed by these dreams, you need not fear that this is an indication of a propensity to abuse. It is actually just the opposite.

The subconscious uses dreams to work through things that are bothering the abused adopted child. A dream about abusing another child is really the child's way of trying to make sense of what he has experienced.

I was horrified the first time I had one of these dreams. I was too ashamed even to tell my therapist. Fortunately, he was always one step ahead of me and raised the topic first. He said that the dream was about me trying to make sense out of how anyone could have abused me.

I have had a dream in which I was abusing a child in a "loving" way, which I know makes no sense. In the dream, I was thinking that this was something I needed to do to the child to show him how much I loved him. When I pulled myself out of the dream, I almost vomited because I was so disgusted by that dream. Fortunately, by the time I had this dream, I understood its true meaning. At a subconscious level, I was trying to set up the "best case scenario" to see if somebody really could have confused abuse with love. Of course, the answer was a resounding no. I have not had one of those dreams since.

If your abused adopted child has a dream in which he abuses another child, explain that this is about understanding his own abuse. Tell her that she is trying to work through understanding how a person could harm another person that way. Tell the child that you know she would never harm another child and that, as she works through her feelings about her own experiences, the dreams will stop. Until they do, offer your child lots of comfort. Those dreams are, by far, the most disturbing ones I have ever had.

Related Topics:

• Aftereffects of Child Abuse: Dreams of Abuse
• Abusive Dreams After Child Abuse
• Tracking Child Abuse Healing Progress through Dreams

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt