Sometimes distress in a dream will show us that we are facing struggles in life. For example, when we experience terrible nightmares and still wake up anxiously it means that our fears are alive and in effect. Maybe we’re worried about how much pain our job is causing to our partner or worrying about the future direction of finances. Whatever the process might be, that fear can show up in dreams.
In dreams, we can go through different stages of feeling distress. There is feeling distressed, feeling threatened, and feeling betrayed. All these different feelings are parts of the same dream that a person has had. Feeling threatened in a dream means what is happening to you right now doesn’t matter as much outside your head as it seems to do in your mind and you are going to sacrifice whatever it takes get yourself out of this nightmare.