I keep having very depressing dreams lately

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What could be causing this exactly? Most people have nightmares when stressed or anxious, but I wouldn't call these nightmares as such. They are just depressing. For the last 3 or 4 night I have had really depressing dreams, and last night I had such a depressing dream that it has stuck in my head all day and makes me feel morbidly depressed each time I unintentionally remember it.

These dreams involve me intensely crying (not in real life, just in the dream). I feel very isolated in the dreams, like last night in the dream I was forced to wait alone up in a dark, lonely attic, while everyone else were downstairs socialising and laughing and joking happily, and suddenly a man came up and really shouted at me because I wasn't meant to be up there, so I came back down crying, but nobody spoke to me or cared. It was such a horrible dream that I woke up feeling very put out.

I'm not sure if it's because I have uncontrollably lost my special interest and I am pining for that (because special interests take a long while for me to get over, especially if I love the special interest so much that I don't want to lose it). Does anyone else have really depressing dreams? Could it be because of depression and loss? I have also started a new job, and I don't mind the job itself, but I'm still not over the sudden change of routine, plus they have took to calling me in on my days off so I feel I can't relax now on the nights before I have a day off in case I still have to get up early the next morning. Sometimes knowing I don't have to get up early the next morning (even if I am going somewhere exciting), I can go to bed feeling relaxed.

My dreams are often about what I would do, say, express otherwise if I were a different person or would own different personality traits. For instance, there were whole series of dreams in which i was beating and torturing, raping and killing for no obvious reason. Those dreams actually took place during phases of change like new job or after having moved house. I was always scared when I woke up after such an orgy of violence, it was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing but usually cease three or four months after the change.

I always die in my dreams...

I recall that in Jungian dream analysis, if you dream of a house, the different parts of the house represent the different levels of your consciousness. Higher floors are your conscious mind and spiritual levels and lower floors and the basement are supposed to represent the more subconscious levels.

So (just interpretation from here, based on that), how I would read your dream is that subconsciously you are possibly sensing the expectations of the larger society, how they are pulling you out from what you want to do. You see them as happy, but when you are pulled down to their level, you found that you maybe don't belong (as you feel ignored there). This manifests in the higher levels (how you feel consciously) as sadness and depression. However, what you really need to confront is down at the lower levels, like still not fitting in with others so much.

Another related interpretation is that while you are wishing to get your special interest back (which you really think (as it is in your higher level) would make you happy... i.e. you are consciously mourning the loss of your special interest in your waking life and are very sad in this level in your dream), perhaps you sense that people in the larger society would not be very accepting of it, anyway. Hence, they pull you down (lower level, subconscious urges to fit in) but it doesn't work as well because what you consciously want is your special interest back.