Hiya, I'd definitely tell my T about dreams about her! She always feels they
are hugely relevant! I find it mortifying at times but good stuff usually
comes out of it! Unconscious feelings about her; linking dream stuff to jungian
symbols and stuff like that. I have lots of dreams about her-I feel like she
stalks my dreams sometimes

S

Searching -
I tell my T sometimes too but..... my T will have thoughts, and I'll have thoughts.. but when they are abandonment stuff, I get all... scared. Plus a lot has been coming up for me with my parents recently....... which will likely lead down that road (shudder). I figure it is normal to have the dreams (or in this case, quite an unpleasant "dream") because she is a symbol in my life. I guess... I dunno. I found this one particularly embarrassing. Just because of how I reacted and how truly mean she was.

Oh, I tell my T when I have dreams about her-- the good, the bad, and the ugly. She doesn't push dream interpretation, but I'm very into it and she's always interested in hearing my thoughts on the dreams or their symbolism and then discussing from there. Once she kind of got the knack of how I like to work with my dreams she started joining me in the interpreting phase, too. It's always been cool. I've never known her to take a dream personally or to dismiss it as irrelevant. Yes, she might be sort of humoring me but that's okay too.

I think dreams are always very useful if you really dig into them (my would-be Jungian bias. )

cross posted

I tell the therapist when the nightmare has therapy/therapist in it. I have several recurring nightmares and one is around therapists/therapy.

Ah Cat, I hear you on how scary and vulnerable it is-all of it, not just
the nightmare but all the fear you have felt and experienced
I guess that's what you need to really tell T about (again and again cos it
still seems to be there) and maybe the dream is another way into that
conversation?
I wish you strength and courage-although I think you have both of those
in abundance from what I know of you from on here!
It's ok to be scared, be gentle with you!

S

Cat I would definitely talk about the dream with T. I rarely have a dream about my T. One was very nice and it was hard to tell him but it turned out to be a good thing. My T takes dreams very seriously and is very good at feedback and interpretations. He feels dreams are really important.

TN

((Cat)) I have brought a LOT of dreams into therapy and have several major breakthroughs associated with discussing a dream. With my present T, I literally made an emergency call because I had a vivid dream (nightmare) of him abandoning me in mid session. (ok really strange aside, I have a "dream" version of his office and it has mustard colored walls with these wicker daisies straight out of the 70s on the wall. Neither attribute is true of his real office and I have NO idea). I couldn't shake the feeling and was really scared, so I called. I can still remember how relieved I was when he audibly "winced" when I told him, reassured me and told me he really understood why I called.

One reason I always respect my dreams is that when I was recovering my repressed memories (which as far as I know is not an issue with you) they would often start to emerge and press on me in the form of dreams.

I also think that if you are struggling enough about discussing something that you post about it, that's probably an indication that it would be good to address.

AG

I wonder if dreams always mean something. Sometimes I dream about an entire day at work. I dream constantly, all night... and not "cool" dreams either - they are finely rooted in reality. I don't often get to fly, or whatever... When are they messages from the unconscious and when are they benign? Are they never? I don't know.


((HIC)) I do think dreams are so telling, in my personal life. I believe my T finds value in dreams, or at least (like yours) humors me, too. Sometimes I feel like it's "reaching" does that make sense? That I might be trying to make it be one thing or another. As I wrote that I did think... it's good to have 'symbols' to go with what I'm processing whether it is right or wrong. Care to share a particularly telling/useful dream you've had and analyzed w/ T?

((stoppers)) Ick, sorry you have recurring ones, but so glad you can share w/ your T.

((Searching)) The dream might be another way there... I'm not sure Sometimes being gentle when I'm scared is allowing myself a little avoidance Thank you for the wishes of strength and courage.

((TN)) Do you dream a lot in general? I dream... every single night and remember them all the time. I'm on a medication that makes them even MORE vivid right now which is the problem (but it takes my night terrors away and leaves me an occasional nightmare, but tons of dreams)... sometimes I dreams about a whole day like... at work. Comparatively my T is there very rarely, too. I'm glad your T takes dreams seriously, I need to ask mine if she truly does.

((AG)) Bah... I know I know I know, if I am asking if I should talk about it it almost always means I should I wanted to make a call to my T, just to cry on her voicemail, twice... when I woke up. I just couldn't I'm sure if I had the first time, when I went back to sleep again it wouldn't have continued. I could not get rid of the feeling either... thankfully (I love my T) I got to talk to her this afternoon and it seemed to calm the simmer I had going on. My nightmare was a lot to do with being abandoned, threatened and ridiculed by my T and was forced to do something I didn't want to, that was pretty emotionally cruel, so she wouldn't get rid of me. No repressed memories that I know of, but I will sometimes 'expand' on experiences in my dreams (that's why I had to start taking this med that amps the visuals/feelings in my dreams in exchange for not feeling like I'm re-living some of my trauma at 3am).

((SP)) That sucks that you had your T as an antagonist in a dream - I've been there but only a toe in. I'm sorry you've had that experience, yikes! I think when Ts get transposed in to the position of others it is often symbolic... at least if the situation has happened before. If that makes sense? I hope you'll talk soon!

Hi again Catalyst,

quote:

I wonder if dreams always mean something. Sometimes I dream about an entire day at work. I dream constantly, all night... and not "cool" dreams either - they are finely rooted in reality. I don't often get to fly, or whatever... When are they messages from the unconscious and when are they benign? Are they never? I don't know.


((HIC)) I do think dreams are so telling, in my personal life. I believe my T finds value in dreams, or at least (like yours) humors me, too. Sometimes I feel like it's "reaching" does that make sense? That I might be trying to make it be one thing or another.

Based on the reading I’ve done and my experience working with my own dreams, I really think they are all "messages" from the unconscious, but the form is less like a code you need to crack than a poem you come to appreciate. Even the ones that are boring on the surface will have some little detail that when taken note of, makes the whole dream start to sparkle with significance. I find that when I’m having repetitive dreams it’s because there is a meaning in them that I’m failing to perceive or ignoring, because once I consciously interact with it the dream either goes away or there is a marked progression in it’s symbols and story. The unconscious is conversational like that.

And yes, I do think there is definitely the possibility of reaching erroneously, not because the dream has nothing to say but because we are getting it wrong. A true interpretation will have a kind of “clicking” to it and illuminates other things as well (conflicts, other dreams, and so on), whereas a false reading will seem flat, obvious, or boring. As with most things in life, you have to go by intuition.

quote:

Care to share a particularly telling/useful dream you've had and analyzed w/ T?

Mmm, I've been pretty engrossed in a dream series of late that coincidentally illustrates some of what I was expressing above. I analyzed some of this with T but did the rest on my own because she goes AWOL on certain topics.

Here we go, Dream One:

In this dream, I am talking with T in her office when we receive the news that a tornado (a second tornado) is coming. I am flooded with anxiety and T offers to drive me home. I gratefully accept. While enroute, the dream scene becomes a kind of live action replay of the first tornado. T says to me in bewilderment and compassion, “HIC, I never knew the tornado came this close to you.” I am filled with relief that she finally gets it. In a fit of generosity, I decide that since T is coming to my house, the best I can do is allow her daughter to meet my little girl (a theme of late, yes?). It’s cute to see the two of them interacting. Dream ends.

----------

Background: There was a literal tornado in my city a few months back. I think my unconscious latched onto it as a symbol for some FOO events. None of it got fully processed either in or outside of therapy. I interpreted T in the dream as my inner validator-- apparently I’m wanting/needing acknowledgement of this stuff. And my inner kid apparently wants to be more connected-- with other parts of me and possibly people in the external world.

So, I (perhaps mistakenly) took from the dream the idea of bringing this stuff to therapy, which has not gone well because T has resistance to talking about the tornado. So I decided, the heck with this, T does not own my process-- i will do this work on my own.

I did a lot of journaling around the tornado-- literal events, emotional associations, symbolic resonance. It was draining and time consuming but then I had the coolest dream series ever. Three dreams about tornadoes in one night, oh my.

-------------

1. I am staring at tornados rising up in the distance. They are sudden and beautiful, but scary. I feel an anxiety for protecting my friends and myself. In the end, I am hit and stumbling around traumatized afterwards. I encounter other people in the same condition, and we are moving together towards a kind of refugee camp for survivors. There are relief workers there and the expectation is they will help and know what to do.

2. I am inside a tornado! It has lifted me off of the earth and we are up in the air, moving I don’t know where. I don’t know if I’m going to die, or land, or keep traveling, or something else. I am suspended in the cone, sort of spinning. I don’t know what else to do so I start saying the Jesus prayer. There is a blend of exhileration and calm.

3. Wizard of Oz! My childhood home (with me inside it) is lifted from the ground by a tornado and then placed securely down on the ground in a new location. Amazingly, it is perfectly intact. I decide to move it back to my current city and live in it.

So, briefly, I see represented in this series:

trauma --> finding a spiritual center--> recovery of childhood self = nothing that is good is ever truly lost.

I agree that is a really cool sequence, HIC. Thank you for sharing it.

(((HIC)))

I was just rereading your tornado dream sequence and found it just as fascinating as I did the first time.

What was the time sequence of Dream One in relation to the epic series?

In dream one, T is with you and finally gets and validates how scared you were by the first tornado. You finally get someone to walk with you.

In the epic dream series, you get hit by a tornado three times. In the first one, it sounds like you (and others) are traumatized. You are sent to a refugee camp. In the second one, not only are you hit but engulfed by the tornado (fear?). It turns out not to be quite as scary as you thought.

In the third, you are hit again. There is damage (your house gets moved) BUT it's fixable. The house is intact and you can move it back to its original spot.

I would love to hear the conclusions you came to when you journaled, if you want to come back and share.

In Dream One, you get your ideal. You are together when the tornado hits and T finally gets how much pain you were in.

In the series, you get hit three times. Were those the attempts you made trying to get T to process it with you? In your first attempt, you felt a bit traumatized and was sent away? You tried a second time to process the tornado with T. It was scary at first because you got bit the first time but it sounds like it was almost empowering even though you got caught up in it. With the third attempt, there was some damage but it was fixable and "perfectly intact". Things are going to go back to normal now. Which is exactly what happened with your therapist? You decided to let it go?

What say you?

(((Liese)))

Thanks for your interest.

I never considered that the three dreams in the epic series might correlate with my attempts to discuss the tornado with T, but upon reflection that actually kind of fits. Neat.

Oh, I wish I could remember the exact time lapse between Dream One and the epic series. I think it was around a week, not more than two.

I don't think I actually came to any conclusions in the sense of deductions with the journaling. It was more like-- emotions and memories all felt very intense, connected and present, all somehow activated by and constellated around the tornado as a symbol. So I just wrote about it all and also did some self directed art therapy.

I think the tornado represented trauma-- that feeling of terror, abandonment, betrayal, and threatened annihilation (emotional or otherwise). I felt those things during the actual tornado and in the days afterward when I couldn't make contact with T, and at the same time it reawakened earlier experiences of the same-- when I couldn't connect with my mother emotionally.

It's interesting that in the dreams I am able to move towards finding help and center within the chaos. I think the part of the dream where I'm caught inside a tornado might represent the experience of a self that's come untethered, the partial disintegration of the ego that can follow certain kinds of trauma. The Jesus Prayer probably represents something beside itself-- I think it stands for an act of trust that might also involve trusting T.

The part of the dream where I discover my childhood home intact was the most impactful. I think I've had this sense that I have to rebuild a self from the ground up, but the dream seems to indicate that the good stuff from my past is recoverable or at any rate can survive the transitions. That's so good because I crave continuity in life.

Things have kind of gone back to normal. At least-- T and I are doing all right. I see my parents a little more often and with a little less stress. I sometimes have good memories spontaneously instead of bad ones all the time. I'm feeling better.

Hope this helps? Let me know if you have more questions.