Posted by akc on August 19, 2001, at 8:18:31
In reply to Re: Pain of Recovery akc, posted by mila on August 19, 2001, at 3:36:34
mila,
Thanks for all these insights on dreams and memories. It is a lot to digest, and I don't have any immediate response. I do appreciate all your kind words and all your sharing over the past couple of weeks. And I am glad that your husband was aware enough to bring you strawberry ice cream. :)
akc
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> > I so rarely remember my dreams - like my memories, at best a snapshot. I am suppose to try to write down the feelings I have when I do remember a dream -- I actually had a couple of dreams lately, and when my therapist asked about the feelings, I had a hard time with the question. Didn't remember them at all with one dream.
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> skipping feelings while recording dreams is very common. do not worry about that. one of the reasons is that the plot is 'more interesting' than feelings to most people, another is that feeings are represented in the dreams via other images. one of the theories of dreaming states that dreams are images of feelings: every image in the dream is a 'picture' of feelings: settings, people, animals, objects, actions... they all are representations of how our feelings look like if they were visible.
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> having difficulty with answering 'how do you feel at this point in the dream' question is also a very common one. so do not despair. with time and patience you will learn to give your feelings names. when i first began my adventures in dreamwork, i was totally unable to put finger on my feelings. so i used a trick. feeling is tightly linked to the behavior, physiological state, and thinking, because these 4 make up one emotion. so when I asked about feeling, I would step back into the dream scene and pay attention to my body. is there a tension, or heat/coldness, or pain somewhere? what kind of behavior did I display in the dream? what were the thoughts? then i would solve the system of 4 equations so to speak and come up with the name for a feelins. once i get there I usually feel huge relief, and gasp for a breath, and the emotions start flowing, frequently accompanied with liberating tears.
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> > I wonder sometimes what it is about my past, and my dreams, that I don't want to remember. I am certain that I know the overall picture -- some pretty bad physical abuse. But specifics are hard to remember. I can wake up and know that I had a disturbing dream, but have no clue what it was. Any thoughts on why? Do you think my troubles at remembering my past and remembering my dreams are connected?
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> if you do not want to remember, it is because there is some survival value in such behavior. it is a very healthy way to deal with troublesome past. you cannot go back and undo the wrongdoings, so why care. what matters most is how you are doing today. not remembering dreams can be just lack of habit. energy flows where attention goes, you know. many people are scared of dreaming, or dream analysis, because of some beleifs about dreams that they hold. mostly these are beliefs associated with 'powerful and threatening' unconscious. a bit of courage and practice will help you overcome these. after all it all boils down to being a master in your own house. we do not really live in the bluebeard castle with some forbidden rooms to go to. our mind is ours to own and use.
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> if you have a disturbing dream today, it is because something disturbing going on today in your life. dreams are rarely about the past, if they are, it is only because something in our today's life is very identical to what was going on back then in some very important way.
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> in some very general sense your trouble remembering 'dreams and past' are connected. only you can tell us why. do you feel like it is too much to handle or something?
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> > I wish I could use heavily sedating medications, but I can't afford anything more sedating than what I am on with work. :(
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> i understand what you mean. i had to 'sacrifice' one full year of university because of sedation. I just left one course: the research one, because i enjoyed it enormously, and dropped off everything else, because i was sleeping 17 hours a day. not much time left for anything else :)
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> i hope you are still able to enjoy your weekend despite annoyances you mentioned in other posts. my own exhaustion finally started to show off as physical pain and some anger, and I was even able to cry yesterday. i did went to hospital to volunteer, because one women I am attending to haven't had anyone to take her outside for a week, and she was dying for a smoke. so i took her out yesterday, and we smoked,and i gave her massage, and we recited some Robert Frost's poems. this felt good. then i came home and dived back into bed. my husband asked me if i wanted anything and i said i wanted to be transported into the end of the 19th century into one of those sanatoriums in Alps, where they treated people from nervous breakdowns. he understood very well, and fetched me some strawberry ice cream:)
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> much love
> mila
> >
poster:akc
thread:9731
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010817/msgs/9882.html