Empowering dreams

[keepfighting]

Triggered by another topic about nightmares, I remembered that in the early stages of T my nightmares were gradually replaced by dreams which actually empowered me:

I had a number of dreams in which I was reliving particular scenes from my childhood. The child me would feel frightened, confused and powerless but then the grownup me would enter the dream stage, protect the child and tell my abusing parents all that the child could not and did not tell them. (No prizes for guessing what inspired those dreams - they were pretty much along the line of what we were working on in T at the time)

Waking up after such a dream felt great.

I think that it's amazing that the same mechanism that gives us the frightening nightmares can also come to our rescue and help us deal with the issues for which daytime just isn't long enough...

This summer vacation, quite out of the blue, I had another one of those empowering dreams: This time, it was only the teenage me and my overt uNPDf starring in it. We were on our way to my highschool graduation and he was going on and on about his church activities (he is a self proclaimed spiritual leader of some standing - lol). Then the teenage me turned towards him, told him to shut up for once about himself and let this graduation be about me and my achievements and nothing else. (See, in my dream he actually respected my wishes, IRL he never would have done so). Don't know where any of this was coming from but I woke up laughing.

Did any of you have these kind of dreams? Dreams that helped you in your recovery?

[pam]

I have dreams of rescuing strange 3 or 4 yr old children, usually from a lion in the yard, once from a hijacker who hijacked a busload of kids. I interpret them as me saving my own inner children.

In the past year I actually dreamed of my own inner 9 yr old. This one actually helped noticeably irl. She was sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, leaning back, head tilted back, smiling. It was like meeting her and being even closer to her than just her writing in a diary. I also saw how happy she was compared to how I wasn't. I assume that means I'm helping her, lol.

Keep Fighting, Your dreams are so directly related to your life situation/not very disguised!

Oh a few years ago I had a dream that I was in a wheelchair, had ms or some other debilitating disease, and my a-hole father was the one taking care of me! He was dutifully folding up my chair and putting it in the trunk of his car and being nice to me, but then he got in the car and drove off without me! It wasn't malicious--he just was nervous and forgot, but still, figures I get left behind. 

[Kizzie]

Wow Keepfighting, I would love to have those kind of dreams.  It really must have felt good to wake up after them.  Pam, it sounds like your IC work has helped - seeing your smiling 9 yr old self.

I don't yet have clear empowering dreams like this (things are happening in this direction but still a bit misty/vague), but they definitely inspire me to do more Inner Child work. 

[woodsgnome]

The plus and minus of dreams.

Dreams can be interpreted in so many different ways...I finally learned to stop over-thinking the meaning of certain dream scenarios.

There are some types that replay, of course. Nightmares pop in too often. They have stolen many a night's sleep. But not going there, so breathe easy.

Even some nightmares turned from a minus to a plus type, though. Once I was being pursued on a river (lots of my dreams involve water and canoes) by the human monsters of my early years. Then a huge concrete barrier just dropped in place behind me and blocked their progress, enabling my escape. Cool, that one; I even found a new friend to camp with who comforted, then welcomed me to this undiscovered paradise. So this time the minus dream type was transformed into a plus.

I have another "regular" that comes around, and I've recently shifted my perspective on it. This dream involves either an older or a newer house. The first resembles my childhood home, the second is very modern. A common feature to both is an empty upstairs.

So I used to think, oh rats, I wonder why the upstairs is empty. Surely it indicates I'm missing something, and someday it will be filled with furnishings, and of course meanings associated with them. The someday theme was typical for me--they were always just out of reach, and it felt hopeless, like someday wasn't really a possibility, but just another never-never land. Kind of a ho-hum dream, in the end. But lately I've felt different about it, because instead of a house being filled with stuff, its emptiness might represent what best serves my needs.

One time, for instance, the upstairs of the newer house was filled with people. Um, hold on—I've always been wary, 'cause in my life's progress people always equaled potential danger, and I can easily wilt in new social situations. In this dream that feeling was entirely absent. After a while the people disappeared, but exploring a bit, I discovered a hidden door which led to more open areas, very pleasant and beautiful ones. And that happens only in the newer house.

Nothing really happens when the old house image floats by. Still blank upstairs. That's good, I guess, 'cause back in the waking world of my youth the upstairs was my desperate refuge from the chaos downstairs. An old unused bathroom became my only certain refuge. Another little twist was that the childhood escape room did have a window with a high vista that fed daydreams of a better life. Someday.

I still go slow on putting much stock in what dreams really mean, and still too many of the nightmare variety filter in. But the major difference is seeing that house dream in an entirely new light; and the light comes from that open feeling leading to new vistas. That would be nice. 

[smg]

I had a couple dreams several weeks past that could almost be in the category of empowering, judging by the narrative content. In one, my father attacked my mother and brother (in a way that bears no relation at all to real life behaviour), and I attacked him back in like fashion. In the other, a teenaged boy and girl were at the FOO dinner table, the boy acted out inappropriately, my mother responded by insulting and degrading him, and the girl attacked her for it.

But, rather than feeling empowered, I woke up feeling a little triggered and disturbed by both dreams. I think the missing piece is that in the dreams I'm not really aware of my feelings as an actor and observer.

Next time I have a dream like that, I will try to bring my focus to the dream-me's feelings. I think that sort of thing is possible in lucid dreaming. I don't have any particular knowledge of lucid dreaming or technique, but I'll see where this intention takes me.

smg

[Dutch Uncle]

I have a great friend.
I've known her since puberty, but for about 20 years she was basically just the sister of a friend. We only met at social gatherings.
About 25 later she became a personal friend of mine, and we've grown very close over the many years since. I guess she's now what people call a soul-mate.

She's living with her own psychological difficulties/issues. Some quite similar to mine, some far alien to me. We share these. But most of all, we have fun, and share so much else that life is about. We're great buddies.

Recently I had a dream I married her. And as dreams are, it was very weird. Basically the story was that we were in a shop, at some counter and the saleslady mentioned we could marry at her counter. It was just another thing that could be done at her counter.
So we did. Very 'unromantic', very 'dull', very 'plain'. Yet very pleasant and easy.
And so we walked out of the shop again. Just as it was another thing you just do on a regular day.

We are both long-time bachelors, and very content with our life as Singles. We wouldn't want it any other way.

When I woke up my first thought was: "Nice! I now have a dream-marriage. And a dream-woman/wife." (Or perhaps I should say: The marriage of my dreams, with the women of my dreams. English is not my native language.)

I shared this dream with her a few weeks ago.
We had a good laugh, and toasted. 

[smg]

Well, what do you know?! I can't say whether my intention to focus on dream-smg's feelings really had anything to with this, but last night's dream was validating and encouraging (not quite empowering, but maybe moving in that direction).

In the dream, I was in a room with 3 doctors about to begin a procedure to remove something from my cheek. When I began to feel a little scared and ashamed (body conscious) my mother stepped in and put her hands on me. (This part I observed from above, and I think that I had a child's body.) I felt panicy and tight/frozen in my chest. The warning lights and alarms on all the medical monitors whet off, including one that was really serious. The doctors understood that my mother being near caused the alarms to go off, and they got rid of her. When dream-smg woke up after the procedure, I understood that the doctors had medically-removed my mother. I felt shakey, and a little lost, but supported. I had the sense that I needed time to adjust to the change, but something good had happened.

I think my subconscious was re-working an incident from when I was 2. I don't remember it directly, but my mother's version of the incident is part of the canon of her heroic parenting "against incredible odds, undermined by her husband, dealing with an incapable daughter ... uphill, both ways, in a flipping snow storm."

I'm looking forward to dreaming more like this. I like that I know how I felt. Empathy and emotional awareness are *really* important to me now, but I have very little memory of emotions (and very little emotional range) from before.

smg