I Haven't Got Time For the Pain

LAST NIGHT WAS ANOTHER occasion for my psyche to undertake the job of healing itself. I'm convinced that my dreams, especially the ones where I have deep feelings, are little doses of yesteryear that need to be processed so they can be released. 

There is residual today. I'm still a little raw and emotional but of course I have very little time to deal with it. I'm in an office, with coworkers. Hardly the place for a meltdown. 

Last night's dream, like so many, was centered around Brock and other people of that era. The feelings of abandonment fused with misunderstandings was potent and raw. 

Me, vulnerable, in pain...

During that era, my life was propelled by the feeling of being forgotten. It didn't take me very long to identify it as abandonment. In fact Brock might have been the one to identify it. Although I applied it to my present circumstances, I am pretty sure it was emotional fallout from being ignored as a kid. It was crippling.   

There is a song on John Mayer's Heartbreak Warfare album with the phrase: 

I'm scared you'll forget about me.  

So, back then I took that fear of being forgotten and like a drowning swimmer, I made a lot of noise. This didn't help matters at all. What it did was open me up to tons of rejection, pain and misunderstandings. 

Me, laid bare. 

The same me who had spent the better part of her life inside my impermeable shell. 

Thank you Cate Shepherd 

Isn't this deep? 

I think it is true for adults as well. 

Looking back, my need was very real. Unfortunately I chose a pyromaniac to put out a bonfire. 

Which just proves that people who are emotionally damaged are often not very good at self-diagnosis and self-treatment. They really shouldn't trust themselves. And maybe we as a society should look beyond the behavior to what the wounded soul really needs. 

I like that my sleeping self knows what to do to help me be a more capable adult. I'm going to be fine. 

Do you have dreams that are healing you? 

Recurring Dreams

I SUPPOSE BY NOW most of you know that I've been through some difficult times. Who hasn't, right? If you've read the synopsis for my soon-to-be-published memoir, you'll have a little better idea of the specifics. I haven't gone into a lot of detail here because I want to keep these posts brief. 

The traumas I write about in my memoir, occurred up through the end of the 1990s. Then, I spent the better part of a decade in recovery and I'm doing really well now. Except for one thing--my dreams. 

For years I had to deal with a sleep disorder. What I deal with now, is a cake-walk by comparison. I sleep  very well every night. However, I still have dreams about the traumas I went through. Sometimes they're very emotional. Often they involve the antagonist of my memoir whom I call "Brock." And by often, I mean like, every other night. 

Sometimes I dream about being in a church. I don't want to be there and I'm conflicted and helpless, traveling along some kind of roller coaster-type obstacle course. Other dreams center around my house. People keep walking through it and no matter how much I object to their intrusion, they ignore me and keep coming. 

All these years later, all the healing work I've done and yet, on some unconscious emotional level I still have unfinished business. Or so it seems.

I think dreams are fascinating. How about you? Do you have recurring dreams and have you figured out what they mean? Do you think dreams are our body's way of helping us heal from emotional upheaval? 

Mysteries of the Night World

THANK YOU TO ALL of you who were so gracious with your condolences on my last post. Your words really do feed my soul. 

On to other subjects. It's raining here. I know many of you are having record heat but we lucky souls here in the Pacific Northwest have it pretty dang easy. That is if you like rain. And I do. It beats sweltering heat any day of the week. If you're reading this while a fan is blowing air on your head or you can hear the hum of the AC, I'm sending you buckets of PNW rain. Feel better soon! 

I wanted to write about dreams. Since sleep is a part of being alive and dreams are part of sleep, this subject is one we can all relate to, right? I think dreams are fascinating. I have a couple of books that document dream-themes, dream-symbols and the (controversial) Jung-inspired "collective consciousness." The books haven't made me any smarter but I still like the whole idea of understanding ourselves through our dreams. 

Twice now in the past, say, two weeks I've had the same dream. I'm in my house but it's not my day house. It's a different place but it's my house. It must be my "dream" house but it's not my day "dream" house because I don't live in that house. (I can't afford it.) No it's my night-dream house and it's not a house I would want to live in because it has spiders. And they're big spiders. And they only come out at night so I guess you could call them night-spiders. They're worse than day-spiders. You'll be sleeping on the floor (because in my night-dream house we apparently don't own beds) and out from under the blanket will come a huge spider. And out from the cracks of the walls, (My night-dream house must need a handyman.) will come these humongous spiders. We, my night-dream family (who are different than my day-dream family who aren't really a dream-family except on Christmas morning maybe) want to leave this weird house because we can't sleep with these vicious, huge spiders coming out at night. And that is the end of the dream. 

Anyone care to venture a guess as to what this means? And, do you have recurring dreams? One you'd like to share here? Ah, come on... It'll be fun.