💭🌀Dreams as Potent Processing Spaces 🌀💭
One of the sneaky side effects that emerged from starting to pay attention to my dreams was being able to work with some challenging/upsetting/sticky/uncomfortable/scary issues/themes in my life in ways that didn't overload or blow my system out.
In my dreamscapes, my frozen bits, the shutdown parts of me, parts of me that I've shunned and hidden away, have an opportunity to show up and take the stage. Often, revealing themselves in humorous and curious ways.
As I’ve shared in the past, “anger” has been an emotion that I've been super disconnected and shut down from throughout my life. I really didn't have access to my anger in childhood or growing up into my teen and early adult years. (This stems from some familial/ancestral survival programming in my system.)
I’ve done a lot of exploration and healing within my body and behavior patterns and thawing the freeze in my system so that I can access frustration, anger or rage AND be able to be in the face of someone else who is frustrated or angry without moving into a fear response and/or completely shutting down.
I did marry a fiery Italian man from the Bronx (who is also an Aries!) and we produced a child of the same temperament, so I have had (and still do have!) plenty of opportunities for my system to learn how to be in the face of someone’s irritation without my body moving into a fear of annihilation.
However, when I first started to explore the potential of actually allowing myself to feel the sensations of anger within my own system, it caused deep fear to show up in my body.
I couldn’t even imagine myself experiencing irritation without getting a rush of fear in my body. I worked with practitioners who asked me to bang on pillows or scream at the top of my lungs and I would just go into a complete shut down upon the request.
As I entered into this intentional exploration of anger, I started to have dreams where I would actually get angry at people.
At first I started getting mildly frustrated at people in my dreams (usually my older son’s father…haha)
Then, I started to have dreams where I would actually get angry at people and yell at them, but no sounds would come out of my mouth.
Then I had dreams where I would tell people off to their faces and I had full access to words, volume and expression.
After that, I had dreams about screaming at people, first without any sound. Then, as time passed, I started to have dreams where I would loudly and enthusiastically scream directly at someone.
When I woke up from these dreams, I would always feel surprised and amused (there was usually a humorous element to the scenario of the dream), but the sensations of fear were not there in the same way.
With each evolution of my expression of frustration/anger/rage in the dream, I was able to think about and imagine accessing anger in my day to day waking world more than ever before.
While it still generated fear in my system to think in this way, it was dramatically less.
There was now a memory (the dream) where I had a space to play out and experience a fight response, so my body started to feel more comfortable with the idea of being with this emotion.
I was then able to actually play with some of the anger exercises in my waking life; like imagining being direct and firm with someone who had breached a boundary, imagining hitting a pillow, actually hitting pillows, being around someone else who is hitting pillows in a frustrated way without collapsing, imagining yelling at someone, yelling in the car when no one is around, yelling into the ocean at night on an empty beach, speaking up and actually saying something when someone crossed a boundary, etc.
The dreamspace opened up access for my unconscious to start to heal this part of me that was desperately trying to get my attention.
🌀 🌀 🌀
Working with our dreams can lead us down a multitude of paths to explore. If you are curious to tune in more intentionally to the messages that are coming through to you at night, I invite you to join me and Brie Ann Wollman of Briething Botanica for our portal-program:
𝙒𝙝𝙞𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝘿𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢𝙨: 𝘼𝙡𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙯𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙞𝙨𝙙𝙤𝙢 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩
We begin April 13th and run through October with monthly virtual sessions for dream practice development, group dream sharing circles, an ongoing online community for exploration between sessions, and an optional (but HIGHLY recommended) in-person retreat in New England in the Fall to culminate and enrich our collective dreaming journey!
A potent group is forming. Will you join us?
