Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > What Helps?

Dreams

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sjkravill:
I have been curious...
Does anyone here try to analyze dreams as a way of being atuned to your soul/psyche/ whatever you want to call it... A way of touching the depths of your unconscious?  Maybe to look for healing?

I don't have very many dreams that lend themselves to interpretation. I have had maybe one or two in the last few months.  One of the dreams was relatively coherent, and I was really struck by the bold colors that appeared in the dream.  So, I was looking on line to find what the colors or objects (combination of the two) could mean.  It was fascinating, and lead me to new grains of truth.  

The one I had most recently was actually two or three consecutive dreams that took place in a large dark murkey pond.  In one of the dreams, the dark murkey water was a classroom filled almost to the top with water, where my young mom had (in the dream) gone to nursing school.  I was revisiting her past, seeing pictures of her, talking to her friends....  In the next dream, my parents (when they were young and dating) had tipped over in a canoe out in a big dark lake.  I was only there mentally.  I remembered how my mom used to explain that we would never go canoeing as a family because they tried it once while dating (apparently it didn't go well?).  Wierd!  In the third dream, I was swimming in a huge dark pond in my grandmother's back yard. My cousins were there swimming too. There were trees and ice bergs in the pond.  I never knew what my feet were going to touch.... They would have made a good surrealist movie.

I started asking myself what the dark water meant to me, how I felt about the water... what was I telling myself. How does this correlate with my emotional state, relationships, thoughts....  I didn't come up with anything concrete.  Just a feeling of uncertainty as I sort out my childhood and adult "stuff."  I am sure all of the people and elements of the dream could have been analyzed.

Does anyone here think about/analyze your dreams? Learn anything?  Have any methods or ways to think about them?  
just curious!
peace, sjkravill

Portia:
Wow, gotta reply to this one sjkravill. Thanks!

Since I started going on holiday abroad (this coincides with mental turmoil and increasing awareness) I have many dreams (at home) about swimming pools and the sea. Did you ever see the old film ‘The Swimmer’? – about swimming ‘home’. In my dreams I’m always swimming in various pools, trying different ones and my current partner is always somewhere else and I’m going to be late for some deadline – like the plane leaving. But I always have to try out that other pool, or that rocky bit of the coastline….and in reality on holiday, I never get to swim enough and probably feel a bit miffed that I don’t (he likes to drive around, as I do, so I tend to forgo the swims)…..

Funny how writing it makes it analyse-able. It’s probably all about sex and romantic relationships with me, honestly. That sounds trite but heck, I should know.

Water seems to be a biggy - like flying – ever had flying dreams? Maybe water is beyond analysis and goes right back to the original, real womb we were in? Very interesting that in your third dream you’re in your grandmother’s back yard – is that your maternal grandmother? Maybe you can see where I’m off to here? Sjkravill, please forgive me but I know about your H but can’t remember if you’ve said much detail about your parents … have you? Please point me back to a post if so. If not, do you want to talk about your mother and father?

In general some of my dreams are so obvious – screaming at me to see ‘what’s what’ – but others defy me, like a meaning is there but I refuse to ‘get it’. Frustrating. Last night I dreamt about the N I lived with for six months (15+ years ago) – a big surprise because I’ve dreamt about him only once every year or so. In the dream I was attracted to him again – to his neediness and arrogance, wanting to ‘lose myself’ in him. I guess it was my mother. In the dream I stopped and thought why am I doing this, what’s attractive about this - nothing. Maybe I am moving on, maybe when I felt some kind of sadness on waking today, I was doing a bit of dream grieving? Maybe, but I can’t push these things. But thanks for getting me to think about this and write today. It helps! P

sjkravill:
Hey Portia,
It sounds like your dreams are about exploring on your own.  Maybe a need to take time for yourself away from the partner and despite pressures of deadlines... I also like your idea that we do work in dreams, like grief, or forgiveness or whatever...  You have a fantastic wisdom in saying "I can't push these things."
What a great willingness to settle for the understanding/ feeling you have for now, and just let it happen, or come.  I am always trying to "push" things...

I have never had, but always wanted to have a flying dream.  This was my first water dream.  I will have to watch "the swimmer."  I like the idea of 'swimming home.'  I also loved your image of water and the womb we are in.  Although, I am not sure I completely understand.  Like the world as womb?  

Please excuse the terrible pun but it never occured to me that these may be "wet dreams"  ... meaning about sex!  If thats the case then the water symbolizes both my fears and desires concerning sex with my H

In the third dream that was my maternal grandmother's back yard. She and I have always been very close.  Hmm... this might be about my mother.  Or her sentiment.  I have not said much about my parents.  I have never really known what to say about them.  I did comment once that I have somehow blocked a lot of memories of growing up. Usually I avoid thinking about my childhood.  I go around thinking my parents are saints.  I really admire and appreciate both of them.  I have a hard time feeling anything but emapthy and graditude for them.  

I am the child they are proud of.  It has always been much worse for my poor younger brother, because he was a little less obedient than I was.  Ever since he was a two-year-old, he'd be damned if he was going to be controlled! I just tried to aviod trouble.

I have memories of feeling criticized, controlled, invisible, and afraid of both of them as a child and adolescent...  I never really validated my experience, but I think this is why I went abroad for a year in high school, why I went away to school, why I ran off and got married at such a young age, and now live 17 hours away.  They are well meaning, and we get a long much better at a distance.  

Actual childhood memories sometimes take me by surprise with the slightest referrence... or they come from intentional digging for why I consistantly react so primatively to certain circumstances now. My adult mind knows my parents were dealing with their own issues, and could not always be responsible with their emotions or childhood and adult stuff.  Consciously, I pin most of this irresponsibility on my mother, but when I think about it my father had his part too.  I think the difference is my father is more self-aware and laid back than my mother.  So, it was easier to relate to him.  In the dream when I was visiting my mother's past, maybe I was seeing her as a real person to whom I could relate....

The dreams still mystify me... but over time small insights come.  Thanks for sharing your dreams and wisdom, helping me think... listening...

Peace, sjkravill

October:

--- Quote from: sjkravill ---I have been curious...

The one I had most recently was actually two or three consecutive dreams that took place in a large dark murkey pond.  In one of the dreams, the dark murkey water was a classroom filled almost to the top with water, where my young mom had (in the dream) gone to nursing school.  I was revisiting her past, seeing pictures of her, talking to her friends....  In the next dream, my parents (when they were young and dating) had tipped over in a canoe out in a big dark lake.  I was only there mentally.  I remembered how my mom used to explain that we would never go canoeing as a family because they tried it once while dating (apparently it didn't go well?).  Wierd!  In the third dream, I was swimming in a huge dark pond in my grandmother's back yard. My cousins were there swimming too. There were trees and ice bergs in the pond.  I never knew what my feet were going to touch.... They would have made a good surrealist movie.


peace, sjkravill
--- End quote ---



The thing that struck me about your posts, is that they are not about your life, they are about your mother and her experiences.  Even the one where you are present, you are in your grandmother's yard, swimming in a deep dark pond.  I suspect that all three murky ponds are your mother's life, and you are swimming around in them, probably wondering what the hell you are doing there, instead of in your own nice clear little pond.

What this tells me is that you are possessed by your mother.  Not in a demonic way, but in an emotional way.  She has told you lots of personal, intimate stuff, not to become close to you, but to get you to relive her life for her, and you are doing it in your dreams, and probably in real life too.

Water is often symbolic of emotion, and in particular powerful emotions.  And as has already been said, it can also be symbolic of motherhood.  In this case, the motherhood it shows you is not a very nice kind.  It is cold, dark, and deep, and has trees (family problems???) and icebergs (rejection??) in it.  And quite rightly, you are not the only one caught in the pool, your cousins are involved, which suggests that your grandmother was the same as your mother, and all her children were affected, and their children, as you have been.  As you rightly say, this is a huge dark pool.  

My own family swims in an equally huge dark pool, so I know this can be true.  Lots of people there, but most of them don't know it.  

I think to help deal with this one, I would try to find a picture of your ideal pond or lake; somewhere really beautiful.  A photograph would be nice, but if not then an imagined image would do.  Perhaps somewhere you have actually been.  Use it as a soothing image when things get difficult, and 'escape' to it.  Or change the image, and use a mountain.  But something that you own for yourself, and you choose who you swim with.

In effect, your dreams are saying, 'this water is yucky, how do I get out?'

Hope this helps.

Cathy

October:

--- Quote from: sjkravill ---My adult mind knows my parents were dealing with their own issues, and could not always be responsible with their emotions or childhood and adult stuff.  

Peace, sjkravill
--- End quote ---



Just a thought on this one, sjkravill.  I have huge problems of my own, dealing with my emotions and depression and god knows what else.  There is a lot of childhood stuff there, and it is not easy to keep going.

As you say about your parents, I am not responsible for what happened, and I cannot change what happened.  All I can do is deal with it as best I can and continue to walk the path I have to walk.  Very hard.  

However, I am always, absolutely always, responsible for what I do in relation to my daughter.  That is what being an adult is all about.  Being hurt and damaged does not absolve me from looking after her, and meeting her emotional needs.  Sometimes I think she will never know how hard it is for me to keep going day after day, asking how her day was at school, and buying her little surprise presents, or letting her have friends to tea when I want to not see anyone ever, and I feel empty inside, as if I can't care and can't love.  Then sometimes I think it is good that she will never know those things, because that would only load her with guilt for having a happy time when I was so unhappy.  So depressed.  (Seven years of clinical depression so far, and counting.)

If your parents were not able to make this distinction, the responsibility is not yours, and was not yours when you were younger.  It is theirs.  Absolutely it is theirs.  It does not (necessarily) make them bad people, but it might well make them bad parents.  

We were taught to make excuses for our parents.  Change the people around, and imagine yourself doing or saying what they did, and a child of your own, or one you know, on the receiving end, and you will find a different picture.  This is the only way I found for changing my perspective on things that I thought were ok.  It was ok done to me, but anyone try it with my daughter, and they had better watch out!!!!!

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