Posted by raisinb on March 10, 2008, at 13:37:35
In reply to Re: I DID have a terrible nightmare about my T » raisinb, posted by Daisym on March 9, 2008, at 19:10:43
Daisy, thank you, I thought your interpretation was lovely. There are many parts of it that resonated with me.
First, the voice shouting "don't sit up" wasn't my therapist's--it was a male voice. Which got me thinking--recently I got a terrible flu virus and fainted in the hallway at work. One of our staff caught me and when I woke up, told me "stay down!" (Guess he thought I'd collapse again if I got up too soon). I work in a very high-pressure, political, judgmental environment, and I found this episode very troubling. I worried about what people might think and how they were judging me in their heads. That might seem like I'm being much too hard on myself, but trust me--where I work, it's not far off.
This all ties into what you said later on about having to give friends and work what they want. You're also right that my friends don't understand about therapy and my feelings for my therapist. I have close, supportive friends, but they just don't get it. In the past year they've switched from saying nothing to saying, delicately, "I think you might need to try someone else." I'm sure I'd say the same thing in their shoes. Had I not experienced this, I'd never know what it was like.
You're right that not feeling so intensely for my therapist entails loss. I've been hating the feelings for so long that I don't realize very often how much I don't want to lose what we have in that room. Even though it's painful, it's about the deepest part of me, and I don't want to lose the me that can feel so deeply. Even though I might not lose *her,* losing that intensity of feeling--or transferring it more fully to IRL relationships--*is* a huge loss. I'm sure, of course, that this isn't all happening yet (if ever!) but I think lately I've been contemplating it and seeing how it *could* happen (whereas a year ago I could never see how I could give up even an iota of my therapy feelings).
I quit therapy for awhile a few months ago, and one of the scariest things I half-admitted to myself was that I *could* get over leaving, and maybe I didn't need my therapist as much as I thought I did. For some reason, this was scarier than admitting to needing her in the first place. I guess it felt like it meant I was alone. I don't know why.
All this stuff is so unexpected, so I'm having trouble putting it all together. I hope I get somewhere with it.
<< Dreams are interesting because there is never any right or wrong to them - they tell stories to us but we are the writers - so your interpretation of your dream is what is important. I love dream work!
That said (grin) there are a few things in it I'd like to point out, if that is OK. You said:
****I dreamed that I went to see her and went in on a different level (usually, I have to go up stairs to see her, but I went in on the ground floor). She had to come downstairs to get me. She held me by the sleeve as we went up, as if she was afraid I'd bolt.
In the dream - YOU went deeper and she had to come and find you and bring you back up. And she held on to you - didn't want to lose you. It makes me wonder about two things - depression getting worse and/or the intense need for you to bury your emotions deep within yourself. But your therapist doesn't leave you to them, and she doesn't let you run away from them.
****When I woke up, she was gone, but there was a voice shouting, "don't sit up!" I did anyway, because I was confused.
Whose voice was this shouting? I'm assuming it was your therapist (?) warning you - but perhaps it was in internal voice warning you also. So even though she was gone, she was still there enough to warn you about something potentially scary and dangerous. In dreams, btw - lying down and then sitting up can sometimes representing growing up or growth. We are pretty regressed lying down and sitting up gives us a different vantage from which to view the world.
****There were a million reporters standing around and they snapped pictures of me naked. The front page of the Times the next day was going to have pics of my naked torso (in the dream, it seemed perfectly logical that they'd WANT that:))
Makes sense to me - the torso holds the heart and your core-self - which are so often exposed in therapy. And pictures are snap shots - moments captured (recordings of your therapy work).
****I had to run around trying to convince all these reporters not to use the pics--I knew I'd get fired and my friends would never speak to me again--but they all wanted something different in exchange, things I couldn't locate or provide.
What happens when your therapy self "comes out" at work or with your friends? So many people want different things from you and you give it to them to protect your "therapy self" - the vulnerability that you wrote about is so clear here. But there is a truth buried here - "things I couldn't locate or provide." It is scary to realize that we are changing and can't give to others what they want from us or we can't be who we aren't. And I think when the feelings for our therapist are so intense, many of our IRL friends question the feelings, or worry or even believe that we should banish those feelings, so we hide them. Or we try to.
I also had a random thought after reading your dream posts. I wonder if the move and meeting someone has stirred up feelings that "everything" is changing and that is just too overwhelming so you shut down your feelings. Does having feelings for someone else cause guilt/worry in any way - meaning if you don't feel so intensely for your therapist, does that mean you lose her? I know you "know" you are working on moving to stage three - but does moving on entail loss to you? Like I said - random thought.
Thank you for sharing your dream and letting me "play" with it a little.
poster:raisinb
thread:816719
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080226/msgs/817103.html