Alot, actually.
This post was inspired by a recent post from The Peanut Queen, in which she told us of her dream the night before and wondered what it may have meant. I hinted in the comments that dreams have both helped me work through problem areas in my life and brought to light (or maybe highlight is a better word) some other issues I was experiencing at the time.
I know that everyone dreams each night, but like me most people don't remember them the next morning. On the rare occation that I do remember one of my dreams it is a just a jumbled nonsensical mess. On other occations they have been quite clear. In my college Psych class we studied dreams and I remember reading that it is possible to get to the point where you can actually interact with your dreams and change their outcome. The example given was that of a rape victim with horrid reoccuring nightmares of her brutal rape. With the help of a therapist she was able to actually take controll of her dream and change it so that instead of her rapist braking into her bedroom her boyfriend entered the room and they made love to each other.
In another example a woman with a reoccuring nightmare where she was being chased by a large bear was able to take control of her dream. As she dreamt, and the bear started chasing her, instead of running she turned, stopped holding her hand up and said. "Stop!" and the bear stopped. She then said, "Why are you chasing me." (Ok this is the cool part.) The bear says, (yes it spoke) I am chasing you because you... Then I can't remember the rest of the detail. (Hey we are talking 20+ years here.) It seems to have had something to do with an overwhelming feeling she had about a relationship between her and her astrainged mother.
I also know that your brain doesn't know the difference between a dream, suggestion while under hypnosis, or real life. (I was able to quit smoking 15 years ago with hypnosis because of this fact.) Anyway, I am actually going to get around to my point which is this. Your brain can help you heal your own emotional wounds even if you don't make a consious effort to do so, as the women above. Here are two real life examples that happened to someone I know very well, ME!
OK, remember at the begining of this post I said, I rarely remember my dreams, well fact cements my above point. Every morning for a two or three week period, I would wake and vividly rememeber the dream I had the night before and it was the same exact dream each night. In my dream I was still married and living with my wife and children in the house I owned.
OK time for some back history....
(In reality, I had been divorced for three or four years by this point.) In my dream my In-laws were visiting and as was the standard my wife's mother was being very overbearing and manipulative. In short, she generally ran our house while she was there. In real life I was never able to get my wife to stick up for herself, or allow me to step in and do it for her. There were times when I wasn't able to take it any longer and I would speak up, but that always lead to huge fights after her parents left because I shouldn't be treating her parents that way. (Long story.) Anyway, all the years I was married I had to stuff all of my feelings toward her parent's mean spirited manipulative behavior deep inside of me where it festered in bile.
Without going into great detail, the things I was upset about were major issues, that caused huge problems for my marriage, so it really bothered me that my wife would never let me step in and say what needed to be said, which was......"You either treat my wife and I with respect, and stop manipulating us and our lives or you will no longer be welcome in my home."
Even after my divorce the thought of her mother in particular would cause me great stress and anger that I was unable to work through. I knew it wasn't healthy, and I knew that I was allowing those feelings to get the better of me but I couldn't stop.
OK back to the dream again. Every night for that short time I would dream that her parents were visiting us and hatefully manipulating our lives, but in the dream I stood up for my wife, myself. I told them how their actions were hurting our marriage and that I would no longer tolorate their treatment of their daughter and or me. To be honest, I don't remember if they ever rebutted what I said in the dream but I don't think they did. You see the dream wasn't about them. It is my believe that my brain was helping me work through this issue.
I spoke to my own mother and told her I was having these dreams and that it seemed odd and out of place because I had not seen or spoken to my ex's parents in several years. At the time we just chalked it up to being a dream and nothing else. Then one day about a month or so later I realized I all of that pent up anger and emotion was gone! TOTALLY GONE!!!!!!
How freekin cool is that?
Ok, story two.....
I woke several mornings in a row vividly remembering this dream. It was summer and I was in the back yard of a home I have never seen before, yet I knew I lived there. The lawn had been freshly cut and people I knew started showing up. No one really was talking to each other or to me. Another weird thing was that these people all lived in different parts of the country. (We moved around alot when I was a kid.) Each person was the age they had been when I knew them.
All of a sudden there was a large cement swimming pool which had appeared in the back yard. It was in the shape of a circle and painted light blue. (The same light blue as the large house, my house, that it was attached to.) Everyone that was present was now sitting on the edge of the pool, pants rolled, and skirts and dresses hiked up dangling our bare legs in the warm water enjoying ourselves. Still no one was speeking.
Then something struck me as really odd. Even though I knew the pool to be very shallow, there was a whale swimming in cirlces brushing up against our feet and legs. I didn't feel afraid, and no one else seemed to either. This was odd given that the whale was and Orca, you know "Killer Whale, with big ass sharp teeth."
After one or two trips around the pool the whale stopped infront of me and took my foot and ankle in his mouth, then closed it. Not to bite it off and eat it just to hold onto me. I got the distinct feeling I would me un able to get away from the whale and that even though I was not afraid now if I did try to get loose it would not trun out well.
As the whale held me with his teeth he looked at me. I don't know how I knew it but I could tell he felt sorry for me, and sorry that I coun't get away. Every so often he would let go, leaving no marks on me swim around a few more times while some of the other people left and other's showed up and put their feet in the pool. The weird thing was, when the whale let go, I never took my feet out of the water I just waited until he came around and held onto me with his teeth again looking as though he felt sorry for me.
When I woke the next morning I just knew that this dream didn't fall into the catagory of weird dreams that meant nothing after eating spicy food the night before. The first thing I did was found a dream inturpritation web site. (sorry don't remember which one) that allowed you to search the archives so I typed in Whale.
I found out that most often when people dream about a whale it is because they feel very overwhelmed about something without the ability to change the situation. I almost fell out of my chair! At work ( a previous job) I had a lot of stress related to changing bosses which doubled my work load until I could get the new guy trained, and I had a HUGE, and hugely important project that I was sole owner of that needed to be handled right the first time because there would be no second chances. The big problem was that many of the variables were out of my control and those responcible for them were not pulling their own weight. Furthermore, if the project failed I wouldn't be able to say, well so and so didn't do thus and such. All of the blame would rest with me. Needless to say I was hugely overwelmed. How on earth had my brain known that was an issue bothering me and come up with the above dream I will never know.
I didn't need this dream to tell me that I was well aware of it. However, I belive had I asked the sad whale I he was holding onto my foot he would likely have told me exactly what I already knew to be true.
Finally, my mother was a school teacher for many years. She always tells a story about her first year of teaching when she dreamt she was walking down a long hall. The longer she walked to longer the hall became. At the end of the hall she could see an elevator. After some time she reached the elevator and when she pushed the button, the doors opened and 40 midgets trampled over top of her. I remember her saying, "Don't ask me why I know there where forty I just do."
Gee do you think a first year teacher might feel overwhelmed by a classroom full of children?????
I guess all of this was to say that yes I do belive that dreams can mean things. That said, sometime dreams are just that dreams. I can only remember a few times having a dream and waking up the next morning and remembered actually thinking as I dreamt that "This is a dream." although I have never been able to control one.
Here is another one.... I have read that people don't forget things, meaning they are completely gone from a person's memory. It is better discribed as not being able to retrieve the knowledge you are trying to recall. Thus the word re-MEMBER. The act of putting back together. So that would mean all of the German vocabulary I learned in school long ago is still floating around in my brain, along with the knowledge of how sentences are structured ect. So I have awoken and remember that I have dreamt in fluant German. During the dream I knew what I was saying and so did everyone else. Furtheremore, I could recall what I had said, but only in English without one chance in hell of being able to repeat it in German to save my life.
Just some stuff to think about.
