(((Big Mama))),

Well I have not herd her terms, but what you are talking about is that your brain is trying to figure out how to process the memories/thoughts you have during the day while you sleep at night. You have been working on your past that you have not resolved emotionally, so your brain is trying to figure out how to store it all away at night while you are sleeping.

If you think about it, you have been really working on your past, and how it is bothering you today, and you have not come up with a "safe path forward" yet.
You have been sending messages in your brain "Yes, this was bad and I don't know how to fix it or deal with it". So, at night your brain is left with trying to figure it out as well and if you attached uncomfortable emotions to memories during the day, well, your brain is going to do that at night as well.

By writing down these dreams, it allows you to pay attention to what your brain is doing with information at night. And by taking the information and thinking about solutions during the day that are "more positive" you are giving your brain a better way to process the problem at night while you sleep.

When people have "tramatic" experiences they always go through the process of trying to understand it and find answers to it that will help them see the warning signs in the future. It is all about learning and again thriving. If you never resolved a bad experience or had answers that you could work around in "life" then when a reminder comes up, or you "do" begin to work on it or recall it, you dream bad dreams because you don't have a way of formulating options in your brain so that your brain could dream up a story with a solution.

When we dream, we are processing alot of information, things we see, hear, touch, and feel emotionally during the day. Then at night while we sleep our brain sorts it out and puts the images, sounds, smells, physical sensations all together in a story it can store away or even disgard.

So, in therapy you are talking about things in your life that you didn't really have answers for, things that bother you, make you feel bad about your life or environment and the people you interact with. As you are doing that you are actually "learning" how to look at things from your past, realize that while you cannot "change" it, you "can" learn to finally find enough resolve so that you begin to feel better about yourself and your life in general.

What you are doing is slowly putting in information in your brain that will allow you to finally take the information you have not resolved into a place where your brain has learned enough and now can store in an area that you can tap onto in your life that has "problem solving answers" for you.

By writing down your "bad or upsetting dreams" you will see where you are struggling, and you can work on putting information into your brain that helps direct it so it can finally store confusing information.

Retraining the brain? Well, I think of it as giving your brain better information to work with, building your own data base better. So instead of sending yourself old solutions of "people are just going to be mean to me" or "I am always going to feel bad about being intimate" or "my husband is never going to be trustworthy" or all the things you are now sorting through? You will slowly have "better answers, ways of looking at these challenges" and realizing how to slowly "self empower" instead of turning to "victim mentality" that you unknowingly processed into your brain.

I often compare it to finally learning how to tie your shoes differently. For a while, you will have to pay attention to it as you do it, instead of how you did it the old way where you did it without thinking about it. Another way of thinking about this too, is that if you were to take up knitting, for a while you would have to "pay attention to every movement", however as you continue to do it on a constant basis, eventually you would be able to "knit" and sit in a group and talk at the same time, or watch TV and knit away without having to focus "all" of your attention to it.

It "takes time" to problem solve to a point where you are not constantly going to the old habits you had to think about yourself and your old ways of "dealing". However, Big Mama, you "can" make accomplishments and gains. It just takes "time and lots of patience".

Open Eyes