Has T ever appeared in a dream?

I've had quite a few...usually when I'm anxious about something with T. Some have been really good, insightful, interesting dreams. Others...I wake up either mad or panicking.

At first T was a T-rex I was trapped in a cage with, then he became a wolf I had to get by in order to be free, but he's just T.

Yes, actually he has a couple of times.. I never remeber though, what he says or anything.

Classy and considerate - not!

Yes, I guess those ideas did come from within, and yet...

On every occasion, I told the T about it and she said, yes, that's exactly what I was trying to tell you.

SPECULATION: (Sorry if this triggers you.)

Could this be about boundaries?
Things you don't really want, but feel you can't say no to?
Cigar as metaphor for sex?

In two dreams that I remember.

In one I walked up to the office waiting area door and it was locked. I waited and waited and then I fell asleep. Sometime later she awakened me and acted angry that I was sleeping on the footstep. I just got up and left.

(a side note: she runs late for session every single time)

In the other dream T and I were in her office and she (uncharacteristically) was talking about herself in a teaching situation where the students were being quite disruptive and rude. Then T starts crying and immediately starts making apologies for her crying. I say "it's fine, you can't help it if you cry, your emotions are running high because you are pregnant"

(side note: she is not pregnant)

guess it doesn't sound that way in that little sound bite, does it! most of the time, she actually was, but I seemed to throw her off her usual stride, esp. at the last there, I guess.

Okay, I admit that I've had more than one dream about my therapist in the 2 1/2 years that I've been with her

My all time favorite: I'm in a livingroom with two of my friends from work and we're talking. My therapist is in a room off the livingroom and she calls out, "I'll be with you in a minute, I just need to finish this." I continue talking with my friends but feel an increase in my level of anxiety.

When she comes into the room a few minutes later, she sits down and begins to talk to all of us in a friendly and chatty way. I feel that I need to go to the bathroom and get up and tell everyone I have to be excused for a minute.

I go into her "bathroom" and find all these beach towels covering the floor. They are "squishy" and wet as I make my way to the toilet. When I reach the toilet, I realize that it is "stopped up" and there is a towel in the toilet and I'm ticked off that she didn't tell me that the toilet was "still stopped up". Apparently, it was stopped up the last time I saw her. As I turn to leave, I almost fall into the tub--there are all these beach towels in the tub and they are obviously wet. I catch myself on the side of the tub and leave. . ..

I LOVE talking about dreams with my therapist. She and I talked about "peeing" as being a signal that one is "PEEDED OFF". I guess I was mad at her about something . .. along with the other issues of her talking with my friends and not paying attention to my needs.

Absolutely love, love dreams and what they mean.

Fascinating. I wonder what it all means...

I've had a number of dreams about my T. In one, she responded to an email I had sent by giving me a thermos of coffee. In the dream, I remember being pleased that she had given me something that was hers and warm. But then she sent me an email that had been intended for another client, wishing her a happy birthday.

In another dream, my T was trying to hit me. I was doing the sort of duck and cover move you make when someone is about to attack you. Making that motion is a sort of body memory for me. I don't remember actually having done so.

In the time surrounding that dream, I had been feeling as if I actually wanted my T to try to hit me, because it felt familiar, as if it would be something I would actually understand. Her kindness throws me.

Wow, likelife, the dream about the themos of coffee sounds so much like "giving and then taking away." I think that must be something that a lot of us feel in therapy. . . that our therapist's give to us (warmth and acceptance) and then take it away with seeing other clients. That might be too simplistic, but is sure resonated with me!

As for the "hitting dream", what were your thoughts on that one? I think it's significant that you viewed it as a "sort of body memory for me." Is that something that you think might have been something you experienced as a child/youth? Or is it possibly about you seeing therapy as a hit/miss type of experience? That sometimes it feels like an attack or assault on your defenses? Interesting stuff.

I think you're spot on in your interpretation of the first dream. It does often feel as if my T is "giving and then taking away," though I also know that in reality, she isn't taking anything from me.

I do have fuzzy memories of being hit when I was a kid, especially when I was crying, so I think there's some reality to the body memory piece of it. (As an aside, it takes a lot for me to say that, having categorically insisted for years that I must have been making up stuff about my childhood because I couldn't remember it clearly.) I also like your thoughts about the attack on my defenses. I'm such a literalist sometimes that alternate possibilities elude me. Thanks for your thoughts. And I agree: fascinating stuff!

I've had a lot of dreams about my T. (My life is so boring and I'm so lonely, I guess that makes sense. Who else would I dream about?)

Anyways, in some dreams I was with him and his family. I was there, but knew I didn't belong. Eventually I left. Not in anger, just sadly.

Then there's been a lot where he keeps moving closer to me in different ways. One was interesting. We were having session in a subway station (!?) and it was really noisy. He sat down on the bench next to me, but he was too close - he was a good 3 feet away, but it was still too close for my comfort. I moved further away from him and we continued the session. But now I couldn't hear him very well. I had this dream when the emotional intimacy was developing in the therapeutic relationship. I have problems with intimacy, and this was making it very uncomfortable for me. I was resistant. But as the dream showed, if I don't let him get close to me then we can't communicate. Interesting.

The funniest one was when I was in his house and he refused to give me dinner.I got very angry and picked up a champagne glass and cocked my arm back ready to throw it. He kept saying, "You're not going to throw that at me, not in my house." We circled around the kitchen and all the while I was planning exactly where and how hard I was going to throw it. And I did. It felt good. End of dream.

I thought of something else in reply to this thread. I won't go into all the details, but it involved a man walking slowly toward me. Not threatening or scary, but just looking at me. I didn't know who he was, and he was wearing glasses where the lenses were all shattered and I couldn't see his eyes.

When we discussed the dream, from the context it turned out that it was him. It was so obvious after we talked about it! And he said, "Sometimes we're in disguise." By "we" he meant T's. I thought that was interesting.

Haha yes! I've shared a number of my dreams with my T now, and she's been in a few - but she's also claimed credit for other characters as well! I'll be like, 'there was some blonde woman rummaging under my bed trying to find something' and she'll be all 'maybe that was me!'... Shrewd...

The first dream I had that was clearly about T, was that I was having a session with her but we kept having to relocate as we kept being interrupted. We moved to an office, a school, a living room, shopping mall, a park... My T seemed different in the dream, cold and grey and distant. In the dream I told her this, and she snapped back to her usual self, and said "It's not me who changed, [JSG]."

My T's interpretation was essentially that I seemed to be having trouble progressing - that I had to keep relocating and starting again, like I was stuck - and that as she 'wasn't all she seemed', perhaps I was having trouble trusting her.

I had that dream after what I felt was a strange, disconnected session. At first I'd thought it was her, but I realised it had been me who'd shut down, and for the first time I'd consciously avoided telling the full truth about something. I sent her an email about this dream and the session, and I feel it was her thoughtful reply to it that led to a different chapter in our sessions together, my putting real trust in her... and ultimately what we're working on now, which feels pretty big for me! Funny how things can follow on... I write her any dreams I can remember now, in case there's some earth shattering significance in there!

That one i usually see has tried to insert herself into my nightmares. I have told her a couple of time about these recuring nightmares I have had for many years and she said she thought it meant something about her. I was like "dude, i had these before I ever met you, what makes you think you are in them? It really is not all about you."

not for a very long time... and that makes me happy

Thanks, CE, for starting this. Now when I read back over my dreams I notice that my T showed strong emotion in both dreams (anger in 1st, sadness in 2nd). T is the epitome of "neutral" in our sessions and I see I gave her emotions in the dreams.

Yes, and they embarrass me because it feels like I'm crossing boundaries (not that my unconscious can help it, of course). I have had 2 or 3 dreams about her and I have told her about all of them. The first one was 10 years ago, I dreamed I was in her "house" and the walls were adorned in marble and gold. The 2nd one was a couple years later and I was in another "house" of hers, this time with a huge white staircase and hardwood floors. Anyone see a theme here?? The 3rd one was just last year and it was the strangest. Her office was in one of those huge libraries like you would find in a castle. She had tattoos all over her face, they were mostly cursive writing and ornamental symbols. I think the writing was just gobbledygook, I can't remember what it actually said if anything.

always placing her in grand mansions and "marble halls"...I guess I must think very highly of her and place her high up on a pedestal.

I recently had a dream about my T. I was walking down a street in a European city, being followed by increasingly large crowds of people. I was frightened, because I knew they intended to harm me. I saw a side street and ran down that street. It was a typical street you would find in an old area of Greece or Rome. Row homes, high wooden antique doors topped with stained glass. One was open so I entered, and closed the door behind me. The home had walls and doors but no furniture, pictures, appliances or windows. Someone knocked on the door; I opened it and it was my T. He handed me a large, king sized quilt coverd with bright, jewel toned squares of material. It was a large size version of one I had used in a visualization of my adult self comforting my child self. He said nothing, and I closed the door. I instinctively knew that covering myself completely in this quilt would keep me safe from the people outside in the street that wanted to harm me.I pulled the quilt completely around me, covering my eyes, then woke up.

My T's interpretation - the people chasing me represent the fears in my life that I fight to conquer. The quilt represents the coping skills he and I have worked on together (the various blocks of the quiolt), and how deeply they've become engrained in my everyday life, hence the vividness of the colors.

I think dreams are fascinating. I wish I could remember more of them.

I find dreams fascinating too, Towanda. I've gotten better at remembering them over time. One thing I've learned is that if I have a dream, I need to stay still in bed for a few minutes as I remember and commit the dream to my memory. If I move to get up and then try to remember the dream. .. even a few minutes later, it's gone!

One of my favorite dreams of my therapist happened early in my therapy. I dreamt that I was walking along a steep path with a woman at my side. I couldn't see the woman's face, but later, after waking up, I was sure it was my therapist. At one point during the walk, the woman's shoe became untied and I stood beside her as she sat down and tied her shoe. She then stood up with ease and grace. A little further along the path, my shoe became untied and I sat down on the path to tie it. When I tried to get up, I struggled. I rocked back and forth to get the momentum to get back on my feet . .. kind of like a young child who wasn't as balanced or coordinated. There was a lot more to the dream, but the thing that struck me was the difference between myself and the woman's ability to get back up on my feet. I truly believe it was the contrast I saw between myself and my therapist--I saw her as capable and graceful in dealing with a problem . . .and I saw myself as more immature and struggling in my attempt to be independent.

Yup. I had a dream where my T was this evil Lord Puppet Master who killed everyone I knew and turned them into bloody corpse puppets and destroyed the world using some sort of "Inception"-like (Movie) powers. No, I did not watch Inception or any scary movies any time near this dream.

I almost always remember my dreams and sometimes remember many from each night. The first time I was aware of T appearing in a dream was maybe after 6-8 months of seeing her weekly. I dreamt that the client before me came out of T's office and was acting strangely. T came out and spoke to her, and asked her to go back into her office. A short while later, T came out and told me that the person she was seeing before me was particularly unwell, and she'd be unable to see me that day.

Not the most exciting T dream!

Actually, I just remembered the once I dreamt about having a really good appointment and T said things that were really helpful, and I woke up feeling a little bit better than usual. I could use of few more of those sorts of dreams.

T has appeared in several dreams for me, I think, but I can only remember snatches of them when I wake up and basically nothing now. The only one I have any recollection of is I was getting into the back seat of a car and she was getting into the driver's seat of the van next to it. The front windows of both vehicles were open. I was singing a song by Regina Spektor (can't remember which one) and she looked up and smiled and started singing "Lady sing the blues so well" (Lady by Regina Spektor) and I finished the line "As if she mean it. As if it's hell down here in this smoke filled world where the jokes are cold they don't laugh at jokes. They laugh at tragedies."
So basically us swapping Regina Spektor songs? It was weird because I KNOW she doesn't know any Regina Spektor. She once asked what sort of music I listened to and I told her and she said she wasn't familiar with the artist. Kinda random.