I have lots of time missing in my memories but I do know that the house I grew up in had violence and chaos going on in it. I also just recently had a memory come back about my brother who is 13 years older than me holding me down and tickling me till I would get sick or worse...so I was like 4-6 so he was like 17-20.... all of that for background...

I usually never remember any dreams I have...but last night I had a dream about my brother and it is burned in my memory even this morning... dreams always felt vague to me...but this one is like a movie I can replay...

Do dreams about past or people from past always mean something? I think I remember people saying dreams are a way of subconscious telling you something?

Do you discuss dreams with your T? What does T say about dreams and recovering memories? What does your T say about dreams and subconscious?

Dreams can be very helpful. Yes I discuss some dreams that I feel are significant to me.

[elliemay]

my therapist pounces on dreams like a cat on a mouse. He loves them. I wrote them off at first as spurious mind activity. Useless.

I did notice that the further I got into therapy, the more vivid and disturbing my dreams became.

Oddly my therapist would almost always cast himself in some role in my dreams. I realized that he was using them to understand where I was in my relationship with him. They were quite powerful in that aspect.

We got a lot of mileage from them. It wasn't necessarily the images or the content of the dreams, it was the meaning that I attached to them when awake. The way the dreams left me feeling that was important.

FWIW I still think dreams are random discharges of brain activity and not reflective of actual events, but rather free association of the subconscious.

[Perna]

I treat dreams about the known past as being about some issue during that time period, maybe with that person. Too, dreams are our own creations, from our own imaginations and subconscious and some claim we are every character in our dreams. It is interesting you brought up the example you did of your brother. I would look at that memory and your dream together, look at the teasing/tickling aspect that goes on too long and makes you sick (I had three older brothers and my oldest, 9 years older, would do the same thing to me but my stepmother would stop it before I got sick but it sure did hurt!).

Yes, I discussed my dreams with my T. I don't believe dreams are "true" in the sense that they happened/will happen like memories but that they are part of one's unconscious helping one stay as healthy as possible.

[tkdgirl]

I don't know much about dreams or their interpretation.

I pretty much never dream, maybe once or twice a year. (T claims we dream all the time and just don't remember). Last week for the first time in a long time I had a dream ok well maybe more a nitemare, where I woke up shaking and hyperventalating. It was related to my mother, whereby I was screaming at her that she was drunk.

I told my T about my dream, it was a brief one and I didn't remember much of the details. T was encouraging about wanting to hear about it. T seemed to believe that the dream was a reflection of repressed emotions that were so strong they were coming through my dreams. It actually lead to a good discussion about various things.

As it seems this dream has somehow "shook" you up, I would recommend mentioning it to your T and see what your T thinks.

[Sannah]

Yeah, I agree that what happens in the dream is just your mind arranging things but the message IS very important. I think that our subconscious takes a theme that we are struggling with and then writes a dream script to help us work it out.

Originally Posted by Readytostop

I usually never remember any dreams I have...but last night I had a dream about my brother and it is burned in my memory even this morning... dreams always felt vague to me...but this one is like a movie I can replay...

Do dreams about past or people from past always mean something? I think I remember people saying dreams are a way of subconscious telling you something?

Do you discuss dreams with your T? What does T say about dreams and recovering memories? What does your T say about dreams and subconscious?

Your dream is what I call a "strong" dream. My strong dreams are very important, and some I can still recall years later. The trick is to figure out what they mean.

My T LOVES dreams and we've been doing a lot of dream work for the past 6 months. He's very good at interpreting them, but now I'm getting better at it myself. His view is that we are ruled by our unconscious, and dreams come from the unconscious, so .... it's important to listen and try to understand. He has even said that when he listens to dreams it's like talking to another person. (!!)

And I get it now. Although I consciously might want things to be a certain way, my unconscious may have its own agenda, and once again I shoot myself in the foot.....

I hope you'll share it with your T. It can be almost fun to figure out the meaning, and the more of it you do, the better you'll get at it.

My T specializes in dream work, so we do a lot of that. It's so fascinating!! She says that is how our psyche speaks to us, through the symbolism in dreams. I keep a notebook by my bed and record any dream I remember upon waking. Sometimes I get a messy scribble I can barely read, I figure I only sorta woke up and wrote it down LOL. It's really cool how over the course of 5 months or so I can read back in my dream journal and see like a common thread weaving through them.