Dream / Memory

I woke up with nightmares again today. My T says I should put less pressure on myself to remember whatever this recurring nightmare is. From the little I can tell him about the dream, he says it sounds more like a memory than just a run-of-the-mill nightmare, and blocking it out of my conscious mind is not a sign of weakness, but a "normal" response to trauma.

I think that the sooner I remember whatever this is and address it, the sooner the nightmares stop. What do you guys think? Any tips on remembering the dream? I have a notepad next to the bed, but by the time I stop gasping for air and realize I'm awake, the dream is gone. I'll still be shaking, but have no memory of the dream.

Hi,

I would sincerely suggest lucid dreaming it's very powerful method of been 'present' in your dreams to 'see' what is happening. It can take some time to get 'clear insight' but it is worthy.

All the Best

Sounds highly unpleasant. i don't know how to force memory of a nightmare.

Maybe going in to back door will loosen things up. Stop trying to remember the action line, but as soon as you waken try to write down all structures, objects, bits of dialogue, flashes of music or pictures that stick that stick in your mind.

Lay this aside and glance at it now and then. It may begin to resemble. Good luck.

No advice on remembering dreams, but I'm sorry you've been inundated with nightmares. They seem like such a cruel trick of the unconscious.

Maybe try to stay with it, accept it. Know that you're safe in bed, in your own home, and nothing can hurt you. Try to tell yourself that it's from the past, it's over, it's gone, there's only a memory (or a dream) that's like an echo. I agree with your T that you shouldn't pressure yourself to remember it, but try. Just don't beat yourself up if you can't remember. The fact that this is recurring means that your unconscious is grappling with something and trying to communicate it to you.

Try to put yourself in the frame of mind that you will let it happen, you will accept it. I think we can convince ourselves like this and open our minds. Maybe if you try to put this thought in your head, one of these times it happens you actually WILL remember it.

And keep that notepad handy! Good luck to you. This sounds unpleasant as all get-out.

Can you draw or paint pictures of the dream, what you remember and how it made you feel? Im visual.

So far, I can remember the room it happened in. I can see the carpet and the curtains. From the furniture in the room, I know it's from before I was 6. From the height of the bottom edge of the curtains, I'm guessing I'm four or five.

OH, my T wants me to try to picture myself at that age sitting in the room with T and me now. ????? UGH. He thinks she needs compassion.

Ack. I would never let myself at that age get near the therapist. I have enough trouble protecting me from the woman now. I don't think I have enough resources to make that safe.

He said some things that made it seem almost safe for a moment. My issue is that I hate that kid SO much. I do want to tell him that because then he throws around the word "abusive" in reference to how talk to myself.

My own experience, which is not really so much over but still in progress, is that "that girl" that holds certain memories has got kind of a sassy, attention-getting side to her. I can either treat her with respect (and compassion) and experience a sort of gentle release of a specific memory, or I can be dismissive and hostile towards her. The later results in her pretty much tossing stink bombs (e.g. bad nightmares, unpleasant olfactory or other details that make me feel sick, or really scared, or, well, you get it) at me until I actually get it through my thick skull that I need to BE differently towards myself or ain't nothin' going to change.

Consider that maybe these nightmares are not just "information" about facts in the traditional sense, but their method of unpleasant delivery is also information that you may want to pay attention to. However much you may hate "that kid" for what you think she did wrong or didn't do right, she's got a certain amount of agency now and she's not afraid to F you up with it. For me, having some realization that "that kid" had actually evolved in the 40 some years that I the adult have evolved, or that she had benefited from therapy, that she had the stones to try to mess with me to get my attention, was pretty much the beginning of me getting some perspective on who I was as a child that didn't involve detesting her.

Anyway, I have no idea if my experience has any resemblance to the neighborhood of what is going on with you, but I think your T makes a lot of sense that changing the current situation is about changing the way you see/saw yourself as that kid.

grumbling and cursing about how much sense that makes, Anne.

I think of dreams as a way our unconscious mind sends a message to the conscious. When I can't remember a dream, and I want to, I reassure myself by thinking that if the unconscious is trying to send me a message and the message is an important one, the unconscious will try again. I have had the same dream in several different forms that repeated until I "got the message." So I guess just be patient, and the message will be sent again.

That said, when I really wanted to remember a dream, I tried to lie still in bed, with eyes closed and visualize my brain as having 2 entrances. I would let conscious thought (being awake) drift out one of the entrances and that made it possible for the unconscious dream to flow back in the other entrance. I found that once it started flowing in, I didn't even have to wait for the whole thing. I could just grab it by the tail and remember it once I had a bit of the dream I had already dreamt. This was a visualization that worked for me. Probably sounds bizarre to others. You will have to come up with what works for you.

Good luck.

Are you on any meds (not just psychiatric)? It could just be a parasomnia caused by your medicines. Maybe have a sleep study? I know the body can use intense dreams/images to get you to wake if you are having physical problems (say with breathing) and/or have taken a sleeping med and need to wake (to go to the bathroom or something :-)

Parasomnias: Nightmares, Night Terrors, Confusional Arousals and More

I've had all kinds of dreams, from lucid to strangely abstract to vivid like memories, and some dreams that I can't even figure out the connection to me, as if they are about someone else. Even though I believe in the power of the unconscious and do a form of psychoanalysis myself in therapy, I rarely talk about my dreams or process them even on my own.

I guess the shift happened because what I realized is that dreams might simply be a way of trying to process something that I would at this point prefer to happen while I'm asleep. Usually if I talk about or process a dream, I focus only on the affect that is dominant in the dream. Whatever feeling state is most present in the dream. This gives me some information about what I am currently feeling, not necessarily the past though it might be tied back there.

While I do believe that parts of us are lost to us and instead remain tied to some past experiences especially if traumatic, so in that sense "frozen in time" and age specific, I just don't think that forcing it in an artificial way would be helpful.

I've also found that when I'm having a dream that is going badly and repeating some sort of outline of a traumatic event, I end up now, no matter what sleep meds, waking up to end it. I just shake it off and then go back to sleep.

Maybe this isn't coherent or advice at all. I just think that dreams are complicated and there isn't one single way to approach them. And they will always have distortions even if a traumatic type that has memory in it. It's definitely pushing if the dream repeats but doesn't give you a feeling that you can work with. Beyond that I'm not sure what to say.

I second, third, fourth... nth this.

What IS it with your T wanting to be in the room??? Tell him nobody else's t ever said that in the history of the world, and that I think he needs to get therapy for it!! The only room he gets to be in, is the consulting room. it's not like he's the Tooth Fairy.

...or is he??

I've experimented a couple of times with going back to my childhood and trying to see what I could remember. I did this on my own, outside of the T room, when I was close to drifting off to sleep. All of a sudden there was just a whirlwind swirling around me, an absolute maelstrom, and I was completely terrified. I didn't see anything, just felt like I was going to be blown off the planet. I realized I would never EVER try to go back alone. If I ever do it again, T is going to be with me. In this scenario I'm just a helpless little kid - I'm not going back as the adult I am now, but a small and helpless child. I want someone big and strong with me to protect me, and he's it.

Perhaps this is what your T is thinking. I don't think it's weird at all. I ain't never going back to the past alone!

MKAC, have you ever worked with a client who has had one crappy thing happen to them over and over, and who seems to have few resources to cope, and seems to make one poor choice after another, resulting in a chain of sh*tstorms?

And then you start to know them better, and you start to realize that they are like that children's story of the stone soup, that they are actually taking what little they have and are figuring out how to get little bits of other things they need, and they are actually clever in how they manage to get it, and that they are gradually squirreling away enough resources to make something pretty impressive? That ultimately, this person that you thought was pretty pathetic turned into somebody who you realized did so much with so little, and was so dogged and determined in trying to reach her goal that once you'd seen her through enough time and circumstances, you saw her as someone that was strong?

I think when you can really look objectively at that kid and understand the circumstances, it's not always what it seems. Finding your compassion for that kid is not just about finding compassion in the abstract, it is what naturally will develop if you allow yourself to see who that kid really was, and who she is now.

hankster my friend, I suggest with gentleness that T's actually DO this, as well as suggest this, all the time. That in part this is what therapy is all about. In Buddha's Brain, Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom: Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius: 9781572246959: Amazon.com: Books,

the author suggests that healing the physical trauma that trauma causes to the brain is done by infusing bad memories with the imagination that you are there with "someone that you love." In a way, by T being there while we talk about what happened, this is how our brains start to get out of their well worn grooves and we move from making reflexive responses to more considered ones.

So I think what MKAC's T is suggesting here is sort of a two for one deal, that he is trying to be there for both MKAC and that kid, and help diffuse the trauma caused to both of them. IMO anyway.

That therapist I see does talk about how having her be there is supposed to be useful and how she is kind to the young me and some other stuff but I usually have checked out by that point. It totally creeps me out because I find the presence of the therapist is not reassuring and I would rather any young me be killed off. But she does bring it back up every so often. I understand the idea of not wanting to revisit a young self - particularly if one is viewing that as a vulnerable, moronic thing who, if only would have exhibited the slightest whiff of intelligence, could have warded off all sorts of things and done them correctly. Or that is how I see what the therapist describes.
MKAC - I think you find the presence of the therapist useful right? So it might be something to at least try. (But I also understand wanting to kill it).

MKAC, I'm going to steal a page from my own T's book here and ask, what do you imagine happening if you were to show compassion to your child self?

I am not on any medications at this point. I have sleeping pills my regular doctor prescribed, but I don't want to become dependent on anything.

He says he would like to be in the room because the child deserves to be surrounded by love and compassion and to be heard with understanding and validation. I think he knows where I am well enough to know that I am not capable of offering that right now.

I get what you are saying, but I do not want anything remotely paternal from him and this whole idea feels quite paternal. The whirlwind / maelstrom thing is really, very familiar though. Lying in bed after the nightmare, shaking, completely unable to remember anything about the dream, I feel totally overwhelmed and all reason is swept away. There is no lying there, relaxing or accepting, or trying to be "present" in the dream. It's just GONE when I awake and all I'm left with is this feeling of terror.

That does sound like what his intent is. We have discussed that it very much feels to me like my brain has worn these grooves -- like a record played too many times.

I have noticed that the first time he mentioned it, I was absolutely panic stricken. My throat felt like it was closing and my mouth was dry, and I was just frozen in terror. This time, I was more like, no, NOT happening. But not so terrified.

The parts I bolded are the parts that really, REALLY apply for me. If I could have shown even a glimmer of good sense, so much could have been avoided.

I find him useful. But I also feel badly when he calls me abusive. If I talk about my reluctance to give that child any attention, and my desire STILL for her to just die, he is going to call me abusive again.

She doesn't deserve compassion, Sally. I have a hard time getting past that. She was a weird, dumb, kind of creepy little kid.