[AllyIsHopeful]

*Mention of CSA**May Be Triggering

Is dream work completely pointless?

As a child I had this recurring dream that began at age 4 and still popped up in my early teens. It was more like a nightmare, actually. I had the nightmare frequently as a small child, went years without it, and then it came back.

I do believe dreams are relevant to one's experience with certain feelings or specific events or people. Unfortunately all of the major symbols in my dream represent sexual desires and feelings. I remember very specific abuse based on how traumatic those incidents were and some memories are due to flashbacks. I know I experienced CSA, perhaps by a few different people at different ages...but I cannot remember those events. I have somatic flashbacks and strong somatic reactions when seeing pictures or thinking of certain people, and I demonstrated most of the signs of sexual abuse as a child...my family was just so blind to it.

Maybe it sounds weird to not remember something so traumatic. I recall dissociating a lot, as if I had a twin sister experiencing the abuse as I watched. Sometimes my mind just went black.

Anyway to avoid getting too emotional I will go back to my main question and spare additional detail.

My therapist wants me to journal around this dream because she thinks it is important and will help us process things. She said what makes it important is that it was recurring and how I can remember every detail of it still; however she doesn't do dream work and is unable to properly interpret them.

I used an online therapy database and made a request for dream interpretation and got a few positive responses, validating the importance of dreams. But there is one Psych who responded and told me there is zero evidence dreams have anything to do with our waking life and even if it did, I should not "live my life around it" because it is not the only thing that made me the person I am today. WTF???? I felt horrible after reading that and so discouraged!

Is he right?? Is it pointless? I'm not wanting to use it to recover repressed memories or anything....I guess now I don't know what I want.

I don't even feel like going to therapy tomorrow because he made me feel it was pointless to talk about childhood abuse at all since it is only a small fraction of who I am and how I feel. I wish I could post word for word what he said. Maybe I will later.

Gosh thanks to anyone who makes it to the end of this novel. I feel so directionless.

[someone321]

I have a meeting in 3 minutes so cannnot write much, but I just wanted to let you know that i do not think that dreams are pointless... I wouldn't translate them directly and looking for hundreds hidden meanings; however, I think that if you were dreaming few times about the same thing it really could mean something... Maybe your organism wants to telly you something, so I would focus more on your feelings during/after the dream than on the actual plot of your dream...

I'll write more after the meeting...

[sweepy62]

I process my csa dreams in therapy, my t says they are very important, i remember quite alot of my csa, and the dreams have to do alot with them, I keep a journal. She says they are like flashbacks but in dreams, trust me they really are, do I want to process them, NO, but they do help me vent.

[AllyIsHopeful]

Originally Posted by sweepy62

I process my csa dreams in therapy, my t says they are very important, i remember quite alot of my csa, and the dreams have to do alot with them, I keep a journal. She says they are like flashbacks but in dreams, trust me they really are, do I want to process them, NO, but they do help me vent.

Thanks for sharing your experience with it. My original thinking was parallel with how your T views them.
Since I am aware of my dissociation issues, mostly going numb or blacking out, I have a feeling the dream really is an encrypted flashback. There is nothing but symbolism but literally every strange thing in my dream has to do with sexuality.

[Leah123]

Dreamwork is a way for me to integrate my subconscious with my conscious, I find it very valuable to unite these two sides of myself. Dreams are far from meaningless in my experience: they have given me great insight and hope. I would not, as you mention, take them literally, more symbolically and metaphorically, but they're like art in that regard: is it useless because it is abstract? Of course not.

As far as dreams relating to trauma content, again, they can't be taken literally, but can certainly express the pain of trauma and include *elements* of trauma, without being the same as a record of it or memory.

I am concerned about "signs" of abuse and somatic experiences being taken literally, those things can occur due to so many variable causes, I think it's most important to just learn to accept what we have and work on improving/healing where we are at, as pushing for memory can lead to inadvertent tampering of it. Memory is just a sense, and is prone to shifting, blurring and such over time.

Most of my dreams are completely pointless, but every now and then one will come up that seems to have some significance. I don't place much weight in dreams and certainly not much time into them. Neither does my T, but we've had perhaps one or two conversations about a dream or two over the many years we've worked together.

[HazelGirl]

If you have PTSD, dreams are extremely important because you have flashbacks in your dreams. And the fact that you can't remember the CSA is normal. Have you told your T about the CSA? It's important that she knows about it and knows you have a lot of trouble remembering most pieces of it.

[someone321]

I do not like thinking that dreams exemplify our desires but probably it is because my nightmares are pretty creepy or even rather disgusting but it could mean that this is exactly what I am afraid of... I wouldn't worry so much that one person said that there is no sense in analyzing dreams at all while others have said that there is a sense (especially as HazelGirl mentioned for PTSD etc.) - I guess you know the best what is important for you, and if in your opinion your dreams mean something and you think about them, I would then say that they are important...

[sweepy62]

I agree, i have ptsd, my t and i process dreams related to csa, it has some meaning needs to be processed.

[AllyIsHopeful]

Originally Posted by Leah123

Dreamwork is a way for me to integrate my subconscious with my conscious, I find it very valuable to unite these two sides of myself. Dreams are far from meaningless in my experience: they have given me great insight and hope. I would not, as you mention, take them literally, more symbolically and metaphorically, but they're like art in that regard: is it useless because it is abstract? Of course not.

As far as dreams relating to trauma content, again, they can't be taken literally, but can certainly express the pain of trauma and include *elements* of trauma, without being the same as a record of it or memory.

I am concerned about "signs" of abuse and somatic experiences being taken literally, those things can occur due to so many variable causes, I think it's most important to just learn to accept what we have and work on improving/healing where we are at, as pushing for memory can lead to inadvertent tampering of it. Memory is just a sense, and is prone to shifting, blurring and such over time.

Well I am taking them literally because I have had suspicions for quite some time, but recently found the courage to ask some family about it. My mother confessed her BF, whom I was left alone with most of the time, went to jail for accusations of sexual abuse to a 9 year old girl. My cousin's father was caught molesting her and her sister, both on separate occasions. He was another adult I had spent some time with. I had all of the signs and my grandmother just recently FINALLY confessed that she believes it happened because I said and did such strange things once I moved with them. My flashbacks and memories are vivid but they come to a halt and lack a definite ending. I would never force myself or try to believe something that awful happened if my intuition disagreed with me. I believe I dissociated and this nightmare, along with its symbols, were my brain's way of interpreting the scary situation.

I don't think my memories have blurred and it is all, very slowly, coming back. I have post traumatic stress due to many different situations and we have tried everything under the sun to manage my PTSD symptoms. It is so bad that it interferes majorly with my life. My T said in the beginning we will only ever go there if we really need to and after a year, she thinks it is necessary.

I appreciate your response and it is reassuring to know dream work has worked for you.

[AllyIsHopeful]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

If you have PTSD, dreams are extremely important because you have flashbacks in your dreams. And the fact that you can't remember the CSA is normal. Have you told your T about the CSA? It's important that she knows about it and knows you have a lot of trouble remembering most pieces of it.

Yes my T knows about it now but I took forever to bring it up. She also knows I can't remember specific events and asked me to journal regularly about that time in my life, even if it makes no sense and the pieces I remember are small. She told me if I need to remember then it will come back but also warned that I may never have the answer. It has helped retrieving different pieces of the puzzle from my relatives and things slowly come back to me, but very intensely and all of the sudden certain flashbacks become visual.

Dreamwork has been (and still is) a big part of my therapy. My T has studied it extensively and is a big proponent obviously. I've been an avid dreamer my entire life and always KNEW there was something to dreams... but never knew there was such a thing as dreamwork until I found my T. Like Leah said it's been helpful for me as well in integrating my subconscious self with my conscious self. I just talked to my T a little bit ago we worked with 3 dreams that I sent her that I had the past week or so. The first 2 were very powerful - one of them she called "a big dream" I always secretly feel proud when she says that haha. It was, though.... I have learned a LOT about myself through dream work and T taught me a little thing called Active Imagination, where while you're awake, you "imagine" yourself at some point in a dream and then let your mind take it from there, interact with the dream, etc. Usually I do them sitting at my computer with my eyes closed and I type what I "see" as I'm seeing it. There's a great book I recommend called "Inner Work" by Robert Johnson that I read (my T lent it to me a long time ago, then I bought my own copy I liked it so much) to help me learn how to do AI's. I think dreamwork is very valid and useful and that dreams are definitely NOT meaningless. And I also think it's more important that we learn how to work with our OWN dreams instead of rely on someone else to "interpret" them. Sometimes when I share a dream with T she will say "this one doesn't feel like it needs interpreting so much as you just need to sit with it." Long story short, dream work has and does work very well in my case!

[brillskep]

There are some therapists and psychologists who only ever want to use things that are evidence-based (such as CBT). I don't know of any evience about dream work, but my experience with myself and others is that dreams can carry a lot of weight in their symbolism. Personally, my dreams have helped me a lot. I actually did only a couple of dream work sessions with a therapist and those 2 sessions literally changed my life for the better, on a physical health level. I may not have proof that that was the reason but when a problem ceases to be a problem after over 10 years of physical pain, right after having those sessions, when medicine and self-suggestion and other approaches didn't work, I'm pretty convinced that was the reason. On the other hand, the dream work was only the beginning, I worked with some personal rituals she suggested after that to make the change.

Now, I don't think dream work is for everyone and at any stage - but if this dream is recurring and you believe it has meaning for you, I'm sure it can lead you to something, some place you need to get. I'm a little concerned about the intensity of it because dreams are messages from our unconscious, they speak in symbols and they don't shy away from what we would normally hide from ourselves - so I certainly hope your therapist knows how to hold and protect you in this process.

There will always be people (psychologists even) who will agree and others who will disagree. It's important to believe in your intuition about what can possibly work for you. After all, you won't know it till you've tried it.