[NP_Complete]

Do you talk about your dreams with your therapist? What do you share? What kind of response do you get?

[DP_2017]

i blurted out on my last session, even though it was overall an awful session, also i had a dream about you, it wasn't sick lol.. then i told him it was about abandonment, he asked me when it was and we talked about it a bit, he seems unphased

[ElectricManatee]

Yes, sometimes, if they seem relevant or important. I am more likely to share dreams that are about her because they generally reflect how I'm feeling in the therapeutic relationship at the moment. We talk a little about meaning, but she doesn't really interpret them or look for symbols or anything. Mostly she points out major themes and asks what I felt in the dream. Talking about dreams definitely is not a major part of my therapy, though.

[AllHeart]

I do share my dreams sometimes, sharing as much as I can remember. T is great at analyzing the dream and helping me see the metaphors it represents in my awake life.

[NP_Complete]

I think I can usually see what my own dreams represent. I just wonder if therapists find it helpful to hear them. When I told him he showed up in my dream once, he seemed really excited to hear about that one.

[zoiecat]

I share some dreams. Mostly recurring dreams and ones that seem to relate to EMDR issues. I will be sharing a dream this Friday that had the themes of my last EMDR session. T usually explains the metaphors to me if I don't see the connection on my own. I think this dream means that my brain was actually continuing to process some of my trauma from Tuesday. Dreams do not play a big part in my therapy though.

[WarmFuzzySocks]

Sometimes I have vivid dreams that offer an insight through the story. They are pretty powerful emotionally. Those I share, and t remembers them. She sometimes uses a phrase that I used to describe one of my dreams.

I had a dream about my t once in which she walked across the front of my dream like she was walking in front of a television, and repeated something she'd been asking me in nearly every session for a few weeks. I decided it was my brain telling me I needed to pay attention to that thought. My t thought it was funny (and that I did need to pay attention to that thought).

Originally Posted by NP_Complete

Do you talk about your dreams with your therapist? What do you share? What kind of response do you get?

Ok you are forewarned, this is going to be very long!!

Jungian dream work has been a main component of my therapy with current t from the very beginning (over 6 years ago now). At first I had to train myself to remember my dreams (and wake up to write them down!) and then I type them up and bring them with me to my sessions. (when we did phone sessions, I emailed them to her prior to a session.) We start working with a dream by me reading it to her s l o w l y. Sometimes she'll stop me and want to sit with what I just read for a few seconds. Or she'll have me read a part (or the whole) again. Then we look at the feelings evoked, what was going on in my life prior to the dream, we bounce thoughts about the dream off of each other until something resonates, sometimes i tell her she's way off, sometimes she thinks I am, almost every time I end up with some really good insight or other. Not that I'd ever done dream work before with anyone else, but in my mind, she's very skilled at it. And she knows me so well by now that she rarely misses anymore. Dream work is why I will probably never fully and completely terminate with her - because if she's still practicing like 5 years from now, I can totally see myself still calling her with a dream I want her help with. She's that good at dream work.

Oops back to your questions (I ramble, my favorite subject!) I have learned to share every bit of the dream that I recall/wrote down. Every nuance that I remember. She can tell when I censor - I used to try to get away with that - I'd be reading and "skip over" a part I didn't want to share and then pretend I hadn't made a copy for her. ha well she always saw through that. So I don't even bother censoring anymore. I read 'em no matter what. Or, if it's particularly embarrassing, like some have been, I hand her her copy and tell her to read it to herself.

Her responses - sometimes she'll not have much to say about some dreams, usually the ones that are blatantly obvious. Then there's others that feel like they went on all night and feel huge - she'll be like that's a BIG dream! (I never knew there were such a thing as Big Dreams til therapy with her lol) Big dreams are important and impart a lot of information. Usually involving some archetype or other. Sometimes she'll ask me to do an Active Imagination (a Jungian thing where you imagine yourself back in the dream and interact with it while you're awake) I usually do Active Imag. at my computer, but when I do them there, I just speak what I'm imagining instead of typing it.

(For those Big dreams - then there's going deeper with the Active Imagination thing, we sometimes bring shamanic work into my therapy and I'll do a dream re-entry. I lay down on the couch and close my eyes and she'll drum for me and I journey with the intention of re-entering the dream and interacting with it at a deeper level than in Active Imagination. I've really gotten some incredible insights doing dream re-entries. This is of course not traditional therapy work - but for us, it fits right in, because we are both shamanic practitioners.)

I've noticed (because I have all my dream journals going back 6+ years) that there's a common thread that runs throughout my dreams over certain periods of time. It's fascinating to read back in my journals and run across one of those threads!!

She mentioned this evening that she went to a dream work seminar last weekend, I think I'm going to look into those and see if I can find one to go to. I'd probably love it.

I really get carried away on this topic don't I.....

[Elio]

We tried to do dream work and it bothered me too much. At the time I was having a significant amount of violent dreams. I finally said no more dream work. We do lots of awake dreaming or imagery. I find it really good and I'm able to make all kinds of connections that I don't think I would have made otherwise.

Speaking of which I recently had a dream about T. Now I have to decide of I share it or not.

[doyoutrustme]

I love love dream work. You skip over all your resistance and games and get to the heart very quickly. And much less painfully.

[junkDNA]

Yea. He asks me what I think they mean

[junkDNA]

I told him about a recurring dream I was having about me being somewhere with him and he keeps ignoring me and goes to talk to someone else. He said yeah I know it's been hard with the boundary changes.

[RaineD]

I force dreams that I think are important and not too embarrassing on my therapist even though he doesn't do dream work.

Originally Posted by doyoutrustme

I love love dream work. You skip over all your resistance and games and get to the heart very quickly. And much less painfully.

You explained it much more succinctly than I did! Thank you!