Joe

In my dream last night, among other things I went to Joe’s office for an appointment.

His real office is in an office building, but in the dream it was in part of his home. I walked in, looked around, and said, “Oh it is so great to be back here.” I started talking about stuff, only to see that he was reading a book (maybe a comic book) and not paying attention. I don’t remember if he asked me to repeat myself or if I asked him to pay attention.

———

This dream reminds me that, while Joe is an excellent therapist and has been very valuable in my life, he’s not God — he’s not The Answer, just part of it, and he’s not perfect.

Have I ever mentioned that when I was teaching at the homeschool co-op, they asked me to teach a math course, and Joe’s son was going to be in it?

Joe thought this would be a good idea — he thought my empathy and such would be good for his kid. I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea — what if I had to talk to Joe about the kid’s progress? I agreed to do it with the assurance that I would be able to talk to Joe’s wife instead of Joe.

That’s not the way it worked out. My teaching style wasn’t working so well for the kid, and most of the time I did have to talk to Joe about him instead of to his wife. And it was affecting my therapy.

Joe realized that, because of my vulnerability to him as a client, I couldn’t act appropriately as his kid’s teacher; I was too invested in being a good patient, doing an impossible job well. He put his kid in another class. Then I was fired from that position (but asked to stay on as the English teacher), but that’s another story.

It took awhile for us to work through that snarl in our therapeutic relationship, but we did.

I sent him a birth announcement. I wonder what he thought when he got it — did he wonder how soon I would be calling him for help, did he wonder if somehow new motherhood might go smoothly for me, did he have to think a minute to remember who I was, did he pray for me?

I do miss his office. It was good to do phone sessions during PPD, especially since no local therapist seemed to suit me, but it’s not the same as a) being able to see each other’s faces and body language and b) being in a room with healing and safe associations, with a cup of Sleepytime tea (no sugar or honey or milk — he didn’t have any of those) in one of his stained earthenware mugs. The tea itself was a reminder of how excellent and yet how finite Joe was; a variety of good teas, earthy good solid mugs, but no honey — genuine caring service, real, but Other, not the ideal I would envision.

That room, and the healing work done within it, was a taste of goodness and safety that will only be fully realized in heaven. Not that the taste is meaningless or worthless or even necessarily idolatrous, but simply a shadow, a dim look at what’s to be.

Garden stream

In last night’s dream, someone I know, someone who is my peer and yet is a little above me, invited me to the showing of his garden. It was sunny and mild out, and I told him what a lovely day he had for this event.

His garden was in a stream. It consisted of plants or gravel or both, small things with subtle colors and textures, carefully shaped and placed to suit the flow and shape and clarity of the stream. It was like prairie or a forest floor, seemed mostly wild varieties, no flashy cultivated types. The banks of the stream were carpeted with similarly subtle and natural grasses and tiny flowers.

Then the garden was made of larger stones, set carefully in concrete or mortar, in rows. Carved pieces were set in place to match the ones at the ends of something (a bridge? another person’s garden? a fence along the stream bank?).

———

I think this part of this dream is beautiful.

Water often represents the subconscious, the deep, inner self. Perhaps I am learning to see that self as shapely, beautiful, natural, fitting. Perhaps I am the gardener — being my own peer, and a little above me, too, someone it is fitting to esteem, value, respect. And Jesus, and my team of friends and other helpers, are also helping to shape me, and to either make me beautiful or present me as beautiful, or both.

Maybe I am also making progress in learning to see other people more compassionately and respectfully.

I’m not sure about the stones in concrete. I don’t remember if my dream self liked them or thought it was a bad change from the smaller, more subtle things. My waking self prefers the first garden.

Comfort

In last night’s dream:

My friend was working on a project, with a website. I notice the website includes a picture, linked from another website not owned by my friend. She complains to me about how she either got a bad grade or report about it from her teacher or boss, and / or got chewed out by the owner of the website she lifted the picture from. I explain about intellectual property and internet etiquette, that it is unethical to take someone else’s picture without permission, and that hotlinking uses up bandwidth from the other site.

Much much later that night, I notice she’s lying on her bed (my airbed, made up into a loft with things she found in my guest room) with eyes wide open and teary. So I ask what’s wrong, and she tells me that anyone else would have comforted her, would have said to just “bat it up” and move on. (No, I don’t know what “bat it up” means — make a note, chalk it up, something like that.) I explain that it was in order to comfort her that I said what I said.

———

This dream has some underlying hostility — some of the annoyance involved in being a sinful person in relationship with other sinful people, and the annoyances of the complexities of social rules and methods.

It’s mainly about how to know when to shut up and just listen, smile and nod, give hugs and assurances, and when to go ahead and speak your mind, especially if you think it could be helpful or prevent harm. And, to turn it around, it’s also about when I want just sympathy and compassion and when I want advice and ideas.

Stairs

Another common element of my dreams reappeared last night: stairs.

In this dream, when I found myself accidentally in the boys’ dorm at Culver, there were stairs I needed to descend to get where I was supposed to be. Only instead of climbing down like you normally do, I was attached to some kind of really long hydraulic thing and lowered down — felt like free fall near the end, but in slow motion, but I eventually touched down.

There were a few steps into the girls’ dorm where our group / family was staying. At first I claimed a little room just inside this entry, with no walls separating it from the entry and hallway. Another time though I stayed in the same room as the rest of the group.

There were lots of tall stairs in the building where the antique show / flea market / craft fair was going on, where on different floors people were in different period clothing (one chided me for being in regular dress but I stood my ground). At the base of the lowest stair I was horrified and dismayed to see a little memorial box labeled “Our baby.”

In the same building there were paper cut-out / pop-up cards that turned into little paper stairs — apparently a puzzle or task of some sort for kids.

There were also dogs and cats, an annoying smoker lady who knew me but I tried to avoid, feeling guilty all the while. Amy (and her sister?) were there but a little older than she is now. I found interesting things I almost bought at the craft fair, but one was not as great as it looked and the other was $2000.

And in another dream earlier in the evening, there was a restaurant with a dirty / obscene waiter, and the staff kept trying to assure us that they were committed to the highest quality service and all.

And in another dream later in the evening, Jesus was returning — the world was perishing in snow, and everyone was singing but I was too shaky / hiding / tearful to join in.

Toilet dreams and other things

Why are there toilets in my dreams so often?

And they’re rarely normal toilets. There’s no doors to the stalls, or no stalls at all, or the walls are only two feet high. Correct aim is impossible and everything gets messy. There are almost always other people, and no one seems to think it’s strange to sit on toilets in front of one another. No one else has any aim issues, either.

And the shapes — ! If you know Star Trek and remember Captain Pike’s little contraption, I’ve dreamed toilets that reminded me of that thing. Some are quite high. Some are robotic. Some are monstrous.

In last night’s dream, I was cooking at the stovetop, or the robot, and an elderly lady came up next to me and started poking around with a knitting needle under the toilet seat (the stovetop became a toilet?!) trying to flick croutons from a clean place into her bowl so she could eat them — but they kept falling onto dirty places. Kind soul that I am, once I figured out what she was trying to do, I helped her.

Why, oh why, am I helping grannies eat croutons off of my toilet, on which I am also cooking dinner?

Don’t worry, there was a lot more to last night’s dreaming — it’s not all about toilets.

In other news…

Today we made dinner for our friends who had a baby two weeks ago, #2, another daughter. She had a short labor and is recovering just fine, really seems as if nothing unusual at all happened to her two weeks ago. There’s the sleep issue, but otherwise things over there are just peachy. So when Amy and I went over this afternoon to deliver the goods, we got to stay and visit for an hour or so. It was a little chaotic with the two dogs and the two-year-old and Amy and all that, but it was really nice anyway. We agreed that we should do this often over the winter.

Dreams of hostility

Every once in a while — two recently, one last night — I get these dreams full of rage and hostility and rejection and confrontation and complete lack of understanding / respect and defiance and denial. I’m on both the receiving and giving ends of these emotions and turmoils.

Leaves me a little breathless and sad in the morning.

And a little confused. Are the other characters representing themselves? Themselves in the past or in the present? Or are they representing aspects of myself? What does it mean to see myself as these other people? What exactly is it that my dreams are telling me I need to work through and metabolize?

Some ideas…

I continue (as I likely always will) to fight to understand what it means to be a self and how I am to live as a self without disregarding others. This struggle applies to everything — how I think about whether or not I want or am willing to accept another child(ren), how I interpret and communicate with Mark and other people in my life, particularly navigating gracious honesty.

There are things I want to be a certain way, and I have little hope of seeing that happen. Blocked goals / frustrated desires often provoke anger.

There are things that stop me in my tracks, things that flabbergast and bewilder me, things that should not be, things that don’t make sense.

And yes, there are things in myself that are in conflict, things that are difficult to sift through, interpret, evaluate. It is hard to discern the voice of God, the voice of my real self, and the voices of the past and the inner critic and fears and rational mind and emotional mind and wise mind and superego, ego, and id, or whatever else you want to label the various inner voices.

Which brings me to a question for Austin or Beauty or both or any other DID person. Do you see the various parts / alters in your system as aspects of your true self — do you see even a hint or glimpse of the possibility of integration? Or is it more like they’re other people, separate from your true self, so that wholeness would mean their death rather than their integration?

The Mind and the Gutter (not what you think)

In my dream last night…

My sister and I were walking around town. For some reason, we had a lot of extra chairs. She wanted to throw them away. I wanted to Freecycle them. She was extremely angry with me about it. I didn’t get it. Why is it so offensive to suggest something be reused? It’s not like it would inconvenience her in any way.

I kept asking and she wouldn’t talk about it.

Finally, she came out with the real reason for being so angry with me. She said something like, “I just can’t believe you (or anyone) would keep your mind cleaner than you keep your gutter.”

Apparently, on the blog or a discussion group, she’d seen me talking about how I think it’s more important to keep your mind clean than to keep your gutter clean. Apparently, “gutter” refers to the heart, the feelings, the emotional self.

Maybe I was trying to say that feelings have no moral content — they are what they are, and are not subject to control. In that sense, you can’t keep your gutter clean. You can’t stop yourself from feeling something you don’t want to feel. You can’t make yourself feel something you think you’re supposed to feel.

You *can* respond to emotions in an appropriate way, even when the emotions are unexpected, irrational, negative, or whatever. This requires right thinking — wisdom — a clean mind.

I’m not sure why my sister was in this dream. And I’m not sure why she was so upset about me keeping my mind cleaner than my gutter.

And I’m still laughing at the dream’s choice of the word “gutter.”

Dr. Seuss for survivors

Maybe it was a bad idea to keep flipping between “So you think you can dance” auditions and the movie “Crazy/Beautiful.”

In my dream, there was a book, a lot like a Dr. Seuss book in its words and pictures, but it was about a young girl who was molested by some adult in authority, perhaps the school principal or something like that.

During some parts of the dream, it was like living the story instead of reading it in the book; I was some mid-level staff person at a large school event — part entertainment like a football game or dance, part emergency shelter like after a natural disaster. Sometimes I interacted with the girl or the adult, but sometimes I just saw both of them from a distance.

The whole thing had an appearance of innocence or at least good covering up, but a strong sinister undertone that provoked suspicion. As if it started with something like the adult nicely dancing with the girl at the school dance, and only later developed into something perverted.

By the end of the book, there’s a picture of the girl as a sexy bad girl, describing how she had become what she had to be to satisfy others, but you could tell she was lost and dead inside.

———

I think a lot of the dream is just rehashing and recombining images and ideas from the bits of the movie I saw. The Dr. Seuss imagery may come partly from the fact that I’ve got baby books in the house and partly from the fact that a child was a major character in the dream.

What resonates is the idea of the pretty surface hiding things that won’t be talked about, and the idea of adapting to others’ expectations by losing the self.

Joe often suggested that different characters in a dream reflect different aspects of the dreamer. It’s interesting to consider in what ways I may be like the girl and the adult, although not exactly alike in the particulars — one who is betrayed, whose boundaries have been violated, who finds it difficult to interpret when other people’s behavior is harmful and when it is innocent; and one who betrays, who plows through other people’s boundaries, who finds it difficult to interpret one’s own behavior.

When you dream about the Internet…

… it’s time to take a break.

She loves things made of old gloves!

The night before Easter I had some odd dreams.

At one point, I saw this amazing stuffed animal, made with brilliant and wonderfully textured fabrics and notions, including a scarlet glove turned into a tail (was it a bird?). I immediately thought of my friend Sara, because, as I said to myself in the dream, “She loves things made of old gloves!”

At another point one of my friends who is finishing up her first year at college emailed me to say she was pregnant, that it was a boy, and I think the name was something really odd like Somme or Sillf or something like that. (If you recognize yourself, O math major and artist, send me an email for real, hopefully with different news.)

And then there’s the part where, after countless days of going up on the neighbor’s front porch or in their shrubbery or whatever to pet their dogs and cats, I finally knock on the door to introduce myself so they won’t think I’m some weirdo. Only when they open the door, the skunk (or was it only a squirrel?) darts into the house… I offer my sympathies, and a “good luck on getting that out of there without it spraying!” What a good neighbor I am, lol.

I don’t know if there’s anything deep in these dream bits, but the “she loves things made of old gloves,” and the boy’s name, and the skunk comment all made me laugh when I woke up.