Dreams...how Our Little Selves Are Represented

[Whirlwind]

When my dreams are really violent, I'm always under stress, though I don't always even know it (like stress I can't even let myself feel or process in waking life)

This has been my suspicion too. Before therapy I had them but they just cooked along without bothering me....my ex boyfriend said I should capitalize on it and write story lines which made me laugh. He didn't make me feel ashamed of them. Admittedly I was in denial at the time about the level of abuse I endured as a child. But after I was free, an adult, I felt fine for decades, I felt genuinely happy, I used to laugh all the time and I felt very "light" in life.

I haven't felt that kind of lightness for years now.

 

[Chava]

I felt happier for a while too, but I was sort of on a mildy-hyper form of auto-pilot that I just couldn't sustain because I was burning out with age. I suppose we have to face it all at some point, and it sure sucks sometimes! But I do think easier to try to keep present or imagine what I want for myself than think of times that seemed happier, because it's easier to forget how sad or crazy I was sometimes in those years too. And usually pretty isolated, though surrounded by a flurry of activity.