OtherOtie

The other month I was in a sort of wakeful sleep in the morning, drifting in and out of consciousness. A sort of sentence came to me that my mind just kept repeating over and over. It went something like this: "I never used to remember dreams until suddenly FOURTH GRADE, DAY THREE, DANGER - something else..." This is what I wrote down after I had the thought. I'm not sure what some of it means, actually. I'm not sure what the first part means, since it's not true. I remembered lots of dreams prior to fourth grade. The last bit "something else" was actually part of the sentence. I don't know what that stands in for either. But the interesting thing about this is that I believe it refers to 9/11. I was in fourth grade at the time, and it was one of the first days of class, being in September. It very well might have been the third day of 4th grade, but I have no way of checking this unless there's some board of ed calender in 2001 somewhere. The danger part solidifies it to me as referring to 9/11 for obvious reasons. So I live in NY, and naturally this was a pretty scary event for me. I wasn't really in the vicinity of the attack, being from Queens, and neither was anybody I know. Nobody I know died or was personally affected. So it's weird to me that this would come to me suddenly. It's oddly specific, and I never would have consciously formulated 9/11 as day 3 of 4th grade, even though that seems more or less right. Do any of you have any thoughts about what all of this might mean?

Yeah, I obviously wouldn't quit cold turkey. I think this is true. It seems obvious to me in hindsight that the presence of anxiety in my family is more likely part of a cycle of upbringing than of something genetic.

So about a year ago, my therapist convinced me to give Zoloft a try. Anxiety runs in my family, and most of my family members are on this medication. I was very reluctant for various reasons but I ended up giving it a try. I do believe it's helped me in some manner, as I no longer experience disproportionate reactions to circumstances as I used to. However, my wariness towards this kind of drug has never really faded, and I think it may be time I get off it. I'm not sure if this belongs in the self-knowledge category, but it's certainly related. What do you all think?

I'm sorry, where did I accuse you of a lack of empathy? I also don't believe I marked you down... mostly because I have no idea how to do that. Or I might have and forgot, but since I can't seem to figure out the system at the current moment I'm going to go with the former possibility.

I have to disagree. If someone is afraid of water, they can either stand there by the pool in paralysis waiting for themselves to "just do it" ... or they can explore the reason why they fear the water in an attempt to understand how best to overcome that fear. "Just doing it" doesn't actually address anything - all it does is force the individual to confront their anxiety prematurely. Also... what is your theory about the words "no offense"? =P

No offense, but this doesn't really seem like effective advice. You're basically telling him to overcome his fear by overcoming his fear. If it were that easy, he wouldn't be here looking for something more foundational. Moreover, I think the suggestion that one should not "dwell on the reasons" is actually counterproductive. If we don't explore the cause of our anxiety, then we risk making the mistake of thinking that to be anxious is simply a brute fact of who we are, rather than something inflicted upon us at some point in our development that can be understood and maintained.

That would be a good thing to ask about, Kevin. Personally I don't feel that my problems are that "urgent" -- in that I don't have any pressing psychological issues that need to be addressed on a conscious level. It's the more subtle wounds that I want to explore and the level of self knowledge that I want to reach. I'm guessing once or twice a month would be sufficient for that end provided I do a lot of journaling and stuff on my own. Do you guys know if it's standard to give a therapist homework -- in a manner of speaking? Like, if I were to provide a copy of my journal or outline my history for my therapist to get a better understanding of me, is it expected that they'll read it, or would that be considered something extra that a therapist may do if they're nice, but not required? Or is it on a case-by-case basis?

That's true. I had a therapist about a year ago that I saw every week for a few months. Eventually narrowed it down to twice a month, and then once a month. At this point, I don't even see her anymore. I'm not sure how helpful she was. It got to the point where I wasn't very enthused to go, although it was helpful to an extent early on in the therapy. I couldn't justify paying that much money to see her. But I really want to start looking for another therapist. I think I could do once a month, maybe even twice a month.

I'm not familiar at all with that insurance, but the way I would go about it is to look at the listings for which therapists are are associated with Kaiser. From there you can probably filter out the ones that seem relevant to her interests in regards to specialization. At that point you might think of calling a few up and getting a brief view of their philosophy if they'll provide it for you via phone.

Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? I'm thinking of looking for another therapist but money is kind of tight right now. I may be able to afford once a month, and I'm just wondering how far from the ideal that option would be.

Yeah, I may just get his book down the line. Thanks.

OK, I started to check out his website, and I'm feeling really overwhelmed. I think, in his effort to be completely thorough and organized with his guides, he's accomplished the exact opposite. Basically all of the videos I've watched so far place emphasis on reviewing "Lesson 1" of his website. Fair enough. So here is Lesson 1. From what I've gathered, completing Lesson 1 consists in completing the 4 modules that are listed on that page. The first module involves reviewing something about high-functioning families. OK... so I click that link, only to discover that the article about families assumes you're familiar with Lessons 1 through 4. Just, what? Every single link on this website is directing me to a different lesson. It's like, to complete Lesson 1, you need to know Lesson 4, and to complete Lesson 4, you need to know Lesson 1. Maybe I'm just completely missing it, here, but I feel so lost. Does anyone have any help or experience navigating this guy's ideas? I may just completely ignore his website and just go through the videos... most of which seem to direct me to Lesson 1.

Very interesting ideas. I think this guy's videos will be a good resource for me. Thanks for posting these.

I think this is a pretty great idea. But only if it features a hyper-exaggerated version of Stefan Molyneux.

That makes some sense. So if I'm understanding you correctly, this feeling of "resonance" aroused by the dream can be taken as an indication that there is something deeper going on? Agreed. I'm just wondering if that is the extent of its value as an exercise. I understand that concept, but I'm wondering what the scientific basis is for believing this is actually the case. I'm not denying there is one (quite frankly, I haven't checked) -- I'm just curious to know what it is. Well, this is kind of what I'm inquiring about. I'm wondering what the basis is for thinking that dreams are coded like this. Those are some interesting thoughts. I do have a tendency to focus on what feelings my dreams arouse rather than look for symbols. But I don't want to miss out on symbols either, provided I have good reason to think they're there. Which is kind of what I'm wondering about in this topic... what is the psychological basis for the symbolic approach to dream analysis that people (such as Stefan) often take? By the way, thanks to you all for replying. I'm interested to hear further thoughts as I'm really curious about this whole dream analysis thing and definitely want to take advantage of it if there's something to it.

Maybe I'm not being clear enough regarding my question. Say I have a dream (this is just off the top of my head, I haven't actually had this dream) about an alien invasion where I run home to my mother only to discover that she has been compromised by the aliens and is now under brain control. What reason do we have for thinking that this dream is about anything more than an alien invasion wherein my mother gets mind controlled? That is, why would we then try to theorize and understand what the aliens symbolize, what it means for my mother to be under mind control, etc.

Thanks for your input Wesley. However, I'm not sure if it answers my fundamental question about why we can expect our dreams to "mean" anything in the first place (at least, beyond whatever narrative happens to be told in the dream). Perhaps I'm missing something in your post, but these questions still linger...

I've been sort of back and forth regarding my stance on dream interpretation--mostly because I haven't investigated it in much depth in the literature, but I've always just assumed the idea that my subconscious (or whatever term is psychologically applicable... unconscious?) would be able to create these elaborate and clever metaphors was beyond the pale of something I could accept, considering that not even in my conscious state am I deliberately able devise such metaphors. (That could just be because I personally am terrible at metaphors.) At the same time, though, it's obvious to me that dreams do have something important to tell us about our own psyche. This is evident to me primarily because I dream about some things with more regularity and emotion than others. There must be a reason why, and I think that alone is worth exploring. I'm familiar with Stefan's perspective on dreams, and have heard him try his hand at a few analyses, which I thought were rather interesting and seemed to provide clarity for the other person. What I struggle with, is, again, this idea that there is a sort of puzzle within our dreams that we might, in principle, be able to decipher. Particularly, I'm wondering what the basis is for thinking that we can expect objects in dreams to serve as symbols. I could understand if the person has a tendency to think in symbols (such as Stefan, who is quite spectacular with his use of metaphor and allegory) might also dream in symbols, but for someone like myself who might take an hour to come up with a decent allegory, it's hard to believe I can do it without trying in my sleep. There's also the question of how we can ever know if we have really "cracked" the puzzle, so to speak. Since we don't ultimately have access to a legend that will tell us which objects correspond to which things, it's hard to know with any degree of certainty if we truly have our dream figured out or if we are just imposing meaning on it after the fact. Which leads me to ultimately question if the purpose of dream interpretation is not to presume that there is some puzzle there to solve, but just to use the dream as a sort of stepping stone to self knowledge--and that, perhaps, the real insight is not in the content of the dream itself but the process of attempting to interpret the dream. So I am wondering what you all think about dream analysis. What do you think is the scientific or psychological basis for presuming that dreams can be interpreted as symbols, or do you think the purpose of the analysis is not in that presumption, but in something else? Thank you for your thoughts in advance. :-)