
How are you at deciphering dreams? It’s definitely not my gift. All my self-analyzing winds up with a million questions and no answers, but I can’t seem to help myself. I need a modern-day Daniel.
I almost always have a wakeful time in the wee hours of the morning, around 3 or 4. One night recently I couldn’t go back to sleep so I read a little bit, then turned the light off and dozed. I must have slept enough to dream, because I did and it was a doozy.
I dreamed I was at an upscale gathering, like a cocktail party or something. This must be because of all the cocktail parties I attend in my actual life. Ben was not there, but my daughter Leah was. Let me interject here that Leah has also experienced trauma and understands when I talk about healing from the effects of it. We were chatting and having a good time when a man with long-ish hair came up to me and started examining me. He was way too close—definitely in my personal space—looking closely at the skin on my face and my neck. He was pushing my hair around and inspecting my scalp. Then he put a finger in my mouth to open it. I started crying and asked him to please not put his finger in my mouth, but I remember feeling bad about asking him to stop. Why didn’t I just bite him? Leah didn’t seem to have any problem with what the guy was doing, and if you know Leah at all, you know this was not real life. She would have been the first person throwing herself between me and this weirdo, shoving the guy away from me.
Then somehow we transferred to a boat, which the guy was driving. He was taking me and Leah and a few other people to some different place to get help for our trauma. When we got there, the boat was filled with water (isn’t this backwards?) and we had to duck down underwater and come up through a little hole to get out. I remember making a big deal out of taking my glasses off first so I wouldn’t lose them, and being afraid I wouldn’t fit through the little hole and would just be stuck there, underwater, drowning.
My first thought here is to wonder why I went with the guy. After him being all up in my face—literally—why did I go anywhere with him? I didn’t even know him. Why didn’t I just tell him to buzz off and mind his own business? Why didn’t I just say no? I have always been a follower. I am the hardest-core people pleaser I know and it is so frustrating.
And why is the boat filled with water? Is it because I feel like I’m drowning without help and drowning with it? And why the big deal about the glasses? Am I just so worried I won’t be able to see clearly what is happening in my life? And what if I can’t fit through the hole? Does that mean I am stuck drowning in my issues forever with no hope of ever being normal again?
On some level, I can relate to every single one of these things, and isn’t it amazing that my brain can put all my fears together in one coherent narrative while I sleep? I just wish the story came with an answer key.
Once we were on land, the guy put us in an open car, not exactly a convertible but one that never had a roof (I don’t know why this distinction is important, but to me it is). It was some kind of futuristic, hover-type car. A girl was driving. I was put in the front passenger seat—the worst place on earth for me—and Leah and the guy were in the back seat. Leah seemed unfazed by all that was happening and I remember wishing I could be calm like her. (Leah, are you laughing at this? Again, if you knew Leah, you would know she is not exactly the calm one in the family.)
The land was open, red dirt. No trees, no grass, nothing as far as you could see. (This is a pretty accurate description of my current new yard—nothing but red dirt.) On our left was a deep crevice in the earth. The girl started slowly drifting the car toward the crevice and I got more and more scared, but I did not say anything—did not express my fear or ask her to steer away from it. Then she swerved hard and the car shot off the edge and fell about 20 feet straight down where there was a dirt roadway in the crevice. It didn’t seem to affect anyone else in the car, as if they were expecting it to happen, but it scared me so badly I was sobbing and hyperventilating.
I woke up in the middle of a panic attack, gasping and heart pounding and hand clutching my chest. It reminded me of an experience I had as a freshman in college. I was in a car with two boys in the front and me and another girl in the back. The boy drove like a typical 18-year-old idiot, going up in a random yard and spinning the back tires to dig deep ruts in an innocent person’s manicured lawn. I hated being there in that car and wanted desperately to go home, to not be part of this, but did I say that? Did I ask to be taken back to my dorm? Did I express my disgust at what he had done? No. None of the above.
I can picture the guy to this day: medium build, olive skin, dark curly, bushy hair. Maybe he was Italian? If you graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1983, maybe you knew him. He was not a nice person and isn’t it amazing the things we remember so vividly?
I took some slow, deep breaths and calmed down. Then I went back to sleep and dreamed again, this time that I had literally just given birth one minute, and the next minute I had a positive pregnancy test. Two little lines; there would be another baby in 9 months. At 61 that’s a nightmare.
It’s been several weeks since this happened and I’ve thought about it a lot, wondering how my body produces the physical manifestations of a panic attack while I am asleep. I know our brains are still active when we are sleeping. That’s when they put things together, make connections, store memories in long-term storage, and do some defragmenting, to use a 1990s computer word. Do computers still do that?
According to healthline.com our brains continue to be active during sleep, and
“For better or worse, part of this nightly brain activity sometimes involves patching memories and sensations into a semi-narrative. It follows, then, that if your recent thoughts and feelings cause stress and fear, your dreams will likely follow a similar pattern.”
Basically, they’re saying that if you’re stressed about something—or several somethings—during the day, they may show up in your dreams. And even though your stresses may be completely unrelated to one another, your brain will combine them into a freaky story that bears a little resemblance to real-life issues. Gee, thanks. But the part that fascinates me is that the reaction to the stressful dream is physical. The body is responding, not just the brain. I am asleep. It’s all out of my conscious control. But my body still does what it does in response to my mental state.
So how do we wrap this all up in a nice, neat package? I always think there has to be some takeaway, something to be learned. Here’s what I get out of the dream:
People pleasing is rooted in fear of being rejected. We think we must do whatever the other person wants in order to maintain connection. As an enneagram 9 whose core fear is loss of connection, I feel this deeply. The truth, though, is that that kind of “connection” is not worth maintaining.
The boat and water represent fear of drowning. That’s a perfect description of how I felt when I had actual PTSD but didn’t know what was wrong with me and thought I was losing my marbles. Therapy was the life-preserver God threw to keep me afloat while he dragged me back to shore. There are still moments when I feel that same sinking feeling, and it’s kind of terrifying. I don’t ever want to go back there. But they remind me how far I’ve come and that I have tools to keep me above the surface until the difficult moment passes. God’s words are my glasses that help me see clearly through the muck and mire of psychological—and physical—healing.
The overarching theme is that I am learning to use my voice, the one I kept silenced for a lot of years. I am learning to say no when I mean no and to express my opinion when I have one. I am learning to say I am afraid or nervous or anxious when I am instead of sucking it up and not letting anyone know. And I am learning to recognize that I have more opinions than I’ve previously given myself credit for having, and that they are valid and worth sharing. I’m learning that most of the time, people want to hear them, and when they don’t, it’s not mine to worry about.
As I’ve said repeatedly, trauma is stored in the body. The mind remembers and may experience stress and anxiety over events, but the response to the event is stored in the physical body. This will never not fascinate me.
Although the dream was disturbing, it’s also encouraging because I can look back and see progress from then to now. I can see how God made us and wired us a specific way on purpose and I’m reminded that Jesus walks the road with me. I am not alone.
I almost never remember my dreams. But I'm a restless sleeper, so maybe that's why.
The brain and our minds are so interesting, aren’t they?