October 4, 2024 • 63 mins
In this deep and introspective episode, Dr. Loren returns to explore the profound psychological effects of childhood trauma through dream analysis. Using a case study of a patient named Brian, Dr. Loren reveals how unresolved family dynamics and emotional neglect can manifest in depression, anxiety, and even physical symptoms. The conversation touches on themes of inherited trauma, the role of dreams in uncovering unconscious feelings, and the importance of understanding one's inner world. Whether you’re interested in psychology, personal growth, or the power of dreams, this episode offers a compelling look into how the past shapes our present and the journey toward healing.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks.
I head up the HolisticPsychoanalysis Foundation
established by my late husband, Dr.
Bernard Bail.
Welcome to AM Now, love.
Dr. Lauren is with us today.
Always great.
Always thought provoking.
(00:26):
I know this work pretty well,but listening to Lauren
always creates more curiosity for me.
Bernard's theoryputs us in touch with who we really are
and is continually compelling.
We are never done learninghow to be our best selves.
(00:46):
We are here today to talk about dreamsand the amazing keys to our unconscious.
They absolutely hold.
Dr. Wiener is going to sharethe dreams of one patient
as we discussthe interpretation of the dreams.
You will see how the patientwas able to heal and find out
who they truly are and live life in a new
(01:10):
and truly meaningful way.
Let's get started. Hi.
Thank you for having me back.
Of course. Thank you for being here.
So I have another case.
I'd love to jump right in, if that's okay.
Let's do it.
This is a patientwho has been in treatment
for a reasonably shortamount of time, six months ish.
(01:33):
So a lot of things
come up in the beginning of a treatment.
They emerge.
Oftenit gives the patient an understanding.
It gives me a starting place.
And I know that we're goingto be coming back to these ideas
over and over and over again.
Is there a typical amount of timethat it takes for you to kind of
(01:56):
get the big picture of who this person isso you can better interpret the dreams?
It depends on the person and in part,it depends on
whether that person is gearedto start more at the top or the bottom.
And I say that because some people come inand then the first few dreams, if I know
that I can get a good enough picture,because sometimes it is in there,
(02:19):
I don't know the person well enough yetto know everything I'm seeing.
So some people will startand they give you, wow, a whole
deep, big picture right away.
And some people startmore at the top and say, okay, look,
let me see how this goesand we'll make our way down.
I see. So,you know, and everything in between right?
And then I suppose some peoplehave a dream they can share right off,
(02:41):
but you can't really give ita good interpretation
until you have more informationabout them. Absolutely.
Nonetheless, that dream will be valuableat some point. Yes.
And sometimes I will go back to a dream,
say, you talked about thisin the first dream.
You brought me.
Now I understandmore of what I was saying.
Yeah, this makes sense now.
(03:02):
And so I may have to reinterpret or add
to the interpretationto make it more meaningful.
And it provides information.
So I'll. I'll get to it.
All right. Okay.
The patient, Brian, is a young man
in his mid-thirtieswho has suffered from lifelong depression
and has felt that from a young agehe would at some point take his own life.
(03:25):
He was referred to me by a psychiatristwho was prescribing him antidepressants
and working with his medical teamto help diagnose and treat
a new and potentially complicatedmedical condition.
Brian is the eldest of two childrenand grew up in a very unhappy home
marked by palpable dislikebetween the parents
(03:45):
and with constant bickeringthat often turned into screaming matches.
Both parents
also had short temperswith both of the children.
His parents marriedafter dating a short time
because his mother became pregnantwith the patient.
He said that he did not thinkthat they would be together otherwise,
and it makes him feel guiltyand the cause of the family's misery.
(04:09):
Specifically his mother's.
And this is all without havingany information about the imprint theory.
That's right.
He just always felt he knew the timelineof how how it all went down.
And he always felt guilty.
This wouldn't be happening.
Nobody would be here suffering like this.
If not for you.
(04:30):
what a burden for me. Right.
So and that's you know, he knew it.
That's,you know, part of what he felt was.
All right.
Well, if I do away with myself,everybody's free to just go on.
Everyone will be better off. Everybody.
He reports that both parentshad their own painful histories.
His mother spokevery little about her family of origin
and generally spokevery little about most things.
(04:54):
What she did say was that her father wasan alcoholic who was verbally abusive
towards her mother when he was drinkingand that it was never mentioned.
He would get little bits of informationover the years.
But, you know,she was a very reserved woman prone
to yellingbut not prone to real conversation.
He described his mother as coldand depressed much of the time,
(05:17):
which resulted in herisolating herself in her bedroom
and leaving the running of the houseto the children.
Once they were old enough.
He did not remember her offeringeither of the children
much comfort in the way of emotionalor physical affection.
And she was easily angered,
which would result in her yellingand occasionally hitting the children
(05:37):
until they became olderand too big for that.
She appeared more interested in her workthan anything else, though
the patient wonders if it was just sothat she could escape from family life.
He saidthat his father lost his own father
when he was in his mid-twentiesand that he felt his father had to take
(05:57):
on the role of the father being the fatherin the family at that time.
He describes his father as distantand said that he spent much of his time
outside of the home at workor involved with his hobbies.
So neither parent is really presentemotionally.
Nobody's connecting with these childrenregularly.
Everybody's suffering.
(06:19):
And the arguments or the yelling or thehitting that occurred wasn't spoken about.
Was it just supposed to feel like thosethings didn't happen or they did happen?
But don't you dare talk about them.
It was more like they happenedand it's not up for discussion.
You know, I don't know that it was so muchin this family that they pretended
(06:41):
it didn't exist the way they did
in the mother's family,but it was just more This is how it goes.
I see. This is life.
Yeah.
There is nothing to talk.
And the childrencertainly have no say. Sure.
So if this happens, they're to go alongand that's that
and figure out how to be better childrennext time, you know, Which is right.
That's how the message lands for them.
(07:03):
And then, of course,when those children go out into the world
outside of their family, they're carryingon with that sort of behavior.
That's right.
This is this is the model
for how life goes,how interactions go, how relationships go.
The patient was a high achiever in school,despite his deep feelings
of being a burden on his parentsand seeing himself
(07:24):
as fundamentally stupidand a waste of a person.
His words.
He earned a degree in computer programingand went on to make good money
in his field.
He had a harder timewith his romantic life and knows
that his experience in his family colorshis expectations
around romantic relations shipsand keeps him alone.
(07:45):
He worries that his depressionand self-loathing would eventually ruin
any relationship he had and doesn'twant to bring pain to another person.
He also cannot guarantee thathe will be here, which he feels is unfair
to a potential partnerand greatly complicates any relationship.
He imagines having.
I will say that he is very well-likedby his friends.
(08:07):
He has a nice circle of friendsthat I think
all became sort of second familiesfor each other.
So there is that bit of positiveinput for him.
Luckily,and I think part of what keeps him here.
And that's a different experiencethan he would have with a partner
because two partnersreally rely on each other.
(08:29):
So if he goes missing, then he's leftthis partner in a big lurch with friends.
Exactly. Friends.They'll all have each other.
So, yes, it's a much bigger commitmentto that one on one relationship.
And I think for him,while he's had some experiences
in a romantic relationshipin the past, minimal.
(08:50):
But I think it very quicklybrought up so much of the family dynamics.
It was too much for him.
He would find ways to back out of itquickly,
several months before he began treatment.
Brian began having some unexplained
symptoms, muscle spasms,some numbness in his feet
(09:11):
at times, and a feeling that his muscleswere not what they once were.
This is a young man.
Yeah.
Doctors,you know, couldn't quite figure it out.
He was a personused to being active outdoors.
So relying on his body was somethingthat gave him a sense of security.
And without it,he felt more depressed and also scared.
He saw many specialists,
(09:31):
and it was unclear what was causinghis pain and muscle weakness.
Though the doctors had ruled out mostthings that would be devastating to him.
The factthat he was still experiencing symptoms
and that it was unexplainedwas deeply unsettling to him.
He was prescribed pain medicationto help him combat the discomfort,
but he reported needing it and alsofinding it made him less clearheaded.
(09:53):
So he was careful about taking it.
In the early days of treatment,he asked me about
whether I was comfortabletalking about suicide.
Well, he had
never made any actual attemptsto kill himself, which I think is notable.
But he did engage in some dangerousbehavior during his teenage years,
such as hanging out of the windowof a speeding car
while driving with his friendsand mountain climbing.
(10:16):
That could be more or less safe,depending on how you did things.
He said he wasn't actively thinking ofdoing anything to harm himself currently,
but he wanted to make sure he was okayif he talked about it since thoughts about
it had been a constant companion to himover the years.
I told him I wanted to hear everythingthat was on his mind, including that
(10:36):
the link between his guiltover being an unplanned baby
and his suicidalitycame up very early in the treatment
as he imaginedthat had he not been born, his
mother would have gone on to find a lifethat actually made her happy.
As he explored his life and historymore carefully, his idea
that either parent would have beenfundamentally happy began to fade.
(10:59):
And the following sessionsare several months into his treatment.
Did he come to youbecause of the physical pain?
And he was looking for a solution to that
that might be outside of medicine?
Yes, I think the psychiatrist saidyou have now another thing on your plate.
You should talk to someone.
(11:21):
And he had had some brief therapy prior,a few attempts.
Some was helpful for a little while.
Nothing stuck all that long.
But he was open when he said,okay, I'll try.
And he heard that I work with dreams,which I don't know that
that was a big draw for him, but it wasat least a little bit of a curiosity.
(11:41):
And so he came I have a feeling he came
sort of assuming it would be like the,you know, other he'll do it.
He'll see how. Whatever.
You know, he he did stick around, whichwas I think showed he felt it was helpful.
Do people come to youor others in your field
wanting to share thoughts of suicide,
(12:02):
but not really ever intending itfor themselves?
Yes, that happens.
One of the reasons he checked with mewas that in the course
of some of these questionsrelated to the physical symptoms,
some of the doctors, you know,
sort of on the checklist,any thoughts of suicide, any of this.
And he said, I made the mistakeof telling a few of them
(12:27):
because it's been part of my life,but it's I'm not going to do it.
But people freaked out.
So he wanted to make sureI wouldn't freak out.
And I was very happy.
He was so frank, you know, bring it up.
Let's talk about it, get it on the table.
It gets you towhere you need to be in a little faster.
That's right.
And it really lets me understandwhere he is instead of just pretending.
(12:51):
But he sort of kept this, you know,this was the idea
was that if it ever gets too painful,he'll check out.
And if he's not marriedand he doesn't have kids
and there's nobody depending on him,he's free to do it.
And he is if at any point he decides,I suppose
he's, you know, depending on your beliefs,he's free to do it.
Right.
And I think for him, just knowingand now adding to it
(13:14):
the physical symptoms, if itif life really just was so unbearable
and he feltit was too much pain for himself
and if he ever felt he was bringingtoo much pain, like to the family
because he carried that piecefrom the unplanned birth or a pregnancy.
Well, and that's amaybe a topic for another day.
(13:35):
But the responsibility you as a human
must feelwhen you hear these sorts of things.
Yeah.
And to be able to talk aboutsomething like this,
because a lot of people think about this,you know, it's much more common
that people think about itand at various times in their life
and with different stresses.
Now, luckily, most of the timeit doesn't mean somebody's
(13:59):
really got a planand they're really right about to do it.
But you you don't always know immediately.
So I'm going to start the first sessionthat I have with us.
This isn't his first session.
This is a few months in.
And he starts by saying, Maybe I've beenmore depressed than I realized.
I've been sleeping on and off.
(14:19):
And still this morning I'm
very groggy and I'm worriedit might be a little hard to talk.
My arms open in a lot of pain, butI didn't take a painkiller this morning
because I was worried I would go backto sleep and missed the appointment.
I also wanted to be clearheaded.
When we speak, he tells me he had a dream.
I had a dream last nightthat these two guys were after me.
(14:41):
It was as though I had testifiedat a trial or it was going to
and my testimony would incriminate them.
Then the scene changesfrom the middle of the city
to the outskirts of town,and it's a more wooded area.
And I still feel that I'm in danger.
I'm runningand trying to hide behind trees
or find any place that I can duck intoto get away.
(15:04):
It occurs to methat I have my cell phone on me,
but I lookand there appears to be no service.
I move again, trying to find a placewhere there is service.
I find it, get a few barsand I feel I will be able to get help.
Though the dream ends thereand I don't know what happens.
Then he starts to tell me his thoughts.
(15:27):
I don't know why I had this dream.
It was a very quiet weekend,and I mostly stayed home resting.
I've been very low energyand need to rest right now.
I was supposed to go over
to a friend's house, but I canceledbecause I just wasn't up for it.
And everyone understood.
I don't know whether I'm depressedbecause I'm not able
(15:48):
to do my regular stuff or if I'm justin one of those down times right now.
Then he's quiet for a whileand I'm waiting.
I want to I don't want to interrupt him.
I want to let it flow.
But I don't hear from him.
I don't hear another commentfor what feels like too long in my mind.
So I ask what else comes to mindabout the dream?
(16:10):
I may have asked him, What'swhat is he thinking?
Then I ask himwhat comes to mind about the dream.
He's. I have no idea.
It was anxiety provoking to be chased.
I definitely felt that it was as thoughI knew what they had done
and I was going to tell everyoneand they had to get to me before I did.
(16:31):
I felt like I was in a video gameand maybe I was even
this character from a gameI played when I was young.
It was this game called Mario Brothers,and there were these two characters named
Mario and Luigiand their cousins who are plumbers
and have to save the princesswho has been imprisoned.
I think I was Mario.
I haven't played that game or even thoughtabout it in a really long time.
(16:55):
I said, Well, what did the bad guys do?
I think they murderedsomeone and I knew about it or saw it.
Maybe it's a little unclear, but I knewI was very afraid and running for my life.
And so why Mario brothers?
That would put me back in childhood.
I suppose that game was a bit of an escapefor me.
I could play it with my friends andwe could lose ourselves in it for hours.
(17:20):
Those were brief momentswhen I remember enjoying myself.
I was with everyoneand we could be carefree while we played.
So who do you feelyou've testified against now?
I don't know.
That seems very far from my liferight now, so I don't know.
And I said, Well, is there
anything you feel is chasing youat the moment?
I don't know.
(17:40):
I don't think I'd sayif anything was chasing me.
But I have been thinkingabout my childhood and my mother.
After our conversation last week,
I was thinking about how my childhood wasnot normal and I had no idea at the time
there was a lot of family stuffgoing on all the time
and we were just supposed to not feel it,not react to it and keep going to school,
(18:05):
keep getting good grades,
making it all look likewe were a perfectly normal family.
And that was a lie.
I don't think I was supposed to know
and surely wasn'tsupposed to talk about that back then.
I used to think that
my father caused all the problemsand he certainly caused his share.
But I'm seeingnow that it was both of them.
(18:25):
They were both completely occupiedwith their own stuff and paid
no attention to us.
Why they had us
when they really were not interestedor able to parent is a mystery.
I wasn't even supposed to questionanything.
I wasn't supposed to think aboutwhether it was fair or normal.
All of those thoughtsare starting to come up now.
(18:46):
And I
said, So you're telling meabout it, You're testifying.
And he said, Yeah,I guess I am talking about it.
We didn't get to talk about those thingsgrowing up.
I couldn't get either of my parentsto talk to me about anything emotional.
They would go silentor change the subject, and it was clear
it was a no go zone.
I have to say, it'sweird to talk about it.
(19:07):
I feel guilty like I'm betraying them.
And I also wonderwhether the things I say are accurate.
Like, was it really that bador does it sound worse when I tell you?
But then I have to remind myselfthat it was not good.
And my brother and I both have problemsin one way or another.
I think my depression is the worstand more like my mother's.
(19:29):
But we both have something.
Neither of us got out unscathed.
So this was really the first timewhere he was able
to expressthese thoughts out loud with you.
He was starting to you know, over time,I would ask questions.
He would tell me about his life.
I would ask what it was like growing up,because I like to know.
(19:50):
And through his prior dreamsand the interpretations
and him talking about,you know, beginning to open all of this up
and start thinking about, my gosh,maybe this wasn't normal.
Maybe everybody doesn't go through this.
It started to register.
And then his mind just Yes,started thinking.
Now, of course, then immediatelyhe's testifying.
(20:13):
Not good.
And when you said to himthat you're testifying,
even in me, I felt like, my gosh, yes,that's that's it.
I can check that off the list.
That is clearlywhat that means in my dream.
And when you do that,when you realize that whatever that is,
I'm testifying in this case,it does something inside of you.
(20:35):
I think there's a feeling you havethat you either weren't allowed to have or
you didn't recognize that in a little wayhelps to start making you whole again.
Right.
This starts to let him put understandingto all of the things he had been through.
It starts to set the mind.
Now I'm going to say at ease in one way.
(20:56):
Right.
Because somebody is now bearing witness
to the fact that this wasn't normal.
And you're allowing yourselfto feel some validity.
Right.
And have somebody take itseriously in the family.
It was a no go zone. Yeah.
So the complaints,I mean, forget taking them seriously.
They really weren'tallowed to even emerge.
(21:18):
You could not complain.
But he can complain now and say,I didn't like this.
That didn't feel good.
They weren't attending to us.
We felt all alone.
So on the one hand, it's relieving.
I can tell you the other hand is.
And now I'm in trouble.
And now this is going to be hard.
I am violating the family rule.
And then, of course, he has to wonder,you know, and question his mind's
(21:41):
ability to recount his own historythat he went through.
Is it right? And I. Feel guilty.
As am I making this worse than it was,right?
How how dare I talk about these people
who gave birth to me and raised meeven if it wasn't perfect?
Don't you think somany of us can relate to that?
(22:01):
I think so.
No matter what it was like that there'ssome say, Am I allowed to say this.
Right and everything.
We thought was normalbecause that's how we grew up.
I mean, what is normal after all?
But it's the way you grew up.
You're thinking
everybody else in their households,they're growing up the same way.
Must be the same.
Yeah, right.
(22:22):
Everybody has a motherwho's gone into her bedroom
from after work until the next morningand doesn't talk to you.
Everybody has a father who maybe checksin, has a sandwich
with you, doesn't say much,and then has to go,
you know, meet his friendsto watch a game or whatever it is.
Right.
Or you find yourself tiptoeing aroundjust to keep the status quo.
(22:42):
Right. Don't disturb anything.
So, you know, I think some flavor of this,
you know, more or lessmost people can relate to.
There is some circumstances.
This was,you know, way over here and the edge.
Right.
I think for for a lot of people,but not as unusual as we would like.
And I think through this,if we say to ourselves, okay, I'm
(23:06):
I'm allowed to be curiousabout these things that I grew up
with, I'm allowed to be curiousabout these feelings, not create
a space that is absorbed by guiltand therefore blocked off.
I think that's one of the great benefitsabout these conversations,
is letting us know that it's it's
(23:27):
okay to have your feelings and it'sokay to question things.
And these are you know,this is a traumatic upbringing. Yes.
This does things to your psyche.
It Right.
This shapes who you are,
what you're allowed to talk aboutand what you can feel about yourself.
And he's saying, look, I felt terrible.
I always thought this was my faultin some way.
(23:50):
I carried all of this aroundand nobody there was softening the blow.
One could imagine that a lot of people
might get pregnant before they get marriedor something like that.
You know, you hear the stories,but in certain families,
okay, might have an impact,might not have an impact these days.
But even if it doeshave a bit of an impact, there's enough
(24:12):
love that it softens all that and said,all right.
Yeah, but they.
Love each other or,you know, here. my God.
And they're stuck.
These people are imprisonedall because of me.
That's tragic.
Pretty difficult.
You know, And so the parentsdidn't have the capacity within them.
They had not had upbringingsthat supported them developing,
(24:34):
knowing how to love.
So they didn't they didn't have no ideahow to give this to their children.
And they had no idea that the childrenwere waiting to love them back.
So they also missed out
on this enormous well of love
that could have been therefor them to help also heal that.
(24:54):
Not that it's the children's job to heal,but that's the circumstance.
And so these children would have givenanything to love these parents
and create a new, new relationship.
So who would the gangster in the dreambe then?
I feel like it could be my motheror my father.
(25:16):
They were both pretty brutal towardsus, though.
I always thought I shouldprotect my mother since she was my mother.
I always thought she was so unhappyand that it was my fault
and my father's fault.
But I don't think it was just him.
She was hard to talk to.
She would just go silentand not respond to him.
(25:38):
I think it would make himso angry and hurt and he shut down.
I don't know if he started that way,but it was clear
that he stopped trying with her.
And then by default, both of the kids.
I said, Thatsounds like when you were young,
your mother could have beenthe princess that needed rescuing.
Yeah, that could be.
I really wanted to just make her happy.
(25:59):
When I was young, I knew she was unhappy.
I would try to think of thingsthat she would like and do them for her,
but I don't think she even registered it.
They were both miserable but pretending.
Or maybe it just never occurred to them
that they didn'thave to stay in the marriage.
They just stayed and suffered.
So I said, I think there's a part of youthat must feel you told me the truth.
(26:24):
We see that you testified.
So now you're a wanted man.
I also think that you're Mariowho has to save the princess.
But I think that Mario is alsothe PM for Mother.
You had to become your motherbecause she was emotionally absent.
(26:44):
So then you're having to save yourself
and your mother and also be your mother.
Big task, I think here.
The bad guys at the Depression, That'sthe depression stemming from the idea
that life is painful and hardand that's how it is.
And that seems to be how your mother felt.
(27:06):
So you're saying it'sher emotional experience
that becomes the gangsters that are after
you chasing you, going to get you.
In fact, they have gotten you.
You've had to live her lifewith her depression.
So the question is,how much pain do you have to be in?
(27:26):
And are you allowed to call meand tell me about it?
That's the part in the dreamwhere you say, I realize I have a phone.
Can I get help? wait,I don't have service.
wait, I think I do now.
Otherwise, you have to keep it all in.
If there's no one to talk to.
If you can't get service,you're stuck with it all.
And that's how you've lived.
(27:48):
No bars until you were ableto start talking about it?
He asked me.
So Waits.
He has to clarify.
So I have to be the mother.
He wanted to understand that.
And I said, Yeah,from what it sounds like you unconsciously
had to become the mother to yourselfand probably to your brother,
(28:08):
I think is why it's your Mario, not Luigi.
And from Mother, she was emotionallyunavailable and unhappy.
But you need a mother as a babyand a child.
So what do you do?
You become the mother now.
Once you become the mother,all kinds of things happen.
Because once you become the mother,you take on parts
(28:32):
of the mother's personality to do the job.
You took on her depression.
You feel likeshe did a lot of the time down unhappy.
But that's what it means to be the motherin this situation in here. Yes.
So, yes, for him, for everybody,
it's going to be specific
(28:55):
to what your mother felt
her life was like unconsciously,maybe even consciously.
His mother was, as he describedit, was just going to suffer it.
There was no choice.
There was no option to get out of it.
So she's caring an ideathat life is painful.
I'm unhappy, but this is just what it is.
(29:16):
There's no changing.
So I told him he'dhave his own pain. Also.
But now he's got a double whammybecause he's also the mother.
So he's got to carry her pain and his.
No wonder he's been really depressedmost of his life.
So I explained all of this to himin a back and forth.
(29:36):
He was asking me questions.
I was wantedto make it really clear to him.
So he understood because in the dream,
that's what's been chasing himhis whole life.
The gangsters.
But the gangsters are this depressionand this way of feeling.
That's it. Life is just hard.
It's never going to stop.
(29:57):
I'm always going to be on the run.
And it was trying to end his life.
And he's rightthat depression, not only would it end
his life, let's say, in a suicide,but it's kept him from really living.
He's constantly back
and forth between,am I going to be here or not be here?
It's not a life.
And all of this is in his unconsciousand really dictating
(30:22):
his conscious existence,
but not knowing what
that unconscious is saying toyou means that in your conscious world
you're doing these thingsand not understanding why.
You wouldn't even think about it.
I think, you know, it's just youthat's the problem here, is it?
So isn't something you question.
(30:44):
It just feels like you.
It's like I'm left handed.
I am just left handed.I don't know the question.
Why am I left handed right?
I am just depressedand of course I'm depressed.
I caused my family enormous painand that is in there.
I don't want to saythat peace isn't a big part of this,
but the dream is telling us, Look,I had to become the m m.
(31:07):
I became the M to save the princessand the princess
as Mom and I am now both plaguedwith guilt about testifying
and telling you all about what happenedand what he didn't realize is he's
not only telling me the conscious piecesthat happened in the family, he's
telling me the unconscious piece,which is I had to become her.
(31:28):
There was no love to get from her.
She didn't have it.
So I had to become the motherto save my own life and save her.
I had to rescue the princess.
But now I am part
me and a great deal my mother.
And what is her life look like?
So here this is important.
(31:49):
You can start a person can start lookingand saying, okay, wait a minute,
How how much of my mother'scharacteristics
way of seeing the world, way of feeling,way of being in the world, Am I.
Kerry?
And is that really me?
Because what we're going to do in part inthis treatment is help
(32:10):
peel off what is mom.
We have to get back to Brian,not Brian as Mario. Mom.
And most of this peeling awaywill come via the dreams.
Via the dreams that if you have it,
is one of the best ways to do it,because it's I don't know that
(32:31):
I would ever get to this idea fromjust what he's telling me consciously.
I might over time.
Just a longer, slower processto to hear that.
Wait a minute, he's back.
He's telling me, here's howhere's the game I played in my childhood.
Psychologically, I played a game.
I became the mother.
I rescued the princess.
(32:53):
I gave up part of myselfso that I could imagine
I could have a fairy tale life.
And a big piece here is that his motherjust didn't have it to give.
She didn't get it in her lifetime.
I don't know how many generations backthat goes,
but she didn't have it,so she couldn't give it to him.
(33:16):
But he felt that.
And as a baby, as a child,if you're feeling that,
you don't have a lot of choicebecause not having love
makes you have to do mental gymnastics,we actually need that to survive.
You could think about thatlike water or air.
We're really designed to have it.
(33:36):
If we don't, we have to imagine it.
We have to become our own caretakersand conjure it.
But that means we're not ourselves.
And what we're conjuring that we think islove is probably not love.
It can't.
Really bebecause we don't know what that. Is.
(33:57):
We don't know what it isconsciously experience right now.
I think some people probably come inwhere where it comes from,
people can discuss, but they come inwith more of a capability to love.
Naturally, that does happen.
But I would say generally no.
People are having to sort of domental gymnastics and imagine
and you'll hear people talk about this,they they tip their hat to this.
(34:21):
well, it was really, really hard.
But I know I was loved, you know? Right.
So you get both the denial and probably
a little acknowledgmentthat there's been some gymnastics.
I had to make this loving.
All right. Well, yeah. How'd you do that?
We've got to look at the deepest leveland see how each person did it
(34:42):
in that family. Given those.
So he and I have some of this
conversation because a lot of this well,he's heard some of it.
He's still trying to get this idea.
Hey, wait a minute.You mean what do you mean?
I'm I'm not my motherand I want to be my mother, you know.
How dare you call me my mother?
You know, I mean, he he understands.
(35:02):
I'm not insulting him,but this is a big idea.
Takes a lot of getting used to a.
Lot of getting used to.
As we talk about this, we go backand forth and he asks me, But what about?
My father and I said,I'm sure you got a lot from your father.
There's no question.
And this is important for people to hear.
You got a lot from your father.
(35:23):
What I'm going to do hereis follow your dream,
this particular dream,because you're telling me
you had to become Marioand save the princess.
This dream pertains to your mother.
That doesn't meanwe're not going to get another dream
that pertains to your fatherand what you had to do with him.
So I wanted him to knowwe're going to explore everything.
(35:46):
Dad's not left out of it.
Dad made huge contributions.
He was removed,Didn't really talk to the kids here.
He's got two boysand he's not showing up as a father.
Dad will be covered.
But this dream is so importantbecause it shows us
probably very early onhe had to become the man.
(36:06):
Which makes sense given that we start
our existence in our mother's womb.
Right?
There are few other thingsthat I think are important
about this,which is I know hearing that he was a baby
who felt they didn't plan him,he wasn't wanted.
(36:27):
The unconscious is powerful.
So the parents didn'talso didn't work to not have the baby.
So we can think about that.
But that I know.
Then he will bewondering whether I want him
to that.
And at the top of this sessionhe even says I didn't take the pain pills.
Now, in one way, wonderful.He wanted to be clear headed.
(36:49):
He was thinking about the treatmenthe wants to be able to engage.
But I think he's also telling mea little bit, you know, one would wonder,
how much pain does he then have to be?
And for me, see our suffer.
I won't take my pain pill.
My arm is killing me, but I have to do itbecause I need to show up for you.
(37:10):
So that's in there too.
I see.
Because I was just goingwith what you first said.
How great He didn't take the painkiller,that he just wanted to be present.
Right. So but I think it's both.
There are a lot of thingsthat come up in a treatment
and you have to decide any given session.
What's the most salientpiece to interpret.
(37:31):
You only have so much time.
What do you really want to get to?
And there are certain piecesthat will stop somebody from coming back
potentially, You know, you can feel thatbuilding, so you want to interpret it.
Some things you may want to letif you know you're going to see them.
Another time that week or soon,
(37:53):
you might let that slide a little bitand come back to it.
But you'll you'll catch up to it
because this is going to show itselfin the treatment all over the place,
because he felthe caused so much pain in the family
that I know he's going to feel it here.
And what you don't get to in a givensession
(38:16):
will probably continueto show up in his dream
until you get to it. Yes.
Or in what he tells me.
Right.
This doesn't necessarily show upin the dream, but it's what he opens with.
I'm going to tell you,I didn't take a painkiller.
Right. Okay.
There's a. Message.
There's a message.
And he wants to know that first.
(38:36):
So is there any kind of revelationor soothing that he feels
after having shared this dream,
or does that come in your next sessionthat you were going to discuss?
I don't know that this is a sessionwhere I'd say we wrap it up with a bow.
He feels better.
Neither of these are high,but what they are is incredibly important
in terms of him getting the uncutconscious lay of the land.
(39:01):
He has to know what he did early on.
He became his mother.
He is carrying both his own depressionand her depression.
No wonder you want to commit suicide. Yes.
And like you said, it's a double whammy.
It's a double whammy.
So that's the big revelation.
So it's not a big revelation.
(39:22):
But now these thingshave bubbled to the surface.
So do most patients.
Then go away and it continues tosort of fizz, or do patients
think that is big and scary
and try to dismiss it,even though they really can't because it's
sitting thereall the time in their unconscious?
(39:44):
Both can happen.
Some people might.
You know, to me,this is a big revelation, but, you know,
I don't maybe it didn't sound like it,but it is
if you find out you are not yourself,that's a pretty revelation.
But as a patient to take thatin, maybe it's being watered down.
Well, one has to see.
(40:06):
And so what I'm always doing is seeing,I mean, a you want to see
if your patient comes back, you know,how do they respond?
After the interpretation,He starts asking me some questions.
Now, some of that may be to shift backto intellect a little.
Right.
And so I'm always weighing that becauseotherwise the feeling might just hit him.
(40:26):
Right.
And I weigh it because he's new andthere is some education that has to go on.
But I also know I'm being pulled to answerquestions, intellectual questions.
In a way,the dream is going to be all the feeling,
conversation, conscious conversationcan be half and half
or maybe even all intellect,but it may be used as a bit of a buffer.
(40:49):
But I'm going to do it hereknowing that that may be happening.
And let me see where it goes.
You know, I don't want to leavethis patient unattended to
and ignored that way.
And so maybe looking back now,if I had found a way
to interpret that a little bit for him,I might have.
But at the time my thinking was
(41:10):
this baby has been unattendedso much of the time.
The last thing I want to dois not be having a conversation with him.
He didn't get enough of this.
He needs it.
Right.
So both things are going. On, right?
So intellectual or not,he needs that connection.
He needs. A connection.And he's new in treatment.
(41:33):
And this is, in my mind, a bombshell.
Yes, You know, you are not yourself.
Part of the reasonyou always want to kill yourself
is because you are livingyour mother's life.
And that is just the way it's going to be.
Okay.
So to answer your question, some peopleare going to completely deny that.
Some people are going to the wheelsstart turning and they may of
(41:54):
I could barely sleep.I'm thinking about is what does this mean?
I'm looking all over like,how am I my mother?
Do I drink my coffee the way she does?
Do I complain the way she does?
Do I feel depressed?
Do I look like do I dress like her?
Do I only cook thingsI know she would want to eat for dinner?
The whole picture.
And some people are going to bemost likely somewhere in the middle.
(42:17):
Then I have to look at the next session.
As I said, A, do they come backor did that just blow it out of the water?
If they come back, what's next?
What do you want to tell me about next?
And you're looking to see does ityou know, does the dream deepen?
Does the treatment start to deepen?
Do they shut you up? Do the bad guys win?
And the patient is lying deadin a warehouse somewhere in the dream?
(42:41):
What happens?
Follow the unconscious.
That's where the feeling is going to come.
So Brian does come back.
And does he come back all in and come backsoon?
Brian stays in treatment.
So yes, he comes back soonand keeps working on this.
This didn't blow him out of the water,which is good.
(43:03):
It didn't cure him.I want to be very clear.
You know, thisjust starts to set the stage.
Brian, here's what you're dealing with.
You are not Brian.
You're you're Brian. And
Brian.
Plus, Brian.
Plus when Brian is thinking about itwhen he's not with you.
(43:23):
Well, I guess it is, as you just said,people go in all different directions.
He might just put it out here.
He might be taking it in,he might be thinking that's impossible.
But he comes backand this next that you're sharing,
is it subsequent or is it a few dreams in?
This is a few months in.
Okay, so this isn't the next piece.
(43:45):
He starts working on all of thisin his dreams.
He's figuring out how I'm mom, Who am I?
How my dad.
What's going on?
And he's also wrestlingwith this physical problem, right?
So that the next dreamwill have to do with some of that.
And I like these two dreams a lotbecause these
(44:06):
are two of the biggest complaintshe came in with.
I've got a lifelong depressionand now I've got this medical piece.
I'm dealing with.
So I want if I can get an understandingof this, this is why the guy came to me.
Sure. Right.What are you going to do with this now?
I can't always do this.
Sometimes I don't see it.
Sometimes the material isn't there.
(44:27):
But I think the next dreamis very interesting in terms
of his elaboration on
how he felt as a very young person
and what that had him do in his mindand why he's suffering the way he is.
So that in that sense it's tiedto the first piece, but elaborates.
(44:49):
So he comes in to the next session.
I haven't been sleeping much.
I've had some trouble with my legs again,
pain and they aren't doing whatI like them to do.
I also think I have gotten sick.
I had stomach crampsand that kept me up a lot of the night
I was in a fetal positionand I'm hoping the worst is behind me now.
(45:11):
But it was a pretty bad night.
I just wish they could figure outwhat was wrong with me.
I know people must think I'm crazy,but I'm not.
Really.
I just want to be able to get onwith my life the way everyone else does.
They're starting to decreasethe pain meds, which should help me a lot.
That will mean I have more energy
think, and I won't have that feelingof being in a cloud sometimes.
(45:35):
But then I worry aboutwhether that is also
protecting mea bit from the emotional side of it all.
Life has changed so much.
I thought I was really on my way to havinglife finally be happy for a change.
Maybe I really am not supposed to be happy
or get that I see it more now.
It is tough and it brings backall of the depression
(45:59):
I make it through the day,but I don't really feel like I do inside.
It's always sort of therethese thoughts that people must think
I'm just this horrible, lazy piece of shit
since I feel dependent on everyonefor everything.
I was such an active personand now I'm just wasting away
and I don't know where this will go.
(46:20):
I know I'm scared a lot.
I ask him if he was able to dreamI was at school or college.
I think I opened a doorand I'm suddenly in a 1940s or fifties
plane and it's big, emptyand maybe for cargo and the back is open
and I can see outand maybe we are on a military base.
(46:42):
And then I see there's a can of frostingwhich I love to eat out of the
can I take two or three spoonfulsand it makes me sick.
And then I see it'ssome kind of airplane sealant
and I leave the planeand I see these people
and they take me to an Italian restaurantand I eat pasta with seafood.
(47:04):
And I think I like it.
It's very nice, but I'm not sure about it.
And then dinner ends and I walk to a park,
but I'm not sure if that happens or not.
And the dream ends.
So many parts and pieces. Lots of pieces.
So I asked him to tell me about histhoughts and he knows how to do this now.
(47:24):
And he says, I'm back in schoola lot in my dreams.
And I ask himwhat comes to mind about that?
And he says, MaybeI feel like I have things to learn.
Is that too obvious?
And then he tells me
he has no connection to a plane,has no idea why he's dreaming about it.
And then as he sits there, he says,wait a minute.
(47:45):
Actually my uncle,my mom's brother, was in the Air Force,
maybe someone else in the family,but I really can't remember.
But I think it was mentioned at some pointI would have to ask someone
what the story was.
But I guess there issome family connection.
I just don't know the details.
I think it might have been herfather, too.
(48:06):
Yeah, that sounds right.
So I ask him what comes to his mindabout this frosting.
That's sealant.
And he said it.
It just look like frosting. And I ate it.
He said, it's embarrassing,but I like to eat frosting out of the can.
It's very sweet. I like it.
And I said, Well, couldn't you tell afterone spoonful that it was sealant?
(48:27):
And he said, I knew it was off,but I guess I couldn't tell.
And it wasn't bad enough to get thatit wasn't food.
And he said there was a spoon or somescoop in the can and it was ready to go.
But then I got sick, which is no surprise.
So I stopped, but I wasn't that sick.
So I was okay enough.
(48:48):
I asked about the family and the next parthe said, I know I'm in the fifties,
sort of in the dream and it looks like it,
but I'm also somehow aware of time too.
So I think it just looks like that.
And the families actually current day,if that makes sense.
I don't remember much about the dream,but they seem nice.
(49:09):
They invite me to eatand I think there are vegetables in some
pasta with mussels, but for some reasonI don't really feel comfortable.
I ask why not?
They said.
I thinkbecause I'm never fully comfortable.
I think I was wondering whether they likedme or was there something else going on?
I wasn't sure.
Could I trust them? That's common for me.
(49:29):
If someone seems like they like me,I always wonder whether there's
an ulterior motive,even though I realize there's not a lot
someone is going to get from mein terms of money or anything else.
But I still worry.
So what I ended up saying to them was thatit sounds like the plane is his mother
and he's saying that already in uterohe got a frosty welcome.
(49:51):
You had only your mother's toxins.
I see the sealant to eat, no love.
And yet he had to eat them.
He had to eat them.
I said that I must be the familythat is offering to feed him real food.
But he isn't quite sureif he can trust me.
I also think it's interesting thatthe food offered is pasta with mussels.
(50:15):
Given your problems with your mussels,
you might be saying thatyour mother offered you no real food, so
you've resorted to eating your own musselsto feed yourself the love you needed.
Now, I think the painkillersand maybe the way painkillers really work
is that they're dulling the effectof having no love.
(50:37):
It's not really the pain in the body.
And he said, I think I'm going tohave to think about this one.
That's a lot to take in.
But it's interesting,I didn't mention it was mussels initially.
I realized when you said that I thoughtof it as seafood, but it was mussels.
It was mussels.
(50:58):
That's why we ended.
That's amazing. Yeah.
So this is an interesting dreambecause he's really saying,
here was my mother,she was an empty cargo plane.
I'm inside and there's nothing for meto eat but airplane sealant.
I imagine it's sweet frosting.
Where's my love?
(51:19):
Where is the love?
It's just sealant.
So that goes to what you were sayingearlier, where we all, most of us, devise
something that we call lovejust to get us through.
Right. Just to survive.
Said it wasn't bad enough.
Didn't kill me.
Right.
I'm here. Might make me. Sick.
(51:40):
Might make me sick now what?
Starting at the beginning this time,he says I couldn't sleep that much.
So he's waking up right now.
He's uncomfortable. He's anxious.
You know, the dreams are showing himmore truth about his life.
So people will worry because patientswill come in and complain.
(52:00):
I'm not sleeping,but that may have to happen
and we may have to helpour patients understand,
yes, this is hard to go through,but you're working towards something
and you will geta better understanding of your life,
but it may disrupt your sleep.
And so these awkward things that happen
(52:20):
or uncomfortableor physically, emotionally,
we need to be told that there are signslikely that you're making progress.
That's right.
This is a big sign. Both he's deepening.
my gosh.
You're going to tell us what's happeninghere.
You're going to tell usthere wasn't any love, right?
He's going to keep testifying.
(52:41):
He's getting, I think, prettyThis is pretty direct, pretty frank.
I was in an empty cargo plane.
You can imagine the metalhold of a cargo plane.
Yeah. What's soft in that?
Yeah, nothing.
Cold, metal, steel.
And this is what he had.
This is the cargo planes, Mothers.
The cargo plane. Right.
(53:01):
He was the cargo.
Then he's going to come.
I'm going to invite him to this dinner.
You know, I'm going to invite himto come eat.
Things that taste good.
Hopefully healthy food, right.
Understandings about his mind.
Even then, they were nice, right?
I don't know if I can trust you.
How do I know you're not going to feed me?
(53:21):
See, Lynn, How do I knowyou're not just cold back there?
Well, he's got to talk to me a long time
to realize I'm not actually his mother.
And you can't really say to himpoint blank.
Well, of course that's not the case.
I mean, it doesn't matter what you sayintellectually or on the surface,
that doesn't undowhere he's coming from unconsciously.
(53:45):
That's right.
And that's why you want to keep
working and keep showing himthat you're working to understand him.
Keep working on the dreams.
He gives me a hint here that at least
it's vegetables and seafood.
So I think he gets to the ideathat it's muscles, but it's also he's
starting to seeyou're offering me food to see my life.
(54:07):
But I don't trust you yet.
Well, of course you don't.
And you're not going to trust mefor a long time.
You may trust me. A pocket hereand a pocket there.
But you couldn'ttrust your parents to love you.
So how can you trust that a person
who's not actuallyyour mother is going to love you? Yes.
Because of all people.
It's your mother that you should be ableto trust or your father.
(54:28):
Right. And if your mother doesn'tlove you, if your own mother.
How can it be?
Am I going to think he's reallyjust a lazy piece of shit as he says?
Of course he's going to wonder thatfrom time to time.
Now it's not so strongthat it keeps him from coming back.
And if I see those things popping uptoo much or in such a strong way,
(54:48):
I'm going to really go after themto interpret as well.
You must have me as your mother, who youimagine thought you were a piece of shit,
because that will ruin a treatment.
You won't come back if it's too strong.
So this is what's going on for him,is he says it because I had no love.
I've turned to eating my mussels.
(55:09):
So no wonderthey can't find a simple cause
for why the mussels feel weakand like they're deteriorating.
It's a psychological underpinning.
Now, I'm not going to say that he mightnot have some physical pathology going on,
but certainly he is telling us that,Wait a minute, you better catch this.
(55:31):
It is absolutely connectedto my state of mind.
And of course, the body and the mind
say say I was starving for love, starving.
And that's still a hard thingfor a lot of us to settle with that
our feelingsand our physicality are so connected.
(55:51):
Yes, it's still a difficult concept.
I think we're very connected.
And the other thing I think is hard forpeople is to really say,
I wasn't loved very hard.
There wasn't love there.
I was starving. I'll eat sealant.
Meaning his mother was so filled,she was filled with all sealant.
There wasn't any frostingof the sweet kind in there.
(56:13):
It was frosty.
It was freezing cold.
But didn't have you know, it wasn'tas though this woman was hiding sweet
cans of frosting from themand just wouldn't give them.
She didn't have it to give.
That he was able to take all thatshe was able to.
Offer. That's right. And he. Did.
Is Brian still a patient?
Brian is not a patient.
(56:34):
Did Brian overcome or begin
to work on his true self even more?
What happened to his physical pain?
Right. All good questions.
Brian worked with mea few years beyond this.
His depression got much better.
Not gone.
It wasn't gone, but much better.
(56:56):
He was able to put distancebetween himself and the bad guys.
The dreams would start to showthat he was no longer on trial.
He was no longer feelinghe was solely testifying.
But I would say that his symptoms,the physical stuff, didn't get worse.
This certainly also did not cure that.
You know, this is not magic.
(57:18):
But what it did was it didn't get worse.
Right.
And he was able
to scale back on the pain medsand get back to some of his activities.
Brian went back to his life.
That's great. I don't think Brian was.
At the end of the day,Brian just wanted to live his life.
You know?
I don't thinkBrian was looking to be in therapy
(57:39):
for as long as it would have takento really clean all of this up.
But I think he felt he got enough relief.
I think he probably testifiedas much as somewhere deep inside.
He felt he was allowed to.
See some of these things, though,that he was sharing with you
that allowed him to sort of become okaywith himself, with who he really was.
(58:02):
Is that knowingthen maybe even on his own,
he could say, okay,wait a minute, here's a moment
where I'm really feeling guiltyabout an experience I'm having.
What is that about?
I feel like some of this would give usa few tools to to question ourselves.
Yes. Not in a negative way,
(58:22):
but just to say, wow, it'sokay for me to think about this.
It's okay for me to feel this way.
And why am I feeling this guy right?
I can talk.
I can have some experiencethat there's a place that certain people
are going to want to hear what I have tosay, even if they're hard things,
I can start to thinkabout the internal map
(58:42):
I now have of my unconscious,my internal world.
OG SometimesI'm living completely as my mother.
Sometimesmaybe there's a little more me there.
Can I now see when I'm deeply, deeplyin my depression,
I have to at least be thinkingwhich part of my depression is this?
Is this my mother who feels this?
(59:05):
It will never stop.
This is just life. It goes like this.
Or am I me who thinks, Well,wait a minute, I don't have to be her.
I had my own pain,but I got some help with that.
Maybe I don't have to be that depressed.
I don't have to constantlybe thinking, Well,
if this doesn't go well,I can always off myself.
(59:26):
Yeah, because there's nothingabout his mother's depression
or way of living lifethat's truly his that he must own.
It's just fiction, right? That.
That the part that is hers is hers.
Now, the one piece where Brian didget more of the life he wanted, as well as
(59:47):
he was finally able to have a relationshipand feel less that he would kill himself
or that that option was so strongthat he couldn't go into something.
And, you know, he said ifif he's ever there again, he'll call me.
And you may not know,but that relationship was he
was he
or is he truly able to feel love there?
(01:00:11):
He'll have to tell us.
Maybe if he comes back,I hope because he's using the rule
that if he really feels like he'sgoing to do himself in, they'll come back.
Yeah, but if he does show up again,I'll have to ask him.
I'll have to see what he's doing,see what he tells me.
And I think there was probablysome way of saying, look,
(01:00:32):
I won't stay here and talk to you,but I can have a girlfriend.
She'll substitute in for youand I'll go on and live my life with her.
So in a certain way,I've got a part of this
that I'm going to hold on to,even if I can't be here
and tell you everythingabout the rest of my life.
There's something about the level of trusthe was ultimately able
(01:00:54):
to feel with you, that he wasthen able to transfer to another human.
Who hopefully loves him.
Will, Will hope and will hopeit can hold some of that up.
Is there anything elseyou want to share about this?
That's a lot, love.
That's what it all comes down to, right?
And now love.
That's what everybody has to get to.
(01:01:16):
You want to know why you're takingthe pain meds to block out the feeling,
the pain from not having enough love.
And it's at the root of everythinghuman beings are navigating.
And that's that's thethe critical piece in this dream is
he feels the way he feltbecause he didn't have love.
(01:01:38):
And that and now love.
I think it's, just imperativethat now could be right this very minute,
that now could be when you're pregnantand thinking about your baby,
that now applies to our government,our politics, our humanity.
It's so big, right? We need it now.
We needed it yesterday, now, now, now.
(01:02:00):
More love.
Yes. Well, thank you.
Thank you for that giant message.
And this, as always,fascinating conversation.
I it's so precious that you can sharethese dreams there.
They move me deeplyand I'm sure others, too.
It's just it's huge.
It's really a gift. Thank you.
(01:02:21):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
And thank you to my patients for being.
Willing.
To share all of this.
That's awesome. Very important material.
Okay, so you'll come back. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us.
And be sure to check in with us often
and let us knowwhat you're thinking about our program.
(01:02:42):
See you soon.
Okay.
Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks.
I head up the HolisticPsychoanalysis Foundation
established by my late husband, Dr.
Bernard Bail.
Welcome to AM Now, love.
Dr. Lauren is with us today.
Always great.
Always thought provoking.
(00:26):
I know this work pretty well,but listening to Lauren
always creates more curiosity for me.
Bernard's theoryputs us in touch with who we really are
and is continually compelling.
We are never done learninghow to be our best selves.
(00:46):
We are here today to talk about dreamsand the amazing keys to our unconscious.
They absolutely hold.
Dr. Wiener is going to sharethe dreams of one patient
as we discussthe interpretation of the dreams.
You will see how the patientwas able to heal and find out
who they truly are and live life in a new
(01:10):
and truly meaningful way.
Let's get started. Hi.
Thank you for having me back.
Of course. Thank you for being here.
So I have another case.
I'd love to jump right in, if that's okay.
Let's do it.
This is a patientwho has been in treatment
for a reasonably shortamount of time, six months ish.
(01:33):
So a lot of things
come up in the beginning of a treatment.
They emerge.
Oftenit gives the patient an understanding.
It gives me a starting place.
And I know that we're goingto be coming back to these ideas
over and over and over again.
Is there a typical amount of timethat it takes for you to kind of
(01:56):
get the big picture of who this person isso you can better interpret the dreams?
It depends on the person and in part,it depends on
whether that person is gearedto start more at the top or the bottom.
And I say that because some people come inand then the first few dreams, if I know
that I can get a good enough picture,because sometimes it is in there,
(02:19):
I don't know the person well enough yetto know everything I'm seeing.
So some people will startand they give you, wow, a whole
deep, big picture right away.
And some people startmore at the top and say, okay, look,
let me see how this goesand we'll make our way down.
I see. So,you know, and everything in between right?
And then I suppose some peoplehave a dream they can share right off,
(02:41):
but you can't really give ita good interpretation
until you have more informationabout them. Absolutely.
Nonetheless, that dream will be valuableat some point. Yes.
And sometimes I will go back to a dream,
say, you talked about thisin the first dream.
You brought me.
Now I understandmore of what I was saying.
Yeah, this makes sense now.
(03:02):
And so I may have to reinterpret or add
to the interpretationto make it more meaningful.
And it provides information.
So I'll. I'll get to it.
All right. Okay.
The patient, Brian, is a young man
in his mid-thirtieswho has suffered from lifelong depression
and has felt that from a young agehe would at some point take his own life.
(03:25):
He was referred to me by a psychiatristwho was prescribing him antidepressants
and working with his medical teamto help diagnose and treat
a new and potentially complicatedmedical condition.
Brian is the eldest of two childrenand grew up in a very unhappy home
marked by palpable dislikebetween the parents
(03:45):
and with constant bickeringthat often turned into screaming matches.
Both parents
also had short temperswith both of the children.
His parents marriedafter dating a short time
because his mother became pregnantwith the patient.
He said that he did not thinkthat they would be together otherwise,
and it makes him feel guiltyand the cause of the family's misery.
(04:09):
Specifically his mother's.
And this is all without havingany information about the imprint theory.
That's right.
He just always felt he knew the timelineof how how it all went down.
And he always felt guilty.
This wouldn't be happening.
Nobody would be here suffering like this.
If not for you.
(04:30):
what a burden for me. Right.
So and that's you know, he knew it.
That's,you know, part of what he felt was.
All right.
Well, if I do away with myself,everybody's free to just go on.
Everyone will be better off. Everybody.
He reports that both parentshad their own painful histories.
His mother spokevery little about her family of origin
and generally spokevery little about most things.
(04:54):
What she did say was that her father wasan alcoholic who was verbally abusive
towards her mother when he was drinkingand that it was never mentioned.
He would get little bits of informationover the years.
But, you know,she was a very reserved woman prone
to yellingbut not prone to real conversation.
He described his mother as coldand depressed much of the time,
(05:17):
which resulted in herisolating herself in her bedroom
and leaving the running of the houseto the children.
Once they were old enough.
He did not remember her offeringeither of the children
much comfort in the way of emotionalor physical affection.
And she was easily angered,
which would result in her yellingand occasionally hitting the children
(05:37):
until they became olderand too big for that.
She appeared more interested in her workthan anything else, though
the patient wonders if it was just sothat she could escape from family life.
He saidthat his father lost his own father
when he was in his mid-twentiesand that he felt his father had to take
(05:57):
on the role of the father being the fatherin the family at that time.
He describes his father as distantand said that he spent much of his time
outside of the home at workor involved with his hobbies.
So neither parent is really presentemotionally.
Nobody's connecting with these childrenregularly.
Everybody's suffering.
(06:19):
And the arguments or the yelling or thehitting that occurred wasn't spoken about.
Was it just supposed to feel like thosethings didn't happen or they did happen?
But don't you dare talk about them.
It was more like they happenedand it's not up for discussion.
You know, I don't know that it was so muchin this family that they pretended
(06:41):
it didn't exist the way they did
in the mother's family,but it was just more This is how it goes.
I see. This is life.
Yeah.
There is nothing to talk.
And the childrencertainly have no say. Sure.
So if this happens, they're to go alongand that's that
and figure out how to be better childrennext time, you know, Which is right.
That's how the message lands for them.
(07:03):
And then, of course,when those children go out into the world
outside of their family, they're carryingon with that sort of behavior.
That's right.
This is this is the model
for how life goes,how interactions go, how relationships go.
The patient was a high achiever in school,despite his deep feelings
of being a burden on his parentsand seeing himself
(07:24):
as fundamentally stupidand a waste of a person.
His words.
He earned a degree in computer programingand went on to make good money
in his field.
He had a harder timewith his romantic life and knows
that his experience in his family colorshis expectations
around romantic relations shipsand keeps him alone.
(07:45):
He worries that his depressionand self-loathing would eventually ruin
any relationship he had and doesn'twant to bring pain to another person.
He also cannot guarantee thathe will be here, which he feels is unfair
to a potential partnerand greatly complicates any relationship.
He imagines having.
I will say that he is very well-likedby his friends.
(08:07):
He has a nice circle of friendsthat I think
all became sort of second familiesfor each other.
So there is that bit of positiveinput for him.
Luckily,and I think part of what keeps him here.
And that's a different experiencethan he would have with a partner
because two partnersreally rely on each other.
(08:29):
So if he goes missing, then he's leftthis partner in a big lurch with friends.
Exactly. Friends.They'll all have each other.
So, yes, it's a much bigger commitmentto that one on one relationship.
And I think for him,while he's had some experiences
in a romantic relationshipin the past, minimal.
(08:50):
But I think it very quicklybrought up so much of the family dynamics.
It was too much for him.
He would find ways to back out of itquickly,
several months before he began treatment.
Brian began having some unexplained
symptoms, muscle spasms,some numbness in his feet
(09:11):
at times, and a feeling that his muscleswere not what they once were.
This is a young man.
Yeah.
Doctors,you know, couldn't quite figure it out.
He was a personused to being active outdoors.
So relying on his body was somethingthat gave him a sense of security.
And without it,he felt more depressed and also scared.
He saw many specialists,
(09:31):
and it was unclear what was causinghis pain and muscle weakness.
Though the doctors had ruled out mostthings that would be devastating to him.
The factthat he was still experiencing symptoms
and that it was unexplainedwas deeply unsettling to him.
He was prescribed pain medicationto help him combat the discomfort,
but he reported needing it and alsofinding it made him less clearheaded.
(09:53):
So he was careful about taking it.
In the early days of treatment,he asked me about
whether I was comfortabletalking about suicide.
Well, he had
never made any actual attemptsto kill himself, which I think is notable.
But he did engage in some dangerousbehavior during his teenage years,
such as hanging out of the windowof a speeding car
while driving with his friendsand mountain climbing.
(10:16):
That could be more or less safe,depending on how you did things.
He said he wasn't actively thinking ofdoing anything to harm himself currently,
but he wanted to make sure he was okayif he talked about it since thoughts about
it had been a constant companion to himover the years.
I told him I wanted to hear everythingthat was on his mind, including that
(10:36):
the link between his guiltover being an unplanned baby
and his suicidalitycame up very early in the treatment
as he imaginedthat had he not been born, his
mother would have gone on to find a lifethat actually made her happy.
As he explored his life and historymore carefully, his idea
that either parent would have beenfundamentally happy began to fade.
(10:59):
And the following sessionsare several months into his treatment.
Did he come to youbecause of the physical pain?
And he was looking for a solution to that
that might be outside of medicine?
Yes, I think the psychiatrist saidyou have now another thing on your plate.
You should talk to someone.
(11:21):
And he had had some brief therapy prior,a few attempts.
Some was helpful for a little while.
Nothing stuck all that long.
But he was open when he said,okay, I'll try.
And he heard that I work with dreams,which I don't know that
that was a big draw for him, but it wasat least a little bit of a curiosity.
(11:41):
And so he came I have a feeling he came
sort of assuming it would be like the,you know, other he'll do it.
He'll see how. Whatever.
You know, he he did stick around, whichwas I think showed he felt it was helpful.
Do people come to youor others in your field
wanting to share thoughts of suicide,
(12:02):
but not really ever intending itfor themselves?
Yes, that happens.
One of the reasons he checked with mewas that in the course
of some of these questionsrelated to the physical symptoms,
some of the doctors, you know,
sort of on the checklist,any thoughts of suicide, any of this.
And he said, I made the mistakeof telling a few of them
(12:27):
because it's been part of my life,but it's I'm not going to do it.
But people freaked out.
So he wanted to make sureI wouldn't freak out.
And I was very happy.
He was so frank, you know, bring it up.
Let's talk about it, get it on the table.
It gets you towhere you need to be in a little faster.
That's right.
And it really lets me understandwhere he is instead of just pretending.
(12:51):
But he sort of kept this, you know,this was the idea
was that if it ever gets too painful,he'll check out.
And if he's not marriedand he doesn't have kids
and there's nobody depending on him,he's free to do it.
And he is if at any point he decides,I suppose
he's, you know, depending on your beliefs,he's free to do it.
Right.
And I think for him, just knowingand now adding to it
(13:14):
the physical symptoms, if itif life really just was so unbearable
and he feltit was too much pain for himself
and if he ever felt he was bringingtoo much pain, like to the family
because he carried that piecefrom the unplanned birth or a pregnancy.
Well, and that's amaybe a topic for another day.
(13:35):
But the responsibility you as a human
must feelwhen you hear these sorts of things.
Yeah.
And to be able to talk aboutsomething like this,
because a lot of people think about this,you know, it's much more common
that people think about itand at various times in their life
and with different stresses.
Now, luckily, most of the timeit doesn't mean somebody's
(13:59):
really got a planand they're really right about to do it.
But you you don't always know immediately.
So I'm going to start the first sessionthat I have with us.
This isn't his first session.
This is a few months in.
And he starts by saying, Maybe I've beenmore depressed than I realized.
I've been sleeping on and off.
(14:19):
And still this morning I'm
very groggy and I'm worriedit might be a little hard to talk.
My arms open in a lot of pain, butI didn't take a painkiller this morning
because I was worried I would go backto sleep and missed the appointment.
I also wanted to be clearheaded.
When we speak, he tells me he had a dream.
I had a dream last nightthat these two guys were after me.
(14:41):
It was as though I had testifiedat a trial or it was going to
and my testimony would incriminate them.
Then the scene changesfrom the middle of the city
to the outskirts of town,and it's a more wooded area.
And I still feel that I'm in danger.
I'm runningand trying to hide behind trees
or find any place that I can duck intoto get away.
(15:04):
It occurs to methat I have my cell phone on me,
but I lookand there appears to be no service.
I move again, trying to find a placewhere there is service.
I find it, get a few barsand I feel I will be able to get help.
Though the dream ends thereand I don't know what happens.
Then he starts to tell me his thoughts.
(15:27):
I don't know why I had this dream.
It was a very quiet weekend,and I mostly stayed home resting.
I've been very low energyand need to rest right now.
I was supposed to go over
to a friend's house, but I canceledbecause I just wasn't up for it.
And everyone understood.
I don't know whether I'm depressedbecause I'm not able
(15:48):
to do my regular stuff or if I'm justin one of those down times right now.
Then he's quiet for a whileand I'm waiting.
I want to I don't want to interrupt him.
I want to let it flow.
But I don't hear from him.
I don't hear another commentfor what feels like too long in my mind.
So I ask what else comes to mindabout the dream?
(16:10):
I may have asked him, What'swhat is he thinking?
Then I ask himwhat comes to mind about the dream.
He's. I have no idea.
It was anxiety provoking to be chased.
I definitely felt that it was as thoughI knew what they had done
and I was going to tell everyoneand they had to get to me before I did.
(16:31):
I felt like I was in a video gameand maybe I was even
this character from a gameI played when I was young.
It was this game called Mario Brothers,and there were these two characters named
Mario and Luigiand their cousins who are plumbers
and have to save the princesswho has been imprisoned.
I think I was Mario.
I haven't played that game or even thoughtabout it in a really long time.
(16:55):
I said, Well, what did the bad guys do?
I think they murderedsomeone and I knew about it or saw it.
Maybe it's a little unclear, but I knewI was very afraid and running for my life.
And so why Mario brothers?
That would put me back in childhood.
I suppose that game was a bit of an escapefor me.
I could play it with my friends andwe could lose ourselves in it for hours.
(17:20):
Those were brief momentswhen I remember enjoying myself.
I was with everyoneand we could be carefree while we played.
So who do you feelyou've testified against now?
I don't know.
That seems very far from my liferight now, so I don't know.
And I said, Well, is there
anything you feel is chasing youat the moment?
I don't know.
(17:40):
I don't think I'd sayif anything was chasing me.
But I have been thinkingabout my childhood and my mother.
After our conversation last week,
I was thinking about how my childhood wasnot normal and I had no idea at the time
there was a lot of family stuffgoing on all the time
and we were just supposed to not feel it,not react to it and keep going to school,
(18:05):
keep getting good grades,
making it all look likewe were a perfectly normal family.
And that was a lie.
I don't think I was supposed to know
and surely wasn'tsupposed to talk about that back then.
I used to think that
my father caused all the problemsand he certainly caused his share.
But I'm seeingnow that it was both of them.
(18:25):
They were both completely occupiedwith their own stuff and paid
no attention to us.
Why they had us
when they really were not interestedor able to parent is a mystery.
I wasn't even supposed to questionanything.
I wasn't supposed to think aboutwhether it was fair or normal.
All of those thoughtsare starting to come up now.
(18:46):
And I
said, So you're telling meabout it, You're testifying.
And he said, Yeah,I guess I am talking about it.
We didn't get to talk about those thingsgrowing up.
I couldn't get either of my parentsto talk to me about anything emotional.
They would go silentor change the subject, and it was clear
it was a no go zone.
I have to say, it'sweird to talk about it.
(19:07):
I feel guilty like I'm betraying them.
And I also wonderwhether the things I say are accurate.
Like, was it really that bador does it sound worse when I tell you?
But then I have to remind myselfthat it was not good.
And my brother and I both have problemsin one way or another.
I think my depression is the worstand more like my mother's.
(19:29):
But we both have something.
Neither of us got out unscathed.
So this was really the first timewhere he was able
to expressthese thoughts out loud with you.
He was starting to you know, over time,I would ask questions.
He would tell me about his life.
I would ask what it was like growing up,because I like to know.
(19:50):
And through his prior dreamsand the interpretations
and him talking about,you know, beginning to open all of this up
and start thinking about, my gosh,maybe this wasn't normal.
Maybe everybody doesn't go through this.
It started to register.
And then his mind just Yes,started thinking.
Now, of course, then immediatelyhe's testifying.
(20:13):
Not good.
And when you said to himthat you're testifying,
even in me, I felt like, my gosh, yes,that's that's it.
I can check that off the list.
That is clearlywhat that means in my dream.
And when you do that,when you realize that whatever that is,
I'm testifying in this case,it does something inside of you.
(20:35):
I think there's a feeling you havethat you either weren't allowed to have or
you didn't recognize that in a little wayhelps to start making you whole again.
Right.
This starts to let him put understandingto all of the things he had been through.
It starts to set the mind.
Now I'm going to say at ease in one way.
(20:56):
Right.
Because somebody is now bearing witness
to the fact that this wasn't normal.
And you're allowing yourselfto feel some validity.
Right.
And have somebody take itseriously in the family.
It was a no go zone. Yeah.
So the complaints,I mean, forget taking them seriously.
They really weren'tallowed to even emerge.
(21:18):
You could not complain.
But he can complain now and say,I didn't like this.
That didn't feel good.
They weren't attending to us.
We felt all alone.
So on the one hand, it's relieving.
I can tell you the other hand is.
And now I'm in trouble.
And now this is going to be hard.
I am violating the family rule.
And then, of course, he has to wonder,you know, and question his mind's
(21:41):
ability to recount his own historythat he went through.
Is it right? And I. Feel guilty.
As am I making this worse than it was,right?
How how dare I talk about these people
who gave birth to me and raised meeven if it wasn't perfect?
Don't you think somany of us can relate to that?
(22:01):
I think so.
No matter what it was like that there'ssome say, Am I allowed to say this.
Right and everything.
We thought was normalbecause that's how we grew up.
I mean, what is normal after all?
But it's the way you grew up.
You're thinking
everybody else in their households,they're growing up the same way.
Must be the same.
Yeah, right.
(22:22):
Everybody has a motherwho's gone into her bedroom
from after work until the next morningand doesn't talk to you.
Everybody has a father who maybe checksin, has a sandwich
with you, doesn't say much,and then has to go,
you know, meet his friendsto watch a game or whatever it is.
Right.
Or you find yourself tiptoeing aroundjust to keep the status quo.
(22:42):
Right. Don't disturb anything.
So, you know, I think some flavor of this,
you know, more or lessmost people can relate to.
There is some circumstances.
This was,you know, way over here and the edge.
Right.
I think for for a lot of people,but not as unusual as we would like.
And I think through this,if we say to ourselves, okay, I'm
(23:06):
I'm allowed to be curiousabout these things that I grew up
with, I'm allowed to be curiousabout these feelings, not create
a space that is absorbed by guiltand therefore blocked off.
I think that's one of the great benefitsabout these conversations,
is letting us know that it's it's
(23:27):
okay to have your feelings and it'sokay to question things.
And these are you know,this is a traumatic upbringing. Yes.
This does things to your psyche.
It Right.
This shapes who you are,
what you're allowed to talk aboutand what you can feel about yourself.
And he's saying, look, I felt terrible.
I always thought this was my faultin some way.
(23:50):
I carried all of this aroundand nobody there was softening the blow.
One could imagine that a lot of people
might get pregnant before they get marriedor something like that.
You know, you hear the stories,but in certain families,
okay, might have an impact,might not have an impact these days.
But even if it doeshave a bit of an impact, there's enough
(24:12):
love that it softens all that and said,all right.
Yeah, but they.
Love each other or,you know, here. my God.
And they're stuck.
These people are imprisonedall because of me.
That's tragic.
Pretty difficult.
You know, And so the parentsdidn't have the capacity within them.
They had not had upbringingsthat supported them developing,
(24:34):
knowing how to love.
So they didn't they didn't have no ideahow to give this to their children.
And they had no idea that the childrenwere waiting to love them back.
So they also missed out
on this enormous well of love
that could have been therefor them to help also heal that.
(24:54):
Not that it's the children's job to heal,but that's the circumstance.
And so these children would have givenanything to love these parents
and create a new, new relationship.
So who would the gangster in the dreambe then?
I feel like it could be my motheror my father.
(25:16):
They were both pretty brutal towardsus, though.
I always thought I shouldprotect my mother since she was my mother.
I always thought she was so unhappyand that it was my fault
and my father's fault.
But I don't think it was just him.
She was hard to talk to.
She would just go silentand not respond to him.
(25:38):
I think it would make himso angry and hurt and he shut down.
I don't know if he started that way,but it was clear
that he stopped trying with her.
And then by default, both of the kids.
I said, Thatsounds like when you were young,
your mother could have beenthe princess that needed rescuing.
Yeah, that could be.
I really wanted to just make her happy.
(25:59):
When I was young, I knew she was unhappy.
I would try to think of thingsthat she would like and do them for her,
but I don't think she even registered it.
They were both miserable but pretending.
Or maybe it just never occurred to them
that they didn'thave to stay in the marriage.
They just stayed and suffered.
So I said, I think there's a part of youthat must feel you told me the truth.
(26:24):
We see that you testified.
So now you're a wanted man.
I also think that you're Mariowho has to save the princess.
But I think that Mario is alsothe PM for Mother.
You had to become your motherbecause she was emotionally absent.
(26:44):
So then you're having to save yourself
and your mother and also be your mother.
Big task, I think here.
The bad guys at the Depression, That'sthe depression stemming from the idea
that life is painful and hardand that's how it is.
And that seems to be how your mother felt.
(27:06):
So you're saying it'sher emotional experience
that becomes the gangsters that are after
you chasing you, going to get you.
In fact, they have gotten you.
You've had to live her lifewith her depression.
So the question is,how much pain do you have to be in?
(27:26):
And are you allowed to call meand tell me about it?
That's the part in the dreamwhere you say, I realize I have a phone.
Can I get help? wait,I don't have service.
wait, I think I do now.
Otherwise, you have to keep it all in.
If there's no one to talk to.
If you can't get service,you're stuck with it all.
And that's how you've lived.
(27:48):
No bars until you were ableto start talking about it?
He asked me.
So Waits.
He has to clarify.
So I have to be the mother.
He wanted to understand that.
And I said, Yeah,from what it sounds like you unconsciously
had to become the mother to yourselfand probably to your brother,
(28:08):
I think is why it's your Mario, not Luigi.
And from Mother, she was emotionallyunavailable and unhappy.
But you need a mother as a babyand a child.
So what do you do?
You become the mother now.
Once you become the mother,all kinds of things happen.
Because once you become the mother,you take on parts
(28:32):
of the mother's personality to do the job.
You took on her depression.
You feel likeshe did a lot of the time down unhappy.
But that's what it means to be the motherin this situation in here. Yes.
So, yes, for him, for everybody,
it's going to be specific
(28:55):
to what your mother felt
her life was like unconsciously,maybe even consciously.
His mother was, as he describedit, was just going to suffer it.
There was no choice.
There was no option to get out of it.
So she's caring an ideathat life is painful.
I'm unhappy, but this is just what it is.
(29:16):
There's no changing.
So I told him he'dhave his own pain. Also.
But now he's got a double whammybecause he's also the mother.
So he's got to carry her pain and his.
No wonder he's been really depressedmost of his life.
So I explained all of this to himin a back and forth.
(29:36):
He was asking me questions.
I was wantedto make it really clear to him.
So he understood because in the dream,
that's what's been chasing himhis whole life.
The gangsters.
But the gangsters are this depressionand this way of feeling.
That's it. Life is just hard.
It's never going to stop.
(29:57):
I'm always going to be on the run.
And it was trying to end his life.
And he's rightthat depression, not only would it end
his life, let's say, in a suicide,but it's kept him from really living.
He's constantly back
and forth between,am I going to be here or not be here?
It's not a life.
And all of this is in his unconsciousand really dictating
(30:22):
his conscious existence,
but not knowing what
that unconscious is saying toyou means that in your conscious world
you're doing these thingsand not understanding why.
You wouldn't even think about it.
I think, you know, it's just youthat's the problem here, is it?
So isn't something you question.
(30:44):
It just feels like you.
It's like I'm left handed.
I am just left handed.I don't know the question.
Why am I left handed right?
I am just depressedand of course I'm depressed.
I caused my family enormous painand that is in there.
I don't want to saythat peace isn't a big part of this,
but the dream is telling us, Look,I had to become the m m.
(31:07):
I became the M to save the princessand the princess
as Mom and I am now both plaguedwith guilt about testifying
and telling you all about what happenedand what he didn't realize is he's
not only telling me the conscious piecesthat happened in the family, he's
telling me the unconscious piece,which is I had to become her.
(31:28):
There was no love to get from her.
She didn't have it.
So I had to become the motherto save my own life and save her.
I had to rescue the princess.
But now I am part
me and a great deal my mother.
And what is her life look like?
So here this is important.
(31:49):
You can start a person can start lookingand saying, okay, wait a minute,
How how much of my mother'scharacteristics
way of seeing the world, way of feeling,way of being in the world, Am I.
Kerry?
And is that really me?
Because what we're going to do in part inthis treatment is help
(32:10):
peel off what is mom.
We have to get back to Brian,not Brian as Mario. Mom.
And most of this peeling awaywill come via the dreams.
Via the dreams that if you have it,
is one of the best ways to do it,because it's I don't know that
(32:31):
I would ever get to this idea fromjust what he's telling me consciously.
I might over time.
Just a longer, slower processto to hear that.
Wait a minute, he's back.
He's telling me, here's howhere's the game I played in my childhood.
Psychologically, I played a game.
I became the mother.
I rescued the princess.
(32:53):
I gave up part of myselfso that I could imagine
I could have a fairy tale life.
And a big piece here is that his motherjust didn't have it to give.
She didn't get it in her lifetime.
I don't know how many generations backthat goes,
but she didn't have it,so she couldn't give it to him.
(33:16):
But he felt that.
And as a baby, as a child,if you're feeling that,
you don't have a lot of choicebecause not having love
makes you have to do mental gymnastics,we actually need that to survive.
You could think about thatlike water or air.
We're really designed to have it.
(33:36):
If we don't, we have to imagine it.
We have to become our own caretakersand conjure it.
But that means we're not ourselves.
And what we're conjuring that we think islove is probably not love.
It can't.
Really bebecause we don't know what that. Is.
(33:57):
We don't know what it isconsciously experience right now.
I think some people probably come inwhere where it comes from,
people can discuss, but they come inwith more of a capability to love.
Naturally, that does happen.
But I would say generally no.
People are having to sort of domental gymnastics and imagine
and you'll hear people talk about this,they they tip their hat to this.
(34:21):
well, it was really, really hard.
But I know I was loved, you know? Right.
So you get both the denial and probably
a little acknowledgmentthat there's been some gymnastics.
I had to make this loving.
All right. Well, yeah. How'd you do that?
We've got to look at the deepest leveland see how each person did it
(34:42):
in that family. Given those.
So he and I have some of this
conversation because a lot of this well,he's heard some of it.
He's still trying to get this idea.
Hey, wait a minute.You mean what do you mean?
I'm I'm not my motherand I want to be my mother, you know.
How dare you call me my mother?
You know, I mean, he he understands.
(35:02):
I'm not insulting him,but this is a big idea.
Takes a lot of getting used to a.
Lot of getting used to.
As we talk about this, we go backand forth and he asks me, But what about?
My father and I said,I'm sure you got a lot from your father.
There's no question.
And this is important for people to hear.
You got a lot from your father.
(35:23):
What I'm going to do hereis follow your dream,
this particular dream,because you're telling me
you had to become Marioand save the princess.
This dream pertains to your mother.
That doesn't meanwe're not going to get another dream
that pertains to your fatherand what you had to do with him.
So I wanted him to knowwe're going to explore everything.
(35:46):
Dad's not left out of it.
Dad made huge contributions.
He was removed,Didn't really talk to the kids here.
He's got two boysand he's not showing up as a father.
Dad will be covered.
But this dream is so importantbecause it shows us
probably very early onhe had to become the man.
(36:06):
Which makes sense given that we start
our existence in our mother's womb.
Right?
There are few other thingsthat I think are important
about this,which is I know hearing that he was a baby
who felt they didn't plan him,he wasn't wanted.
(36:27):
The unconscious is powerful.
So the parents didn'talso didn't work to not have the baby.
So we can think about that.
But that I know.
Then he will bewondering whether I want him
to that.
And at the top of this sessionhe even says I didn't take the pain pills.
Now, in one way, wonderful.He wanted to be clear headed.
(36:49):
He was thinking about the treatmenthe wants to be able to engage.
But I think he's also telling mea little bit, you know, one would wonder,
how much pain does he then have to be?
And for me, see our suffer.
I won't take my pain pill.
My arm is killing me, but I have to do itbecause I need to show up for you.
(37:10):
So that's in there too.
I see.
Because I was just goingwith what you first said.
How great He didn't take the painkiller,that he just wanted to be present.
Right. So but I think it's both.
There are a lot of thingsthat come up in a treatment
and you have to decide any given session.
What's the most salientpiece to interpret.
(37:31):
You only have so much time.
What do you really want to get to?
And there are certain piecesthat will stop somebody from coming back
potentially, You know, you can feel thatbuilding, so you want to interpret it.
Some things you may want to letif you know you're going to see them.
Another time that week or soon,
(37:53):
you might let that slide a little bitand come back to it.
But you'll you'll catch up to it
because this is going to show itselfin the treatment all over the place,
because he felthe caused so much pain in the family
that I know he's going to feel it here.
And what you don't get to in a givensession
(38:16):
will probably continueto show up in his dream
until you get to it. Yes.
Or in what he tells me.
Right.
This doesn't necessarily show upin the dream, but it's what he opens with.
I'm going to tell you,I didn't take a painkiller.
Right. Okay.
There's a. Message.
There's a message.
And he wants to know that first.
(38:36):
So is there any kind of revelationor soothing that he feels
after having shared this dream,
or does that come in your next sessionthat you were going to discuss?
I don't know that this is a sessionwhere I'd say we wrap it up with a bow.
He feels better.
Neither of these are high,but what they are is incredibly important
in terms of him getting the uncutconscious lay of the land.
(39:01):
He has to know what he did early on.
He became his mother.
He is carrying both his own depressionand her depression.
No wonder you want to commit suicide. Yes.
And like you said, it's a double whammy.
It's a double whammy.
So that's the big revelation.
So it's not a big revelation.
(39:22):
But now these thingshave bubbled to the surface.
So do most patients.
Then go away and it continues tosort of fizz, or do patients
think that is big and scary
and try to dismiss it,even though they really can't because it's
sitting thereall the time in their unconscious?
(39:44):
Both can happen.
Some people might.
You know, to me,this is a big revelation, but, you know,
I don't maybe it didn't sound like it,but it is
if you find out you are not yourself,that's a pretty revelation.
But as a patient to take thatin, maybe it's being watered down.
Well, one has to see.
(40:06):
And so what I'm always doing is seeing,I mean, a you want to see
if your patient comes back, you know,how do they respond?
After the interpretation,He starts asking me some questions.
Now, some of that may be to shift backto intellect a little.
Right.
And so I'm always weighing that becauseotherwise the feeling might just hit him.
(40:26):
Right.
And I weigh it because he's new andthere is some education that has to go on.
But I also know I'm being pulled to answerquestions, intellectual questions.
In a way,the dream is going to be all the feeling,
conversation, conscious conversationcan be half and half
or maybe even all intellect,but it may be used as a bit of a buffer.
(40:49):
But I'm going to do it hereknowing that that may be happening.
And let me see where it goes.
You know, I don't want to leavethis patient unattended to
and ignored that way.
And so maybe looking back now,if I had found a way
to interpret that a little bit for him,I might have.
But at the time my thinking was
(41:10):
this baby has been unattendedso much of the time.
The last thing I want to dois not be having a conversation with him.
He didn't get enough of this.
He needs it.
Right.
So both things are going. On, right?
So intellectual or not,he needs that connection.
He needs. A connection.And he's new in treatment.
(41:33):
And this is, in my mind, a bombshell.
Yes, You know, you are not yourself.
Part of the reasonyou always want to kill yourself
is because you are livingyour mother's life.
And that is just the way it's going to be.
Okay.
So to answer your question, some peopleare going to completely deny that.
Some people are going to the wheelsstart turning and they may of
(41:54):
I could barely sleep.I'm thinking about is what does this mean?
I'm looking all over like,how am I my mother?
Do I drink my coffee the way she does?
Do I complain the way she does?
Do I feel depressed?
Do I look like do I dress like her?
Do I only cook thingsI know she would want to eat for dinner?
The whole picture.
And some people are going to bemost likely somewhere in the middle.
(42:17):
Then I have to look at the next session.
As I said, A, do they come backor did that just blow it out of the water?
If they come back, what's next?
What do you want to tell me about next?
And you're looking to see does ityou know, does the dream deepen?
Does the treatment start to deepen?
Do they shut you up? Do the bad guys win?
And the patient is lying deadin a warehouse somewhere in the dream?
(42:41):
What happens?
Follow the unconscious.
That's where the feeling is going to come.
So Brian does come back.
And does he come back all in and come backsoon?
Brian stays in treatment.
So yes, he comes back soonand keeps working on this.
This didn't blow him out of the water,which is good.
(43:03):
It didn't cure him.I want to be very clear.
You know, thisjust starts to set the stage.
Brian, here's what you're dealing with.
You are not Brian.
You're you're Brian. And
Brian.
Plus, Brian.
Plus when Brian is thinking about itwhen he's not with you.
(43:23):
Well, I guess it is, as you just said,people go in all different directions.
He might just put it out here.
He might be taking it in,he might be thinking that's impossible.
But he comes backand this next that you're sharing,
is it subsequent or is it a few dreams in?
This is a few months in.
Okay, so this isn't the next piece.
(43:45):
He starts working on all of thisin his dreams.
He's figuring out how I'm mom, Who am I?
How my dad.
What's going on?
And he's also wrestlingwith this physical problem, right?
So that the next dreamwill have to do with some of that.
And I like these two dreams a lotbecause these
(44:06):
are two of the biggest complaintshe came in with.
I've got a lifelong depressionand now I've got this medical piece.
I'm dealing with.
So I want if I can get an understandingof this, this is why the guy came to me.
Sure. Right.What are you going to do with this now?
I can't always do this.
Sometimes I don't see it.
Sometimes the material isn't there.
(44:27):
But I think the next dreamis very interesting in terms
of his elaboration on
how he felt as a very young person
and what that had him do in his mindand why he's suffering the way he is.
So that in that sense it's tiedto the first piece, but elaborates.
(44:49):
So he comes in to the next session.
I haven't been sleeping much.
I've had some trouble with my legs again,
pain and they aren't doing whatI like them to do.
I also think I have gotten sick.
I had stomach crampsand that kept me up a lot of the night
I was in a fetal positionand I'm hoping the worst is behind me now.
(45:11):
But it was a pretty bad night.
I just wish they could figure outwhat was wrong with me.
I know people must think I'm crazy,but I'm not.
Really.
I just want to be able to get onwith my life the way everyone else does.
They're starting to decreasethe pain meds, which should help me a lot.
That will mean I have more energy
think, and I won't have that feelingof being in a cloud sometimes.
(45:35):
But then I worry aboutwhether that is also
protecting mea bit from the emotional side of it all.
Life has changed so much.
I thought I was really on my way to havinglife finally be happy for a change.
Maybe I really am not supposed to be happy
or get that I see it more now.
It is tough and it brings backall of the depression
(45:59):
I make it through the day,but I don't really feel like I do inside.
It's always sort of therethese thoughts that people must think
I'm just this horrible, lazy piece of shit
since I feel dependent on everyonefor everything.
I was such an active personand now I'm just wasting away
and I don't know where this will go.
(46:20):
I know I'm scared a lot.
I ask him if he was able to dreamI was at school or college.
I think I opened a doorand I'm suddenly in a 1940s or fifties
plane and it's big, emptyand maybe for cargo and the back is open
and I can see outand maybe we are on a military base.
(46:42):
And then I see there's a can of frostingwhich I love to eat out of the
can I take two or three spoonfulsand it makes me sick.
And then I see it'ssome kind of airplane sealant
and I leave the planeand I see these people
and they take me to an Italian restaurantand I eat pasta with seafood.
(47:04):
And I think I like it.
It's very nice, but I'm not sure about it.
And then dinner ends and I walk to a park,
but I'm not sure if that happens or not.
And the dream ends.
So many parts and pieces. Lots of pieces.
So I asked him to tell me about histhoughts and he knows how to do this now.
(47:24):
And he says, I'm back in schoola lot in my dreams.
And I ask himwhat comes to mind about that?
And he says, MaybeI feel like I have things to learn.
Is that too obvious?
And then he tells me
he has no connection to a plane,has no idea why he's dreaming about it.
And then as he sits there, he says,wait a minute.
(47:45):
Actually my uncle,my mom's brother, was in the Air Force,
maybe someone else in the family,but I really can't remember.
But I think it was mentioned at some pointI would have to ask someone
what the story was.
But I guess there issome family connection.
I just don't know the details.
I think it might have been herfather, too.
(48:06):
Yeah, that sounds right.
So I ask him what comes to his mindabout this frosting.
That's sealant.
And he said it.
It just look like frosting. And I ate it.
He said, it's embarrassing,but I like to eat frosting out of the can.
It's very sweet. I like it.
And I said, Well, couldn't you tell afterone spoonful that it was sealant?
(48:27):
And he said, I knew it was off,but I guess I couldn't tell.
And it wasn't bad enough to get thatit wasn't food.
And he said there was a spoon or somescoop in the can and it was ready to go.
But then I got sick, which is no surprise.
So I stopped, but I wasn't that sick.
So I was okay enough.
(48:48):
I asked about the family and the next parthe said, I know I'm in the fifties,
sort of in the dream and it looks like it,
but I'm also somehow aware of time too.
So I think it just looks like that.
And the families actually current day,if that makes sense.
I don't remember much about the dream,but they seem nice.
(49:09):
They invite me to eatand I think there are vegetables in some
pasta with mussels, but for some reasonI don't really feel comfortable.
I ask why not?
They said.
I thinkbecause I'm never fully comfortable.
I think I was wondering whether they likedme or was there something else going on?
I wasn't sure.
Could I trust them? That's common for me.
(49:29):
If someone seems like they like me,I always wonder whether there's
an ulterior motive,even though I realize there's not a lot
someone is going to get from mein terms of money or anything else.
But I still worry.
So what I ended up saying to them was thatit sounds like the plane is his mother
and he's saying that already in uterohe got a frosty welcome.
(49:51):
You had only your mother's toxins.
I see the sealant to eat, no love.
And yet he had to eat them.
He had to eat them.
I said that I must be the familythat is offering to feed him real food.
But he isn't quite sureif he can trust me.
I also think it's interesting thatthe food offered is pasta with mussels.
(50:15):
Given your problems with your mussels,
you might be saying thatyour mother offered you no real food, so
you've resorted to eating your own musselsto feed yourself the love you needed.
Now, I think the painkillersand maybe the way painkillers really work
is that they're dulling the effectof having no love.
(50:37):
It's not really the pain in the body.
And he said, I think I'm going tohave to think about this one.
That's a lot to take in.
But it's interesting,I didn't mention it was mussels initially.
I realized when you said that I thoughtof it as seafood, but it was mussels.
It was mussels.
(50:58):
That's why we ended.
That's amazing. Yeah.
So this is an interesting dreambecause he's really saying,
here was my mother,she was an empty cargo plane.
I'm inside and there's nothing for meto eat but airplane sealant.
I imagine it's sweet frosting.
Where's my love?
(51:19):
Where is the love?
It's just sealant.
So that goes to what you were sayingearlier, where we all, most of us, devise
something that we call lovejust to get us through.
Right. Just to survive.
Said it wasn't bad enough.
Didn't kill me.
Right.
I'm here. Might make me. Sick.
(51:40):
Might make me sick now what?
Starting at the beginning this time,he says I couldn't sleep that much.
So he's waking up right now.
He's uncomfortable. He's anxious.
You know, the dreams are showing himmore truth about his life.
So people will worry because patientswill come in and complain.
(52:00):
I'm not sleeping,but that may have to happen
and we may have to helpour patients understand,
yes, this is hard to go through,but you're working towards something
and you will geta better understanding of your life,
but it may disrupt your sleep.
And so these awkward things that happen
(52:20):
or uncomfortableor physically, emotionally,
we need to be told that there are signslikely that you're making progress.
That's right.
This is a big sign. Both he's deepening.
my gosh.
You're going to tell us what's happeninghere.
You're going to tell usthere wasn't any love, right?
He's going to keep testifying.
(52:41):
He's getting, I think, prettyThis is pretty direct, pretty frank.
I was in an empty cargo plane.
You can imagine the metalhold of a cargo plane.
Yeah. What's soft in that?
Yeah, nothing.
Cold, metal, steel.
And this is what he had.
This is the cargo planes, Mothers.
The cargo plane. Right.
(53:01):
He was the cargo.
Then he's going to come.
I'm going to invite him to this dinner.
You know, I'm going to invite himto come eat.
Things that taste good.
Hopefully healthy food, right.
Understandings about his mind.
Even then, they were nice, right?
I don't know if I can trust you.
How do I know you're not going to feed me?
(53:21):
See, Lynn, How do I knowyou're not just cold back there?
Well, he's got to talk to me a long time
to realize I'm not actually his mother.
And you can't really say to himpoint blank.
Well, of course that's not the case.
I mean, it doesn't matter what you sayintellectually or on the surface,
that doesn't undowhere he's coming from unconsciously.
(53:45):
That's right.
And that's why you want to keep
working and keep showing himthat you're working to understand him.
Keep working on the dreams.
He gives me a hint here that at least
it's vegetables and seafood.
So I think he gets to the ideathat it's muscles, but it's also he's
starting to seeyou're offering me food to see my life.
(54:07):
But I don't trust you yet.
Well, of course you don't.
And you're not going to trust mefor a long time.
You may trust me. A pocket hereand a pocket there.
But you couldn'ttrust your parents to love you.
So how can you trust that a person
who's not actuallyyour mother is going to love you? Yes.
Because of all people.
It's your mother that you should be ableto trust or your father.
(54:28):
Right. And if your mother doesn'tlove you, if your own mother.
How can it be?
Am I going to think he's reallyjust a lazy piece of shit as he says?
Of course he's going to wonder thatfrom time to time.
Now it's not so strongthat it keeps him from coming back.
And if I see those things popping uptoo much or in such a strong way,
(54:48):
I'm going to really go after themto interpret as well.
You must have me as your mother, who youimagine thought you were a piece of shit,
because that will ruin a treatment.
You won't come back if it's too strong.
So this is what's going on for him,is he says it because I had no love.
I've turned to eating my mussels.
(55:09):
So no wonderthey can't find a simple cause
for why the mussels feel weakand like they're deteriorating.
It's a psychological underpinning.
Now, I'm not going to say that he mightnot have some physical pathology going on,
but certainly he is telling us that,Wait a minute, you better catch this.
(55:31):
It is absolutely connectedto my state of mind.
And of course, the body and the mind
say say I was starving for love, starving.
And that's still a hard thingfor a lot of us to settle with that
our feelingsand our physicality are so connected.
(55:51):
Yes, it's still a difficult concept.
I think we're very connected.
And the other thing I think is hard forpeople is to really say,
I wasn't loved very hard.
There wasn't love there.
I was starving. I'll eat sealant.
Meaning his mother was so filled,she was filled with all sealant.
There wasn't any frostingof the sweet kind in there.
(56:13):
It was frosty.
It was freezing cold.
But didn't have you know, it wasn'tas though this woman was hiding sweet
cans of frosting from themand just wouldn't give them.
She didn't have it to give.
That he was able to take all thatshe was able to.
Offer. That's right. And he. Did.
Is Brian still a patient?
Brian is not a patient.
(56:34):
Did Brian overcome or begin
to work on his true self even more?
What happened to his physical pain?
Right. All good questions.
Brian worked with mea few years beyond this.
His depression got much better.
Not gone.
It wasn't gone, but much better.
(56:56):
He was able to put distancebetween himself and the bad guys.
The dreams would start to showthat he was no longer on trial.
He was no longer feelinghe was solely testifying.
But I would say that his symptoms,the physical stuff, didn't get worse.
This certainly also did not cure that.
You know, this is not magic.
(57:18):
But what it did was it didn't get worse.
Right.
And he was able
to scale back on the pain medsand get back to some of his activities.
Brian went back to his life.
That's great. I don't think Brian was.
At the end of the day,Brian just wanted to live his life.
You know?
I don't thinkBrian was looking to be in therapy
(57:39):
for as long as it would have takento really clean all of this up.
But I think he felt he got enough relief.
I think he probably testifiedas much as somewhere deep inside.
He felt he was allowed to.
See some of these things, though,that he was sharing with you
that allowed him to sort of become okaywith himself, with who he really was.
(58:02):
Is that knowingthen maybe even on his own,
he could say, okay,wait a minute, here's a moment
where I'm really feeling guiltyabout an experience I'm having.
What is that about?
I feel like some of this would give usa few tools to to question ourselves.
Yes. Not in a negative way,
(58:22):
but just to say, wow, it'sokay for me to think about this.
It's okay for me to feel this way.
And why am I feeling this guy right?
I can talk.
I can have some experiencethat there's a place that certain people
are going to want to hear what I have tosay, even if they're hard things,
I can start to thinkabout the internal map
(58:42):
I now have of my unconscious,my internal world.
OG SometimesI'm living completely as my mother.
Sometimesmaybe there's a little more me there.
Can I now see when I'm deeply, deeplyin my depression,
I have to at least be thinkingwhich part of my depression is this?
Is this my mother who feels this?
(59:05):
It will never stop.
This is just life. It goes like this.
Or am I me who thinks, Well,wait a minute, I don't have to be her.
I had my own pain,but I got some help with that.
Maybe I don't have to be that depressed.
I don't have to constantlybe thinking, Well,
if this doesn't go well,I can always off myself.
(59:26):
Yeah, because there's nothingabout his mother's depression
or way of living lifethat's truly his that he must own.
It's just fiction, right? That.
That the part that is hers is hers.
Now, the one piece where Brian didget more of the life he wanted, as well as
(59:47):
he was finally able to have a relationshipand feel less that he would kill himself
or that that option was so strongthat he couldn't go into something.
And, you know, he said ifif he's ever there again, he'll call me.
And you may not know,but that relationship was he
was he
or is he truly able to feel love there?
(01:00:11):
He'll have to tell us.
Maybe if he comes back,I hope because he's using the rule
that if he really feels like he'sgoing to do himself in, they'll come back.
Yeah, but if he does show up again,I'll have to ask him.
I'll have to see what he's doing,see what he tells me.
And I think there was probablysome way of saying, look,
(01:00:32):
I won't stay here and talk to you,but I can have a girlfriend.
She'll substitute in for youand I'll go on and live my life with her.
So in a certain way,I've got a part of this
that I'm going to hold on to,even if I can't be here
and tell you everythingabout the rest of my life.
There's something about the level of trusthe was ultimately able
(01:00:54):
to feel with you, that he wasthen able to transfer to another human.
Who hopefully loves him.
Will, Will hope and will hopeit can hold some of that up.
Is there anything elseyou want to share about this?
That's a lot, love.
That's what it all comes down to, right?
And now love.
That's what everybody has to get to.
(01:01:16):
You want to know why you're takingthe pain meds to block out the feeling,
the pain from not having enough love.
And it's at the root of everythinghuman beings are navigating.
And that's that's thethe critical piece in this dream is
he feels the way he feltbecause he didn't have love.
(01:01:38):
And that and now love.
I think it's, just imperativethat now could be right this very minute,
that now could be when you're pregnantand thinking about your baby,
that now applies to our government,our politics, our humanity.
It's so big, right? We need it now.
We needed it yesterday, now, now, now.
(01:02:00):
More love.
Yes. Well, thank you.
Thank you for that giant message.
And this, as always,fascinating conversation.
I it's so precious that you can sharethese dreams there.
They move me deeplyand I'm sure others, too.
It's just it's huge.
It's really a gift. Thank you.
(01:02:21):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
And thank you to my patients for being.
Willing.
To share all of this.
That's awesome. Very important material.
Okay, so you'll come back. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us.
And be sure to check in with us often
and let us knowwhat you're thinking about our program.
(01:02:42):
See you soon.
Okay.
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