January 6, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode of "And Now, Love," Cynthia Marks and Dr. Loren Weiner tackle the universal yet deeply personal topic of love, examining its complexities through the lens of dream analysis. They explore how early imprints from parents and caregivers influence our ability to give and receive love in adulthood. The discussion features the poignant journey of Daphne, a 35-year-old physician, as she unpacks her relationships, self-perception, and the unconscious patterns shaping her life. Loren highlights how dreams can serve as powerful tools to uncover hidden emotional truths, paving the way for healing and growth. This episode invites listeners to reevaluate their understanding of love and consider how societal and familial imprints might hinder their ability to embrace genuine connections.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks.
I head up the Holistic
Psychoanalysis Foundationestablished by my late husband, Dr.
Bernard Bail.
Welcome to. And now, love.
I am happy to say that we have Dr.
Weiner with us againtoday with more dreams.
If we're really paying attention,we can find so
(00:26):
much of ourselves in the dream scenarioswe share here.
For me, every dream shared has sparkedfeelings in me,
and those feelings createthis magnificent curiosity.
Our unconscious us is vastand cradles the healing we all need.
Our dreams are the conduitto this incredible wellspring
(00:48):
where our true selves can be known.
Thank you, Loren, for once againsharing your wisdom
and your feelingsabout our dreams with us.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Well, what do you want to talk about?
Well, something small. How about love?
my gosh. Yeah, I think
(01:09):
I havesome dreams today that talk about it.
The dreams are easy to understand,I think, from everybody.
But I think we're all going to be ableto see ourselves in it.
And that's the important piece.
And obviously, love is a huge topic.
So we will touch on some of ittoday, and I think
we'll touch on other parts of it as we goalong.
(01:31):
And I wonder who of us hasn't
somehow questioned what that really is.
And, you know, so many times we think,I love this person.
I love this feeling.
I love you.
And then you step back and think, well,how do I know what that really is?
Yeah. So that that's an important piece.
How do we know that what we arefeeling is love?
(01:55):
And how good is our compassat determining that.
And knowing and feeling?
I guess you've got to somehowfigure out how to start with feeling
to get to the knowing. That helps.
That helps.
So all of the things you're talking about
will be touched upon in the session,which is nice.
(02:16):
This is.
Yeah, this actually is a really simple wayto start talking
about a very complex topicbecause it is all about who are we,
you know,and are we really here to love each other?
The end of the day, that's my feeling thatwe need to be able to love each other.
(02:36):
So whatever gets in our way,and that may be about an individual love
relationship, as you're saying,love on a bigger scale globally
that crosses political divides,that crosses countries, that crosses
tribes, whatever it is, familiesthat really what are we all doing here?
And if not to loveeach other, then why what
(03:01):
what purpose could
be betterthan to learn to love each other?
And it sifts all the way down.
Or I guess it's the very beginningis loving yourself, loving yourself.
And really, that Bails idea was that
first pair,which is the mother, and the concept
is the motherand the baby is where love starts.
(03:24):
So his idea was, Look,
casual sex may be nice,but if you think there's a chance
that a baby will come from this, thenyou better start being in a loving state
and thinking about lovefrom the very beginning, if possible.
Because you want to infuse everything
about that baby's beginnings in love.
(03:47):
The more the baby feels loved,the more that baby knows it's
okay to love him or herself.
And that's in an amazing gift
to give a human being to go into lifewith.
We've got to figure outwhat that really is, That love. Yes.
So many of us are in that position now.
(04:08):
We're carrying a human child
and we knowwe're supposed to love that being.
But how do we knowwe're really doing it right?
Good question.
So let's take a look at the case,and I think it won't answer
that question specifically,but it starts to get into the discussion
that will lead us there. Okay.
(04:29):
So I will read the introductionto my patient.
We're going to call her Daphne.
Daphne is a
35 year old physician who came to mefollowing her divorce.
She was married for five years
and was devastatedwhen the marriage didn't work out.
She was both heartbroken and panickedbecause she knew
(04:50):
she was pushing up against her ageand her fertility.
She always felt she wanted childrenand now may have to let that dream
go, given it felt unrealistic for herto meet and marry another person
quickly enough to make having a childfeel like a real possibility for her?
Did she think somethingwas going to have to give?
(05:11):
She was either going to meet someone and
marry them, maybe not having itbe completely based on love
in order to have this happen quicklyor just not even have this happen.
I think for her,the question was, will this even happen?
I see.
I included it because you have to knowthat's in there.
That's a pressurethat's pushing on someone.
(05:33):
And as you alluded to,that may make you make decisions
about love, security,
having a childor things that are not quite love and
have you make life choices based on that.
So this is a huge anxietythat is always with her.
(05:54):
And for a lot of us in this world.
And for a lot of people.
And it also goes to her self-esteem,you know,
how good is she feeling about herself?
Does she feel she's really entitledto a full love match?
Does she have to rush?
Will anybody want her?
She told me that she felt hermarriage had broken up after her husband
(06:14):
lost his mother to a quick moving illnessthat surprised everyone.
She watched as her husband fell
into a deep depressionfrom which she felt he never recovered.
This happenedin their second year of marriage.
Over the next two years,he tried medication and therapy.
And while some of the depression lifted,she felt his emotional distance
from her remained.
(06:36):
By the fourth year of marriage,she found out
he had an affairwhich caused her to end the marriage.
She felt she had lost him long before thenand no longer had the fight in her.
They split up and she was lefthurt, confused and unsure
of how in her words, to get her life back.
She no longer trusted herselfas she had no idea that her husband
(06:57):
would ever cheat on her.
And it made her question everything.
Had she missed the signs, had she failedto understand how much she was grieving?
She didn't feel she had real closure
or understanding from himabout why he did what he did.
And she wanted to get clarity around itso that she could move on.
And very importantly,she wanted to understand her part in it.
(07:20):
She was still hopeful that she could havea chance at lasting love, but was afraid
she might find another bad situation.
Over the course of the first few sessions.
Daphne gave me her history.
She was the oldest childand had two sisters.
All three were highly intelligentand very driven.
Both parents were also physicians
and very successfulin their respective specialties.
(07:44):
She spoke of her childhoodin a realistic way,
showing her awareness of her parentstendencies to work long hours
and sometimes seem more like friendsor colleagues than a romantic couple.
She felt her
mother was reserved and that academicand then professional achievement
was the only way to get her attention.
(08:04):
She also noted that her mother wasat least warmer than her grandmother.
The mother's mother,who was cold and very punitive.
Her grandmother,married young, had several children
that she openly statedshe did not want and felt
that she had to stay in her marriagebecause it was what was done.
The patient felt
(08:25):
her mother may have been bettersuited to a career than being a mother.
The patient described her father
as warmer than her mother generally,and although he was a workaholic,
he was very interested in the children'sactivities when they were young,
attending sportingmatches and performances without fail.
She felt he was the parentshe would go to if she needed advice,
(08:46):
but most of the time she feltshe would handle things on her own
because she didn'twant to interrupt his work.
Daphne said she had good relationshipswith her sisters and they were close
the way friends were texting, oftenmeeting for lunches and shopping and able
to share the ups and downs of lifewith each other.
She said there were some jealousiesand rivalries, but nothing
she considered out of the norm.
(09:08):
And she was grateful to have them,
especially during her divorce,when she leaned on them heavily.
She told me that both siblingshad had a tough time finding satisfying,
romantic relationshipsand often found themselves
either pining over menwho were not really available
or settling for men who werebut did not really excite them.
(09:28):
Daphne said she had those experiences too,and was so relieved
when she finally found her husband
because she thought it would get herout of the slog of dating.
The patient was eager to get someemotional relief and understanding around
how her life had takensuch an unexpected and painful turn.
And I will present some dreamsthat start to reveal
(09:50):
the unconscious peacethat was sitting under all of this.
Okay.
I think most of us can relateto some bit of that.
How do I enter into a relationship?
What does it mean?
It. Her sisters are pining away forthe right partner, not the right partner.
And you think you've found someoneand you think you've read
(10:10):
the situation reasonably correctly.
And all of a sudden,I think she felt out of nowhere.
She lost this man.
Also in part of this that I think we canall relate to are those times in your life
where you think you have that
the total picture,you know what's going on.
(10:32):
The people closest to you,you can you can trust,
you know, what they're doing,what they're feeling.
And she never expected this manthat she lived with to have this affair.
How do you trust anything after thatwhen you've been sort of so compromised
in your closest relationship?
I think that's how she felt.
Just you would question everything.
(10:54):
Gutted andand really thrown off her center,
you know, of what she thoughtwas her center, at least, you know.
These are the things I know.
And I can depend on him.
And then he fell apart.
And Wait a minute.I thought this was love.
I thought this was love.And it would last.
This would hold me. Big, big, big loss.
(11:14):
So I think as you said,
I think there's a lot of different pieceswe can all relate to.
This is not a woman who,
you know, overtly sufferedwhat we would normally call big abuse.
This was a reasonablywell-functioning life
where she was able to meet a lot of hergoals.
Things were going well until they weren't.
(11:35):
And experience many of us can have. Yes.
I'll present a sessionthat comes early in the treatment.
They're both reasonably early sessions,but you can sort of see that
the unconscious very quickly beginsto bring her information
that is going to shed lighton her internal foundation.
(11:56):
And that led her into this relationshipin a way where she
could be surprised.
She starts.
So I'm not sure what is the mostimportant thing on my mind today.
There are a lot of things swirling around.
My best friend dragged me out last weekendto try to get me back in the game.
(12:17):
It was unpleasant,but I really appreciated her effort.
It's been a little over a yearsince the divorce was finalized
and she felt I really needed toat least dip my toe in the dating world.
I don't think I even know how to do it.
It's been a long time.
We went to a housewarming and thento a birthday dinner, which was at a bar.
(12:37):
I was doing my best to not be sourand to smile and look happy to be there.
I did talk to a few people, some nice men,but none of them felt like anyone
I would actually wantto spend more time with.
But I tried to practice my flirting.
I'm glad I went.
Maybe it won't feel so strangethe next time.
She says she had a dreamthe night after going out with her friend.
(13:00):
In the dream, she says, I'm someplacecrowded, like a school or university.
Maybe I'm in the dorms. I'm leaving.
And so is a male friend of mine.
I like him a little romantically, I think.
So I am packing all this stuffinto a little travel bag.
I know. I can only take a few things.
He's going somewherelike New Mexico or Colorado.
(13:22):
I don't think he's sure where he's going.
He asks for my email to keep in touch.
I keep trying to write it down,and I either can't decide
which one to giveor I can't remember the correct spelling.
I basically have to write it many timesover and over, trying to get it right.
I think to myself
that it doesn't really matterbecause he won't write to me anyway.
(13:46):
So I ask herwhat comes to her mind about the dream.
She says, I think this brings upsome interesting things.
It makes me feel a little sad, actually,and I'm not sure why.
I had a boyfriend a long time ago
that I think moved to New Mexicoafter we lost touch.
And also my ex has a connection as he hadsome distant family there and has talked
(14:08):
about wanting to move there at some pointbecause he loves the wide open spaces.
And I askedwhat the guy in the dream was like,
and she said, Maybe he's my ex,like a younger version of him.
He's sort of soft spoken,a creative type, like my ex.
But there's also somethinga little different about him.
He was pursuing me, he was following me.
(14:29):
He was following me around the dormas I was packing and gathering my things.
That was not exactly like my ex.
It felt a littlemore like he was interested.
And that feels so different.
After feeling like my ex just dropped meand never really looked back
and I said, So is this more of the wayyou wished he would have been?
(14:49):
And she said something more like,that feels right.
Like there was an energy to him.
He was solid and I could depend on him.
And I asked her about, you know,whether she could depend on her ex.
And she said, I could definitely.
But I think it was more likehe just didn't feel as solid as this guy.
It reminds me of this guyI dated, well, loosely
(15:10):
dated in med schoolbefore I met my husband.
He was sweet and definitely solid,like he liked me.
And I just knew it.
And I think I didn't really let myselfrelax into that.
And I was busy chasing this other guyand went on to date him for a while.
He was an asshole, it turns out,And I think just too immature.
(15:32):
Ultimately.So I picked the wrong guy there.
So why do you think you're backin college?
I ask her.
College brings up so many thoughts for me.
It's an exciting time.
Everything is before you.
And I feel like that isn't exactlytrue anymore.
Now, I've been through this,and it colors things.
It changed me.
I'm not as optimisticand excited about life.
(15:54):
I'm still here, but different.
This takes me back to a better time,I think.
Maybe there are still thingsI want to learn or needed to learn.
Like what?
I ask.
Like whatthe rest of my life will be like.
What about the fact that he wantsyour email and you can't get it right?
I think this gets at something about me.
I have this default where I just assumethe guy won't really want me
(16:17):
and I do this even when they are makingit really obvious.
I might get embarrassed and awkwardand I feel like I shouldn't
say how I really feel,but then I think I give off
not interested vibesand then things just fall apart and either
they lose interest or something happensand it doesn't work.
(16:37):
But I know it's me.
I do it because I just get so nervousand almost can't imagine
that someone will actually want meand also be romantic and treat me right.
It's like that doesn't compute.
And Isaid, Is that how you feel in the dream?
And she said, I'm not sure.
I think it might be a little lessbecause I get the feeling
(16:57):
that he is actually interested in me
and I want to give him my information,but then I can't do it.
It's like a slow jog or dream,
but instead I'm writing my emailover and over and trying to get it right.
It's crazy.
So this guy is interested in you
and you aren't able to make yourselfreachable available to him.
(17:18):
And she said, I think so.
So why aren't you ableto write your email?
I guess I'm not comfortable.
I don't think I trust thathe will really want me.
He was cute and seemedlike the kind of guy everyone would want.
So maybe I just didn't feel it was real.
Like,he wouldn't really want to ask me out.
(17:39):
So where do you think you got the ideathat you wouldn't be wanted?
I'm not exactly sure,but my mind immediately
went to my sisters,and I think they sort of feel like I do.
So this must be a family thing.
So everyone has the ideathat they won't be wanted?
Yeah, I think that's fair to say.
And we're all insecure that way.
So it sounds like there's two thingshappening here.
(18:01):
The first is that you're sayingthat, well, you worry he won't want you.
You're actually not availableto the good guy who wants you
and will take care of you.
You can't give the right emailas hard as you try.
And she said,
That's interesting because I feel likeI've always attracted these guys
who are either totally not available orI thought they were, but really weren't.
(18:24):
I think that's why I married my husband.
He seemed to be available
and be interested and I really loved him.
But then it all fell apartand it was so hard to understand
why he just disappeared on me emotionally.
His body was there, but he was gone.
I couldn't understand
why I wasn't important enoughto fight for it to come back to.
(18:45):
But it was like he just pulled awayand that was it.
But if I'm not really available,is that why I chose him?
I don't think we have the full story yet.
But you seem to be saying that this isan important piece for you to know about.
That's why you're dreaming about it.
Then we can figure out howand where it played a part in all of this.
In the dream,she's ultimately sabotaging the really.
(19:10):
Good connection.
To protect her feelings. I suppose.
Not being left, not being hurt,not knowing if it's real love.
And then that relatesto her real relationship in that
she found a man whom she could be safewith safety equals love.
Not really, but yes.
(19:32):
So it is kind of the same thing.
At first I was thinking, well,
that seems so differentthan her relationship, because she
basically gave him her email,but she put herself in a safe place.
This man wants me.
Yes, I think she did.
And and as we go on,I think she talks a little more
about that compromise.
(19:55):
Right.
What you're talking aboutis a real compromise
where people often don't feelthey're entitled to love.
They will pick someone for safetyand security.
It may look like love to them.
It may not.
But often they make that choicebecause there just isn't
a feeling that they will ever get off.
(20:16):
That's not even.Or they imagine they will.
But what their definition of love ismay look much more like security.
It may not really be lovethat may be almost so much more
than one could ever hope for thatyou don't even get that
as part of the decision making process.
So safety is kind of all you can hope forat the moment, right?
(20:38):
It's the closest to love you'd ever get.
Which is really not love at all. Right.
Which is not love.
I mean, that
and that's that's part of what this womanis going to be dissecting over time.
What's love, what isn't.
How do you chase loveif you don't know what it is?
Right.
So you have to start looking at yourselfand figuring out, do I know what it is?
(21:00):
And if not, how did I get the wrong idea?
And isn't that most of us?
That's most of us.
That'swhy I wanted everybody to hear this.
So as as we go on in the session,
I said, I think we have to come backto the question
of where you would have gotten the ideathat you wouldn't be wanted or love.
(21:22):
And she said,I guess it makes me think of my mother.
I always felt a little unsettled with her.
I know she loved me, butI really just got praise for achievement.
But it wasn't warm most of the time,and I felt like
she just must not care that much about me.
I mean, that sounds bad.
I knew she cared,but maybe I just didn't really feel it.
(21:43):
Or she didn't know.She didn't show it much.
I felt like she loved her work firstand then the rest of us.
And I said,So when you're talking to these guys,
you're really talking to your mother,whom you worry won't really want you
or isn't that interested,or it will be fleeting.
But her mother came from a placewhere she didn't understand
(22:07):
or feel love, didn't.
Want her, and didn't love her.
So as much as she says.
I know she loved me.
I know she cared about me.
No. Well, you're right on it. Right.
We have to then start questioning that.
Is that real?
Does that hold as we examine it?
Does it yield more informationthat we meaning
(22:30):
we can't just take the surfacecomment as true?
She said, I feel like I want to cry.
So I think that must be right.
So that's good.
She actually has an emotional responseto that.
I'm looking for that.
When you said that,it also made me think of her mother.
She would tell storiesabout not wanting my mom and her siblings
(22:51):
as though they didn't have feelingsabout hearing that
She would just say it the way you would.
State of fact, you know, I didn't wantto be a mother and have all those kids.
I think it really hurt my mom,but she doesn't talk about it much.
Would be hard to talk about.
Might be hard to talk about.
So I said, I think your mind went tothe right place to explain some of this.
(23:15):
If your mother didn't feel wanted, wherewould she learn to make you feel wanted?
That's what she had to pass down to you.
And she said sowhy would I be unavailable?
She was unavailable to me.
And I said, yes.
So maybe a combination of showing uswhat you got.
She was unavailable or being like her
(23:36):
and also protecting yourself.
If you worry unconsciouslythat everyone will treat you like she did.
I think you might protect yourselfand not be so available.
And she said, I get that.
And how would she know any different?
That's right.
And I said, You know,there's a second part of the dream.
(23:57):
I think the person who is interested inyou and wants your number is me.
The question is whether you feelI will reject you
or is it safeenough here for you to give me your email?
And that's where we stopped.
So I think that piece is important.
It's important when you're
(24:18):
treating someone that you are also lookingat the relationship, right?
Because whatever has gone on in
her life will happen in the room,in the relationship.
But also I think it's importantbecause it shows
what we would call the transference.
But everybody has transference,meaning you transfer your feelings
about one thing on to something elseor perhaps everything.
(24:42):
If you had a mother who herself wasn'twanted, we know this overtly, right?
This is clearly stated.
We're not even guessing.
And her mother didn't have an experienceof being wanted or loved.
She didn't have that to passon. She tried.
She tried to be warmer than she knew.
That was not the way she wanted it,but there was not a lot to draw on.
(25:06):
So that's what this patient got.
And the patient, you know, may deny it.
I know she cared It as one goesalong again, she'll question that.
But that means she isgoing out into the world.
Everybody is potentially her mother
who didn't love her, who doesn't want her,
who isn't going to care for herto keep her in mind.
(25:29):
So you can imagine. Right.
And then, of course,if her mother didn't love her,
where would she have learnedto love herself?
Most importantly, she wouldn't.
So she doesn't love herself.
So that means how can shethen go out and find the right
people, the right relationship,maybe the right everything?
You may deemsomething loving or this feels good
(25:52):
and it may be very muchthe wrong place for you,
because what you may be finding overand over is a place
where you're not loved really,just like mom did it.
And we are so satisfiedwith taking everything at face value.
You said something a few minutes ago
(26:13):
about this and that.
It's nice not to have to dig deep.
You want to believe what you're told.
You want to buy the picture,You want to figure out
how to make your mom okaywith your existence.
And you help create an image of love
just so you can survivein that relationship, right?
(26:36):
Like you begin to understandthat if I get good grades,
that means that I was going to love me.
And. Right.
And so those kind of surface things carryyou through.
And do they then become more and moreso your definition of love.
If I have all these right qualitiesthat makes me lovable,
(26:58):
I'm smart or I always get
A's or I'm the best football playeror whatever it is that
those can they equal love in your mind?
Well, I think in your mind andand what you're getting at is
what's the fantasy that everybody'swalking around with?
We can look at everybody.
And I think this case very quicklygo, okay, how does this relate to me?
(27:21):
You know,she's gotten to be a medical doctor.
She's doing all these things right.
You know, she did get married.Yes. Had a rough divorce.
But I think this is a storyabout a woman who would say I was loved
and then not understand why things don't
go the way you would expectif you were loved.
Why couldn't I find a last in relationshipwhere my husband wouldn't fall apart
(27:43):
and then cheat on me? Right.
Good question.
If you were loved, probably you're notgoing to end up in that type of situation
where you're so blindsided by this,you didn't see who he really was.
So then we had this.
All right, well,then maybe our assumption is wrong.
Maybe you weren't really loved.
(28:04):
And I think that's the piecethat's so critical for the world.
Maybe what we are calling love
all over the place isn't really love.
And we are all running aroundwith a fantasy that it's loved.
And we may do all kindsof mental gymnastics
to make things that are not loving.
(28:25):
How many times do you hearfrom friends either
growing up as a teenager,even as an adult, you know,
my gosh, person that I want to partnerwith finally said, I love you.
Check it off. Done.
But what does that really mean?
I mean, those are just three words
and we just wait for thaton all sorts of levels.
(28:46):
I mean, we think of any situationin the world almost where
we just want somebody to say that to us.
Right.
And then maybe say it back.
But what what's holding that up?
You know, what kind of background is therewhen it's just the words
that get you there?
Well, right when it's generationafter generation of people saying,
(29:08):
I love you and maybe loving you a little,maybe not at all.
Maybe it's violent and awfuland you're told your hated.
So there's not even a peoplearen't even pretending to love you.
Now you may still find people say,
but I know they loved me.
(29:30):
I know my mother loved me.
She just couldn't show it.
So I think we have toall sort of reevaluate
all of the waysin which we categorize these things.
How do we really judge them?
Because I thinkwe're judging a lot of things
improperly, and that is getting usinto terrible trouble.
And are we making those kinds of excuses?
(29:52):
Mostly as a matter of self-protection.
If I let go of this thing, I have zero.
That's it.
Fundamentally terrifying, right?
I will drop off into the abyss.
So I have to depend on youand to depend on you.
I have to assume fantasizedthat you loved me.
(30:14):
So let's move on to the second session.
This is the second sessionthat you're presenting.
But somewhere along the way, we.
Are still early in treatment.
This is not a consecutive session.
We're early on.
But she pretty quickly lays out sort of.
All right, here's my dilemma.
I wasn't I didn't feel my mother loved me
(30:35):
and I didn't know how tothen make myself available to love.
This is in her unconscious.
This is in her unconsciousin the first dreams.
I think early on, she felt she didn't knowhow to give the number right.
Respond to someone who would be loving.
I don't think at that point she would havesaid, My mother didn't love me.
I just added that piece.
(30:55):
And that'swhere we get later in treatment.
Yes, but my goal,although that was very apparent,
given the historyshe had said and what was going
on, she's going to work her way there.
Well, and she was saying on the surface,I know my mother loved me.
That's right.
That's right.
So in a way, I would say, look goodfor her to at least get the butt in there.
(31:19):
Right. And I really like that.
What she was looking at iswhat was my part in this?
A lot of people come in.
So I think she could have easily onlywent with this is what was done to me.
And so some of that is a little defensiveand protective.
Also, what was my part?
Let me fix thatand then I'll be fine. Right?
I don't have to really touch other things.
(31:42):
But also that's a very curious wayto enter into something to say.
You know, I just imagine there musthave been something on my end too, right?
Yeah.
And how kind of normal forso many of us to think
it's my fault, you know,what did I do here?
Right?
And so there is also that piece often that
(32:04):
the women tend to present more with that.
must be something I did.
Not that men don't ever.
But I think that is more you tend to seethat more with your female patients.
It's a woman's place.
That's right.
And there is some of that in her.
Definitely.
And I think she also just had a genuinecuriosity to sort of see, you know what?
(32:26):
How do I start to understand this?
And he's not giving me any information.
It's going to have to come from me.
So all of those, as she said, swirlingaround lots of things swirling around.
So in this next session, she startsand says, I've been thinking a lot
about what we talked aboutand seeing that there are so many things
I'm starting to see and questionthat I always just assumed were normal.
(32:51):
I don't think my mother was a bad mother,but she was removed.
She was always offthinking about something else or work.
But I think I always knewI wasn't the main thing on her mind.
It did leave me feelinglike I just wanted her to spend
more time with meand to light up when I walked in the room.
So I think I did get the ideathat maybe she wasn't that interested.
(33:14):
Should kids feel like they'rethe main thing in their parents lives.
Enough of the time? Yes.
A little Kidsshould have this kind of glorious feeling.
I can't wait till my mom comeshome from work and I see her face
light up and she comes to me with a hugand asks about my day.
Yes, enough of the time.
I don't think we can do that all the time.
(33:36):
We don't have to do that all the time.
But that baby has to feel a little kid.
The adult child.
Enough of the time when you show up,
that parent either, you know.
Lights up. Yeah, right.
That you really are importantand special to that person.
The glory of that,that thing that happens often
(34:01):
for a lot of peopleor is only imagined by some
to me is a glimpse ofor is love in that that moment
where someone abandons everything elseand just sees you and holds you
either literally or
figuratively is is like,you know, it takes your breath away.
(34:21):
Right?
And so I think, yes, we want thatto be happening as much as possible.
Now that the the only tricky part to that
is that alsothen we have this unconscious piece.
And how much does the unconsciousthen let you take in of that?
Unfortunately, by the time we're adults,
sometimes we have gotten so confused that
(34:43):
we may still getthat response from someone,
but it doesn't always meanthat the relationship is fully loving.
I think we probably get these glimpses andand moments of that.
But I and I don't really thinkthat this patient had a mother
where she felt consistently
(35:03):
maybe never got that kind of responsewhere you just walk in
and the person lights upand it just that's it.
And you, as you say,you can melt into the beautiful
deliciousness of that moment.
Yeah.
We want to be havingthose sorts of moments as much as we can.
And what we are fighting is our trauma.
(35:26):
We are fighting all of the waysin which we didn't get it.
We were hurt,we weren't important, we weren't noticed.
This is what this woman is now saying is,right, the dots are starting to connect.
She was removed.
I wasn't I never really felt likeI was number one in her mind.
How many people in the world
do we see out theretrying to be number one at something?
(35:48):
I want to be the best.I've got to be the star.
Make me the center of attention,you know, or the opposite, right?
I don't want to be seen.
But either way, often what that iscoming from is what place did you have?
Where were you? Did you get enough?
And that and that little world,whether it is either of those,
you know, just give me all the attentionand I'm satisfied or,
(36:10):
you know, I want to be unnoticeable,
that that's all you
think you need to besatisfied is really something.
I mean, that just speaks volumesabout all of us.
I have a question, though.
So this thing that feeling thatthat moment of glory,
let's say,where you get that attention from
(36:30):
or you wish you got it from your parents,I feel like we still know that it exists.
You've either read a book,you watched a movie,
you saw your friends interact,
and you feel that essence of that.
What does that mean?
I mean, it makes me think that somehowwe know that there's that feeling.
(36:52):
I don't even knowhow to put it into words.
But we we don't feel it,but we want to feel it.
We've seen it over there.
You weren't in that movie, right?
But you you've heard the.
Story and you like it.
I mean, why do you like it?
I mean, why do you how do you know thatfeels like love if you don't have love?
Well, there is a part, right, that,you know, people
(37:13):
respond to thatwe are wired to respond to that.
We long we long for that.
You know, And then the question is,can we tolerate it?
Will we allow ourselves to have it?
In what way might we sabotage it?
But I think, yes,we recognize that as human beings,
that that is something desirable.
(37:35):
We do and and do.
We then try to mold our own existencesinto that or,
you know, catch ourselvestrying to believe that what we have
is that even though it doesn't feel likethat thing that you want to feel.
All of it, you know,I mean, then I think you have it and or,
you know, it exists, you felt it or,you know, whether it was fleeting
(37:58):
or you got some little taste of it,something or you didn't.
And then you have to just see it in moviesor read about it.
And then the mind will set about doing
any and all things to justifywhat you have to deny what you don't.
To quiet the pain, to deny the pain, to
(38:18):
try to get it, to keep yourself from it.
It is anything and everything,but that is what we are all busy doing.
That is what we are all
doing,obeying an imprint and wrestling with it
to see where and what kind of lovewe are actually allowed to have.
And walking downsome crazy paths trying to very.
(38:40):
Very, very as as individualsand as the world.
Yeah.
She says She didn't light upwhen I walked in the room
it feels complicatedbecause I know all of the hard work
she did was for the familyso we could have a good life.
Maybe it was also to fulfill her,which I get.
So it isn't likeshe was just hiding out from us all day.
(39:02):
But it also felt like work came first.
And then she was always taking care of hermother, who had a lot of health issues.
And we were somewhere down the list.
And she tells me she had a dream.
In her dream, she says, I'm drivingto the valley and get stuck in traffic.
So I get off the freewayand end up walking through a Thai village
(39:23):
and there are poor people waiting for foodto be delivered.
It finally starts to arrive.
Then I am at Melanie's and there is sometalk about something with Eric,
like he's doing something and Melaniewants a job decorating the set.
AustinMelanie's husband has a job on a film.
They tell me I can sleep on their guestbed since I drove so far.
(39:46):
But I go to their placeand this woman, Brandi, is there as though
she lives there.
She's happy to see me,but has a bunch of friends with her
and they're in the guest bedroom,so I have nowhere to stay.
So I have to leave.
I make a funny comment to themand I go, Then she tells me her thoughts.
This dream is all over the place.
(40:08):
I had it last nightafter a really long day at work.
I just fell into bed and was outpretty quickly.
I did go out to the valleyto see these friends recently.
Melanie is a friend of many yearsand her husband is Austin.
They are an interesting couple, I think.
Well matched.
She's very smart,a little intense at times
(40:29):
and can be controlling,but also can be very generous.
He's a little strange, very funny,but kind of keeps you at a distance.
He's a science guy, a PhD in chemistry,so very smart
and not the best socially,but I get him enough.
He had a rough childhoodand kind of raised himself,
and I think he just lost himself in books,so he's more comfortable there.
(40:52):
She kind of bridges the gap for him too.
They aren't in film,
so I'm not sure why this is about his jobin film and her doing set design.
Then she tells methat they just had this awful situation
where they adopted a puppyand had it for a while,
and then it turns outthere were all these health problems
and they ended upreturning it to the breeder.
(41:13):
I know it was a hard decision for them,but it was kind of like,
How could you do that?
But they felt like the breeder knewthe puppy had problems and didn't
let them know.
I don't even know all the details.
It was heartbreaking
and I was just hearing about itfor the first time when I was out there
and there were too many people aroundto get the whole story.
I felt so sad hearing it.
(41:34):
I really felt for the puppy
and who would take care of itand make sure it had a good home.
I think they also worried they wouldn'tbe able to take care of the dog
in the right way
because they both had very demanding jobsand what if it needed too much?
But it sounds like a rough decisionand just heartbreaking.
And I asked her about Brandyand the guest bedroom and she said, yeah,
(41:57):
she doesn't even knowMelanie and Austin, but
she was my neighbor when I livedin this apartment during Med school.
She was beautiful and friendlyand just a great person in the dream.
She's there and happy to see me,but there is so many people there
that isn't room for me.
I don't want to make a big deal out of it,but I'm hurt.
(42:18):
I did drive a long wayand it would have been nice
if they had made sureto find space for me.
So I said to her,I think the Thai village is about the ties
to your parents and you had to feed them.
They were poor, meaningthey didn't have enough love
given to them by their parents,not enough food.
So you would have to do it
to take care of them,nourish them with your achievements.
(42:42):
Melanie and Austin are alsoyour parents who didn't want the puppy.
The puppy Is you there, baby?
It looks like you were wantedon the surface.
You were invited to stay.
But then there's no space for you.
No wonder you fell into bed last night.
You would be exhaustedfrom taking care of them.
The idea now would be to cut the tiesso that you can free yourself
(43:06):
from taking care of people
who didn't have space for you and moveinto finding those that do.
Of course, that may mean you worrythere won't be space here for you either.
So that's where we left it.
So this is importantbecause she gets to it.
There was no space for me.
(43:26):
There simply was no space.
Space would be the equivalent of love.
There was no loving placein the mother's mind
or in the father's mind for this babyto come really
have that kind of foundationsit in that learn to love herself, know
she's valuable, and then go outin the world and pick accordingly.
(43:48):
What did she do with that information,those feelings?
She came to them with you.
She cried and she cried a lot.
And then she denied it.
And then she felt it some more.
And she dreamed about it some more.
And she did what we call working through,which is you sort of, you know, two steps
forward, one step back,two steps forward, one step back
(44:09):
as you metabolize this new idea.
And this is not an easy idea.
And oftenthis comes up early in treatment.
And then if the patient doeswhat the patient does with it,
and it may stay as a small threadand then usually someone will get moved
aside a little there
some amnesia about this,and then it gets opened up again
and hopefully can get really taken upin a meaningful way.
(44:33):
But her mind is telling her very quickly,here was the situation.
There wasn't a place for you.
So you learn to protect yourself.
You're not going to get hurt.
Why would you keep giving your number out
if you already knowthere's no guest bedroom for you?
You're just going to get hurt again.
You're just going to get hurt.
It doesn't matter how much you feed them,how much you achieve,
(44:53):
how much you take care of everything,and it all look nice on the surface.
She was invited to these people's homeright in the dream.
And in reality, her parents got pregnant.
They invited her in, right?
They they didn't knowthey had no bedroom for her.
They didn't know that their feelingshad not allowed that to happen.
(45:15):
And that's a really important piecefor us.
We all have to understand thatall of our hurts, all of our traumas
get in the way of love getting through.
So either we don't get it or whateverwe have.
Maybe diminished and or block,we assume, I'm trying to be so loving.
I'm working all these hours, I'mtrying to do this for my family.
(45:36):
And that isn'twhat's the love part of that isn't coming?
Well, we think just having a baby is love.
Right? Of course I love you.
And I truly believe,you know, most mothers are not walking
around, not thinking,not wanting to love, not thinking.
They don't want to love this babyor not thinking that they have in
(45:58):
some way,you know, disconnected from love.
But they have and they just don't know it.
And this is why we want to talk aboutall of this and get this really clear.
And if you look around the world again,
as I've said many times,are we doing loving things?
But we're not intentionally, for the mostpart, being, let's say, bad ad.
(46:19):
I mean, we're not a woman who's carryinga child and is going to have this
baby is excited and knowing that
this is coming from a place of love.
There's no harm intended on the surfaceat all.
None at all.
And for the vast majority of people,they are,
(46:41):
of course, in a state of mind to saying,But I love this baby.
I wanted this baby.
Maybe I worked hard to get this baby or,you know,
I felt so lucky to have this baby.
And there are wonderful experiences.
And to those people,I would just say, look, generally fine.
Just keep loving as much as you can dothat.
Do that,keep doing that, lean into that. Right.
Dads or whomever, partners or whomeveryou know is involved.
(47:04):
Caretakers nurturethe person who is caring this baby
because the more love that personis feeling, the better off that Dyad is.
And we want these dyadsin really good shape.
We want that mommy baby couplein a really lovely,
juicy, abundant state of love.
(47:25):
But even there, we may find placeswhere people think
they are consciously being as lovingand thoughtful as they can be.
And yet,guess what? They too have an imprint.
They have ancestorswho did not get all the love they need.
And so often there still are placeswhere that love gets jammed up,
doesn't find its wayin, doesn't allow the mother to freely
(47:49):
give herself overto this wonderful feeling with the baby.
We work with what we've got. That's right.
So if it's going well, I would say, great,Whatever you're doing, keep doing it
right, amplify it, and people around youhopefully support you in that.
We need all of that.
You know, any of these policies
we have around the worldthat are not supportive of mothers.
(48:12):
Bad idea.
Really, really bad idea.
You don'tyou know, if you don't want to make sure
that mothershave all the housing and food and security
that they need to carry a babythe whole time without worrying
that their life is in some wayin jeopardy and insufficient.
And if you don't want to make sure that'sa really bad idea because you will get
(48:36):
an entire populace who has come throughwhatever that trauma is,
you know, And that's just the experiencein the immediate right.
You know, whateverher history is obviously plays in.
And then however, policiestreat that woman.
But if you don't
want to give her a voice at the table,if you do not want her to feel
(48:57):
you're going to have trouble,
and it's not just going to be troublefor the woman in the baby.
Remember, the woman gives birth to malesand females,
both partsof the next generation of people
who will grow up and turn aroundand take care of all of us.
So I think it behooves everybodyto really think about that and
recalibrate, take a better look and say,
(49:20):
Now what are we all doing hereas human beings?
What is our purpose here?
And is it to really make moneyor is it to learn to love each other?
I'm not saying I'm anti money,of course, fine, make money.
But I think if money is your goal,if power is your goal,
it will be a disaster and at some point itwill fail and it will fail in a big way.
(49:43):
Empires crash.
They crash.
So if we can get everybody to realize thatlove,
love is the place to be loveand going inside, understanding yourself
so you can find out where you're not opento love, where you didn't get it.
What you aredenying about your own history
(50:05):
and change that and then start to sell.
You know, Dr. Bail,you say, well, you had to be careful.
And a lot of people have spiritualpeople say this, which is,
look, you may be lucky in this lifetimeand life is pretty good.
And you may look at the person of a nurse.
She thank goodness I'mnot that person who doesn't have
whatever it is, X, Y, and Z,you know, or has to live a certain way.
(50:28):
But in the next lifetime, that may be you.
You may want to make sureif you've been given something good,
you try to give everybody
around youas much good as you can, as much love,
because we never know wherewe're going next.
Who are we going to be next?
And you better hope the other peoplehave tried to make it better for you.
(50:53):
And even if you don't gothat far down that path,
there's it's like ajust in case that would help. You
want us spread this love, You know, just
just in this onelittle existence on earth?
I think so, you know,And so you have to yourself,
(51:14):
am I being loving now,I'm not saying be a martyr.
I'm not saying you have to suffer.
I want to get that clearbecause a lot of people mistake
being loving with suffering. Right.
You just have to take everything.
And that's not the point of this.
And that brings me toI said there's two parts to your question.
Let me answer the second part.
Bail really felt thatthat original spark of love when you say,
(51:39):
but you you see it in a movie, even if younever got to see it in a movie.
right.
Or maybe you even see it like,that is I'm repelled by it almost,
because I've I've so never had this,but I know it is powerful.
It's a feeling. It's a feeling.
But he would say thatfeeling originated with God
and that in his mind, fundamentally,
(52:01):
we all carry a
perhaps very small or distant
in our mindsnow experience of being one with.
And this isn't about religion in his mind,this was about spirit, the Divine,
and this is about the Divinebeing the provider
(52:21):
of pure, abundant love.
And we were intended
to have that to exist with that.
But our trauma has been so heavily
piled on top of thatthat it's hard to find it.
Yes, I think he would say, look, we'veall come down to earth to learn lessons.
(52:44):
So you don't remember
that as much as perhapswe need to remember it or be tuned into it
and the traumas and the different things
we go through, challenges we go through
whatever our earthly curriculum is sothat we can learn and evolve,
so our souls can mature, learn things,and we may put ourselves.
(53:09):
That's how I say,who knows who you may be?
People may disagree with that.
But Bail said here in his mind,Here's how this is working.
So we are holding thisdistant memory of pure love.
And it was blissful and amazing,as you can read.
You know, it's like thatthat person lighting up it
(53:31):
when they see you, but,you know, magnify that.
So we've all got this kernel of that.
And so I think there is also a part of uswhen we are in our earthly relationships
where none of them
are going to be completely fulfillingbecause they cannot be divine.
So there is always a part of us,I think, sort of lament
taking the losswhen we are down here of that feeling.
(53:55):
I wonder if those little glimpsesare just a nudge, a reminder like, yes.
Did youdo you feel that that felt so good?
Don't you want more of that?
Let's go get it.
Everybody stop fighting with each other.
Stop doing horrible things to each other.
Stop having war.
Stop chasing money and power.
(54:17):
It's the wrong thing.
Go for love.
Go for love.
And when you listen to dreams the wayBail did,
the way those of us who do this workdo what?
Come to over and over and over and over
is the lack of love that people feel.
And so for Daphne,did she get to a place where she
(54:42):
could understand and feel that love?
Daphne is working on it.
It is an ongoing process.
But she knows. Itnow. She knows it, right?
And now she knows when she meetssomebody she's going to pay,
see what she feels first and then pay.
Really careful attention to her dreams.
What is this asking me to do?
(55:03):
Is this relationshipsupporting me in my highest good or not?
Do I have to cram myself into,you know, bend myself
into a pretzelto make this relationship work?
Am I willing to do that?Why would I be? Well. Well.
Hopefullyshe wouldn't be willing to do it.
Now, I will say, of course,sometimes that takes a long time
to work throughbecause you will fool yourself, you know?
(55:27):
But it seems like this.
Okay, well, then, see, you know, if youhave to experience this and see, go ahead.
But eventually, hopefully,you come out the other side and go, I yes.
Again, I got confusedand I was really choosing to stay
with some symbol of my mother and father.
Right.
And that's why that dream is so important,because it really says break the ties.
(55:51):
Scary. Incredibly scary.
But those have been making you suffer andyou have to get enough of a view of that.
You have to see all the waysin which you have suffered.
Calling this love,suffered, suffered, suffered, calling
this good, protecting your parents,obeying your imprint.
You have to see enoughof that to where you go,
(56:14):
okay, I get what I do.
Like she came in askingwhat's my part in this.
Well, here's
your lesson to learn and what a blessingthat you get to learn this because
then, yeah, you don't have to repeat itover and over and over.
And that'swhat the whole world needs to see,
is that we are goingthe wrong way when we chase
(56:35):
all of these external thingslike money and power.
You want to divide upcountries, move families,
split people up,make this one good, that one bad.
Take money from this one.Give it to that one.
That's all the wrong thingto be focused on.
Some sort of immediate satisfaction
that you think you're going to have,but you don't really get.
(56:59):
Yeah, it's all too separated from feeling
fundamentally loveand it is all too intellectual.
And I think that's where we've gotten offtrack and we got way too lost
and we have to find our way homeand that is through feeling.
And your dreams will take you there.
Well, thenwe're going to have to do more of this.
(57:20):
And we've just opened upseveral different topics
that I think really ought to be discussedmore about love and spirituality,
our connection to divine, how we find outabout these things through our dreams.
Okay.
Yeah, I'd love to. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, listeners and viewersfor joining us today.
(57:43):
It was great.
Let us know what you thought about it.
See you next time. Bye, Loren.
Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks.
I head up the Holistic
Psychoanalysis Foundationestablished by my late husband, Dr.
Bernard Bail.
Welcome to. And now, love.
I am happy to say that we have Dr.
Weiner with us againtoday with more dreams.
If we're really paying attention,we can find so
(00:26):
much of ourselves in the dream scenarioswe share here.
For me, every dream shared has sparkedfeelings in me,
and those feelings createthis magnificent curiosity.
Our unconscious us is vastand cradles the healing we all need.
Our dreams are the conduitto this incredible wellspring
(00:48):
where our true selves can be known.
Thank you, Loren, for once againsharing your wisdom
and your feelingsabout our dreams with us.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Well, what do you want to talk about?
Well, something small. How about love?
my gosh. Yeah, I think
(01:09):
I havesome dreams today that talk about it.
The dreams are easy to understand,I think, from everybody.
But I think we're all going to be ableto see ourselves in it.
And that's the important piece.
And obviously, love is a huge topic.
So we will touch on some of ittoday, and I think
we'll touch on other parts of it as we goalong.
(01:31):
And I wonder who of us hasn't
somehow questioned what that really is.
And, you know, so many times we think,I love this person.
I love this feeling.
I love you.
And then you step back and think, well,how do I know what that really is?
Yeah. So that that's an important piece.
How do we know that what we arefeeling is love?
(01:55):
And how good is our compassat determining that.
And knowing and feeling?
I guess you've got to somehowfigure out how to start with feeling
to get to the knowing. That helps.
That helps.
So all of the things you're talking about
will be touched upon in the session,which is nice.
(02:16):
This is.
Yeah, this actually is a really simple wayto start talking
about a very complex topicbecause it is all about who are we,
you know,and are we really here to love each other?
The end of the day, that's my feeling thatwe need to be able to love each other.
(02:36):
So whatever gets in our way,and that may be about an individual love
relationship, as you're saying,love on a bigger scale globally
that crosses political divides,that crosses countries, that crosses
tribes, whatever it is, familiesthat really what are we all doing here?
And if not to loveeach other, then why what
(03:01):
what purpose could
be betterthan to learn to love each other?
And it sifts all the way down.
Or I guess it's the very beginningis loving yourself, loving yourself.
And really, that Bails idea was that
first pair,which is the mother, and the concept
is the motherand the baby is where love starts.
(03:24):
So his idea was, Look,
casual sex may be nice,but if you think there's a chance
that a baby will come from this, thenyou better start being in a loving state
and thinking about lovefrom the very beginning, if possible.
Because you want to infuse everything
about that baby's beginnings in love.
(03:47):
The more the baby feels loved,the more that baby knows it's
okay to love him or herself.
And that's in an amazing gift
to give a human being to go into lifewith.
We've got to figure outwhat that really is, That love. Yes.
So many of us are in that position now.
(04:08):
We're carrying a human child
and we knowwe're supposed to love that being.
But how do we knowwe're really doing it right?
Good question.
So let's take a look at the case,and I think it won't answer
that question specifically,but it starts to get into the discussion
that will lead us there. Okay.
(04:29):
So I will read the introductionto my patient.
We're going to call her Daphne.
Daphne is a
35 year old physician who came to mefollowing her divorce.
She was married for five years
and was devastatedwhen the marriage didn't work out.
She was both heartbroken and panickedbecause she knew
(04:50):
she was pushing up against her ageand her fertility.
She always felt she wanted childrenand now may have to let that dream
go, given it felt unrealistic for herto meet and marry another person
quickly enough to make having a childfeel like a real possibility for her?
Did she think somethingwas going to have to give?
(05:11):
She was either going to meet someone and
marry them, maybe not having itbe completely based on love
in order to have this happen quicklyor just not even have this happen.
I think for her,the question was, will this even happen?
I see.
I included it because you have to knowthat's in there.
That's a pressurethat's pushing on someone.
(05:33):
And as you alluded to,that may make you make decisions
about love, security,
having a childor things that are not quite love and
have you make life choices based on that.
So this is a huge anxietythat is always with her.
(05:54):
And for a lot of us in this world.
And for a lot of people.
And it also goes to her self-esteem,you know,
how good is she feeling about herself?
Does she feel she's really entitledto a full love match?
Does she have to rush?
Will anybody want her?
She told me that she felt hermarriage had broken up after her husband
(06:14):
lost his mother to a quick moving illnessthat surprised everyone.
She watched as her husband fell
into a deep depressionfrom which she felt he never recovered.
This happenedin their second year of marriage.
Over the next two years,he tried medication and therapy.
And while some of the depression lifted,she felt his emotional distance
from her remained.
(06:36):
By the fourth year of marriage,she found out
he had an affairwhich caused her to end the marriage.
She felt she had lost him long before thenand no longer had the fight in her.
They split up and she was lefthurt, confused and unsure
of how in her words, to get her life back.
She no longer trusted herselfas she had no idea that her husband
(06:57):
would ever cheat on her.
And it made her question everything.
Had she missed the signs, had she failedto understand how much she was grieving?
She didn't feel she had real closure
or understanding from himabout why he did what he did.
And she wanted to get clarity around itso that she could move on.
And very importantly,she wanted to understand her part in it.
(07:20):
She was still hopeful that she could havea chance at lasting love, but was afraid
she might find another bad situation.
Over the course of the first few sessions.
Daphne gave me her history.
She was the oldest childand had two sisters.
All three were highly intelligentand very driven.
Both parents were also physicians
and very successfulin their respective specialties.
(07:44):
She spoke of her childhoodin a realistic way,
showing her awareness of her parentstendencies to work long hours
and sometimes seem more like friendsor colleagues than a romantic couple.
She felt her
mother was reserved and that academicand then professional achievement
was the only way to get her attention.
(08:04):
She also noted that her mother wasat least warmer than her grandmother.
The mother's mother,who was cold and very punitive.
Her grandmother,married young, had several children
that she openly statedshe did not want and felt
that she had to stay in her marriagebecause it was what was done.
The patient felt
(08:25):
her mother may have been bettersuited to a career than being a mother.
The patient described her father
as warmer than her mother generally,and although he was a workaholic,
he was very interested in the children'sactivities when they were young,
attending sportingmatches and performances without fail.
She felt he was the parentshe would go to if she needed advice,
(08:46):
but most of the time she feltshe would handle things on her own
because she didn'twant to interrupt his work.
Daphne said she had good relationshipswith her sisters and they were close
the way friends were texting, oftenmeeting for lunches and shopping and able
to share the ups and downs of lifewith each other.
She said there were some jealousiesand rivalries, but nothing
she considered out of the norm.
(09:08):
And she was grateful to have them,
especially during her divorce,when she leaned on them heavily.
She told me that both siblingshad had a tough time finding satisfying,
romantic relationshipsand often found themselves
either pining over menwho were not really available
or settling for men who werebut did not really excite them.
(09:28):
Daphne said she had those experiences too,and was so relieved
when she finally found her husband
because she thought it would get herout of the slog of dating.
The patient was eager to get someemotional relief and understanding around
how her life had takensuch an unexpected and painful turn.
And I will present some dreamsthat start to reveal
(09:50):
the unconscious peacethat was sitting under all of this.
Okay.
I think most of us can relateto some bit of that.
How do I enter into a relationship?
What does it mean?
It. Her sisters are pining away forthe right partner, not the right partner.
And you think you've found someoneand you think you've read
(10:10):
the situation reasonably correctly.
And all of a sudden,I think she felt out of nowhere.
She lost this man.
Also in part of this that I think we canall relate to are those times in your life
where you think you have that
the total picture,you know what's going on.
(10:32):
The people closest to you,you can you can trust,
you know, what they're doing,what they're feeling.
And she never expected this manthat she lived with to have this affair.
How do you trust anything after thatwhen you've been sort of so compromised
in your closest relationship?
I think that's how she felt.
Just you would question everything.
(10:54):
Gutted andand really thrown off her center,
you know, of what she thoughtwas her center, at least, you know.
These are the things I know.
And I can depend on him.
And then he fell apart.
And Wait a minute.I thought this was love.
I thought this was love.And it would last.
This would hold me. Big, big, big loss.
(11:14):
So I think as you said,
I think there's a lot of different pieceswe can all relate to.
This is not a woman who,
you know, overtly sufferedwhat we would normally call big abuse.
This was a reasonablywell-functioning life
where she was able to meet a lot of hergoals.
Things were going well until they weren't.
(11:35):
And experience many of us can have. Yes.
I'll present a sessionthat comes early in the treatment.
They're both reasonably early sessions,but you can sort of see that
the unconscious very quickly beginsto bring her information
that is going to shed lighton her internal foundation.
(11:56):
And that led her into this relationshipin a way where she
could be surprised.
She starts.
So I'm not sure what is the mostimportant thing on my mind today.
There are a lot of things swirling around.
My best friend dragged me out last weekendto try to get me back in the game.
(12:17):
It was unpleasant,but I really appreciated her effort.
It's been a little over a yearsince the divorce was finalized
and she felt I really needed toat least dip my toe in the dating world.
I don't think I even know how to do it.
It's been a long time.
We went to a housewarming and thento a birthday dinner, which was at a bar.
(12:37):
I was doing my best to not be sourand to smile and look happy to be there.
I did talk to a few people, some nice men,but none of them felt like anyone
I would actually wantto spend more time with.
But I tried to practice my flirting.
I'm glad I went.
Maybe it won't feel so strangethe next time.
She says she had a dreamthe night after going out with her friend.
(13:00):
In the dream, she says, I'm someplacecrowded, like a school or university.
Maybe I'm in the dorms. I'm leaving.
And so is a male friend of mine.
I like him a little romantically, I think.
So I am packing all this stuffinto a little travel bag.
I know. I can only take a few things.
He's going somewherelike New Mexico or Colorado.
(13:22):
I don't think he's sure where he's going.
He asks for my email to keep in touch.
I keep trying to write it down,and I either can't decide
which one to giveor I can't remember the correct spelling.
I basically have to write it many timesover and over, trying to get it right.
I think to myself
that it doesn't really matterbecause he won't write to me anyway.
(13:46):
So I ask herwhat comes to her mind about the dream.
She says, I think this brings upsome interesting things.
It makes me feel a little sad, actually,and I'm not sure why.
I had a boyfriend a long time ago
that I think moved to New Mexicoafter we lost touch.
And also my ex has a connection as he hadsome distant family there and has talked
(14:08):
about wanting to move there at some pointbecause he loves the wide open spaces.
And I askedwhat the guy in the dream was like,
and she said, Maybe he's my ex,like a younger version of him.
He's sort of soft spoken,a creative type, like my ex.
But there's also somethinga little different about him.
He was pursuing me, he was following me.
(14:29):
He was following me around the dormas I was packing and gathering my things.
That was not exactly like my ex.
It felt a littlemore like he was interested.
And that feels so different.
After feeling like my ex just dropped meand never really looked back
and I said, So is this more of the wayyou wished he would have been?
(14:49):
And she said something more like,that feels right.
Like there was an energy to him.
He was solid and I could depend on him.
And I asked her about, you know,whether she could depend on her ex.
And she said, I could definitely.
But I think it was more likehe just didn't feel as solid as this guy.
It reminds me of this guyI dated, well, loosely
(15:10):
dated in med schoolbefore I met my husband.
He was sweet and definitely solid,like he liked me.
And I just knew it.
And I think I didn't really let myselfrelax into that.
And I was busy chasing this other guyand went on to date him for a while.
He was an asshole, it turns out,And I think just too immature.
(15:32):
Ultimately.So I picked the wrong guy there.
So why do you think you're backin college?
I ask her.
College brings up so many thoughts for me.
It's an exciting time.
Everything is before you.
And I feel like that isn't exactlytrue anymore.
Now, I've been through this,and it colors things.
It changed me.
I'm not as optimisticand excited about life.
(15:54):
I'm still here, but different.
This takes me back to a better time,I think.
Maybe there are still thingsI want to learn or needed to learn.
Like what?
I ask.
Like whatthe rest of my life will be like.
What about the fact that he wantsyour email and you can't get it right?
I think this gets at something about me.
I have this default where I just assumethe guy won't really want me
(16:17):
and I do this even when they are makingit really obvious.
I might get embarrassed and awkwardand I feel like I shouldn't
say how I really feel,but then I think I give off
not interested vibesand then things just fall apart and either
they lose interest or something happensand it doesn't work.
(16:37):
But I know it's me.
I do it because I just get so nervousand almost can't imagine
that someone will actually want meand also be romantic and treat me right.
It's like that doesn't compute.
And Isaid, Is that how you feel in the dream?
And she said, I'm not sure.
I think it might be a little lessbecause I get the feeling
(16:57):
that he is actually interested in me
and I want to give him my information,but then I can't do it.
It's like a slow jog or dream,
but instead I'm writing my emailover and over and trying to get it right.
It's crazy.
So this guy is interested in you
and you aren't able to make yourselfreachable available to him.
(17:18):
And she said, I think so.
So why aren't you ableto write your email?
I guess I'm not comfortable.
I don't think I trust thathe will really want me.
He was cute and seemedlike the kind of guy everyone would want.
So maybe I just didn't feel it was real.
Like,he wouldn't really want to ask me out.
(17:39):
So where do you think you got the ideathat you wouldn't be wanted?
I'm not exactly sure,but my mind immediately
went to my sisters,and I think they sort of feel like I do.
So this must be a family thing.
So everyone has the ideathat they won't be wanted?
Yeah, I think that's fair to say.
And we're all insecure that way.
So it sounds like there's two thingshappening here.
(18:01):
The first is that you're sayingthat, well, you worry he won't want you.
You're actually not availableto the good guy who wants you
and will take care of you.
You can't give the right emailas hard as you try.
And she said,
That's interesting because I feel likeI've always attracted these guys
who are either totally not available orI thought they were, but really weren't.
(18:24):
I think that's why I married my husband.
He seemed to be available
and be interested and I really loved him.
But then it all fell apartand it was so hard to understand
why he just disappeared on me emotionally.
His body was there, but he was gone.
I couldn't understand
why I wasn't important enoughto fight for it to come back to.
(18:45):
But it was like he just pulled awayand that was it.
But if I'm not really available,is that why I chose him?
I don't think we have the full story yet.
But you seem to be saying that this isan important piece for you to know about.
That's why you're dreaming about it.
Then we can figure out howand where it played a part in all of this.
In the dream,she's ultimately sabotaging the really.
(19:10):
Good connection.
To protect her feelings. I suppose.
Not being left, not being hurt,not knowing if it's real love.
And then that relatesto her real relationship in that
she found a man whom she could be safewith safety equals love.
Not really, but yes.
(19:32):
So it is kind of the same thing.
At first I was thinking, well,
that seems so differentthan her relationship, because she
basically gave him her email,but she put herself in a safe place.
This man wants me.
Yes, I think she did.
And and as we go on,I think she talks a little more
about that compromise.
(19:55):
Right.
What you're talking aboutis a real compromise
where people often don't feelthey're entitled to love.
They will pick someone for safetyand security.
It may look like love to them.
It may not.
But often they make that choicebecause there just isn't
a feeling that they will ever get off.
(20:16):
That's not even.Or they imagine they will.
But what their definition of love ismay look much more like security.
It may not really be lovethat may be almost so much more
than one could ever hope for thatyou don't even get that
as part of the decision making process.
So safety is kind of all you can hope forat the moment, right?
(20:38):
It's the closest to love you'd ever get.
Which is really not love at all. Right.
Which is not love.
I mean, that
and that's that's part of what this womanis going to be dissecting over time.
What's love, what isn't.
How do you chase loveif you don't know what it is?
Right.
So you have to start looking at yourselfand figuring out, do I know what it is?
(21:00):
And if not, how did I get the wrong idea?
And isn't that most of us?
That's most of us.
That'swhy I wanted everybody to hear this.
So as as we go on in the session,
I said, I think we have to come backto the question
of where you would have gotten the ideathat you wouldn't be wanted or love.
(21:22):
And she said,I guess it makes me think of my mother.
I always felt a little unsettled with her.
I know she loved me, butI really just got praise for achievement.
But it wasn't warm most of the time,and I felt like
she just must not care that much about me.
I mean, that sounds bad.
I knew she cared,but maybe I just didn't really feel it.
(21:43):
Or she didn't know.She didn't show it much.
I felt like she loved her work firstand then the rest of us.
And I said,So when you're talking to these guys,
you're really talking to your mother,whom you worry won't really want you
or isn't that interested,or it will be fleeting.
But her mother came from a placewhere she didn't understand
(22:07):
or feel love, didn't.
Want her, and didn't love her.
So as much as she says.
I know she loved me.
I know she cared about me.
No. Well, you're right on it. Right.
We have to then start questioning that.
Is that real?
Does that hold as we examine it?
Does it yield more informationthat we meaning
(22:30):
we can't just take the surfacecomment as true?
She said, I feel like I want to cry.
So I think that must be right.
So that's good.
She actually has an emotional responseto that.
I'm looking for that.
When you said that,it also made me think of her mother.
She would tell storiesabout not wanting my mom and her siblings
(22:51):
as though they didn't have feelingsabout hearing that
She would just say it the way you would.
State of fact, you know, I didn't wantto be a mother and have all those kids.
I think it really hurt my mom,but she doesn't talk about it much.
Would be hard to talk about.
Might be hard to talk about.
So I said, I think your mind went tothe right place to explain some of this.
(23:15):
If your mother didn't feel wanted, wherewould she learn to make you feel wanted?
That's what she had to pass down to you.
And she said sowhy would I be unavailable?
She was unavailable to me.
And I said, yes.
So maybe a combination of showing uswhat you got.
She was unavailable or being like her
(23:36):
and also protecting yourself.
If you worry unconsciouslythat everyone will treat you like she did.
I think you might protect yourselfand not be so available.
And she said, I get that.
And how would she know any different?
That's right.
And I said, You know,there's a second part of the dream.
(23:57):
I think the person who is interested inyou and wants your number is me.
The question is whether you feelI will reject you
or is it safeenough here for you to give me your email?
And that's where we stopped.
So I think that piece is important.
It's important when you're
(24:18):
treating someone that you are also lookingat the relationship, right?
Because whatever has gone on in
her life will happen in the room,in the relationship.
But also I think it's importantbecause it shows
what we would call the transference.
But everybody has transference,meaning you transfer your feelings
about one thing on to something elseor perhaps everything.
(24:42):
If you had a mother who herself wasn'twanted, we know this overtly, right?
This is clearly stated.
We're not even guessing.
And her mother didn't have an experienceof being wanted or loved.
She didn't have that to passon. She tried.
She tried to be warmer than she knew.
That was not the way she wanted it,but there was not a lot to draw on.
(25:06):
So that's what this patient got.
And the patient, you know, may deny it.
I know she cared It as one goesalong again, she'll question that.
But that means she isgoing out into the world.
Everybody is potentially her mother
who didn't love her, who doesn't want her,
who isn't going to care for herto keep her in mind.
(25:29):
So you can imagine. Right.
And then, of course,if her mother didn't love her,
where would she have learnedto love herself?
Most importantly, she wouldn't.
So she doesn't love herself.
So that means how can shethen go out and find the right
people, the right relationship,maybe the right everything?
You may deemsomething loving or this feels good
(25:52):
and it may be very muchthe wrong place for you,
because what you may be finding overand over is a place
where you're not loved really,just like mom did it.
And we are so satisfiedwith taking everything at face value.
You said something a few minutes ago
(26:13):
about this and that.
It's nice not to have to dig deep.
You want to believe what you're told.
You want to buy the picture,You want to figure out
how to make your mom okaywith your existence.
And you help create an image of love
just so you can survivein that relationship, right?
(26:36):
Like you begin to understandthat if I get good grades,
that means that I was going to love me.
And. Right.
And so those kind of surface things carryyou through.
And do they then become more and moreso your definition of love.
If I have all these right qualitiesthat makes me lovable,
(26:58):
I'm smart or I always get
A's or I'm the best football playeror whatever it is that
those can they equal love in your mind?
Well, I think in your mind andand what you're getting at is
what's the fantasy that everybody'swalking around with?
We can look at everybody.
And I think this case very quicklygo, okay, how does this relate to me?
(27:21):
You know,she's gotten to be a medical doctor.
She's doing all these things right.
You know, she did get married.Yes. Had a rough divorce.
But I think this is a storyabout a woman who would say I was loved
and then not understand why things don't
go the way you would expectif you were loved.
Why couldn't I find a last in relationshipwhere my husband wouldn't fall apart
(27:43):
and then cheat on me? Right.
Good question.
If you were loved, probably you're notgoing to end up in that type of situation
where you're so blindsided by this,you didn't see who he really was.
So then we had this.
All right, well,then maybe our assumption is wrong.
Maybe you weren't really loved.
(28:04):
And I think that's the piecethat's so critical for the world.
Maybe what we are calling love
all over the place isn't really love.
And we are all running aroundwith a fantasy that it's loved.
And we may do all kindsof mental gymnastics
to make things that are not loving.
(28:25):
How many times do you hearfrom friends either
growing up as a teenager,even as an adult, you know,
my gosh, person that I want to partnerwith finally said, I love you.
Check it off. Done.
But what does that really mean?
I mean, those are just three words
and we just wait for thaton all sorts of levels.
(28:46):
I mean, we think of any situationin the world almost where
we just want somebody to say that to us.
Right.
And then maybe say it back.
But what what's holding that up?
You know, what kind of background is therewhen it's just the words
that get you there?
Well, right when it's generationafter generation of people saying,
(29:08):
I love you and maybe loving you a little,maybe not at all.
Maybe it's violent and awfuland you're told your hated.
So there's not even a peoplearen't even pretending to love you.
Now you may still find people say,
but I know they loved me.
(29:30):
I know my mother loved me.
She just couldn't show it.
So I think we have toall sort of reevaluate
all of the waysin which we categorize these things.
How do we really judge them?
Because I thinkwe're judging a lot of things
improperly, and that is getting usinto terrible trouble.
And are we making those kinds of excuses?
(29:52):
Mostly as a matter of self-protection.
If I let go of this thing, I have zero.
That's it.
Fundamentally terrifying, right?
I will drop off into the abyss.
So I have to depend on youand to depend on you.
I have to assume fantasizedthat you loved me.
(30:14):
So let's move on to the second session.
This is the second sessionthat you're presenting.
But somewhere along the way, we.
Are still early in treatment.
This is not a consecutive session.
We're early on.
But she pretty quickly lays out sort of.
All right, here's my dilemma.
I wasn't I didn't feel my mother loved me
(30:35):
and I didn't know how tothen make myself available to love.
This is in her unconscious.
This is in her unconsciousin the first dreams.
I think early on, she felt she didn't knowhow to give the number right.
Respond to someone who would be loving.
I don't think at that point she would havesaid, My mother didn't love me.
I just added that piece.
(30:55):
And that'swhere we get later in treatment.
Yes, but my goal,although that was very apparent,
given the historyshe had said and what was going
on, she's going to work her way there.
Well, and she was saying on the surface,I know my mother loved me.
That's right.
That's right.
So in a way, I would say, look goodfor her to at least get the butt in there.
(31:19):
Right. And I really like that.
What she was looking at iswhat was my part in this?
A lot of people come in.
So I think she could have easily onlywent with this is what was done to me.
And so some of that is a little defensiveand protective.
Also, what was my part?
Let me fix thatand then I'll be fine. Right?
I don't have to really touch other things.
(31:42):
But also that's a very curious wayto enter into something to say.
You know, I just imagine there musthave been something on my end too, right?
Yeah.
And how kind of normal forso many of us to think
it's my fault, you know,what did I do here?
Right?
And so there is also that piece often that
(32:04):
the women tend to present more with that.
must be something I did.
Not that men don't ever.
But I think that is more you tend to seethat more with your female patients.
It's a woman's place.
That's right.
And there is some of that in her.
Definitely.
And I think she also just had a genuinecuriosity to sort of see, you know what?
(32:26):
How do I start to understand this?
And he's not giving me any information.
It's going to have to come from me.
So all of those, as she said, swirlingaround lots of things swirling around.
So in this next session, she startsand says, I've been thinking a lot
about what we talked aboutand seeing that there are so many things
I'm starting to see and questionthat I always just assumed were normal.
(32:51):
I don't think my mother was a bad mother,but she was removed.
She was always offthinking about something else or work.
But I think I always knewI wasn't the main thing on her mind.
It did leave me feelinglike I just wanted her to spend
more time with meand to light up when I walked in the room.
So I think I did get the ideathat maybe she wasn't that interested.
(33:14):
Should kids feel like they'rethe main thing in their parents lives.
Enough of the time? Yes.
A little Kidsshould have this kind of glorious feeling.
I can't wait till my mom comeshome from work and I see her face
light up and she comes to me with a hugand asks about my day.
Yes, enough of the time.
I don't think we can do that all the time.
(33:36):
We don't have to do that all the time.
But that baby has to feel a little kid.
The adult child.
Enough of the time when you show up,
that parent either, you know.
Lights up. Yeah, right.
That you really are importantand special to that person.
The glory of that,that thing that happens often
(34:01):
for a lot of peopleor is only imagined by some
to me is a glimpse ofor is love in that that moment
where someone abandons everything elseand just sees you and holds you
either literally or
figuratively is is like,you know, it takes your breath away.
(34:21):
Right?
And so I think, yes, we want thatto be happening as much as possible.
Now that the the only tricky part to that
is that alsothen we have this unconscious piece.
And how much does the unconsciousthen let you take in of that?
Unfortunately, by the time we're adults,
sometimes we have gotten so confused that
(34:43):
we may still getthat response from someone,
but it doesn't always meanthat the relationship is fully loving.
I think we probably get these glimpses andand moments of that.
But I and I don't really thinkthat this patient had a mother
where she felt consistently
(35:03):
maybe never got that kind of responsewhere you just walk in
and the person lights upand it just that's it.
And you, as you say,you can melt into the beautiful
deliciousness of that moment.
Yeah.
We want to be havingthose sorts of moments as much as we can.
And what we are fighting is our trauma.
(35:26):
We are fighting all of the waysin which we didn't get it.
We were hurt,we weren't important, we weren't noticed.
This is what this woman is now saying is,right, the dots are starting to connect.
She was removed.
I wasn't I never really felt likeI was number one in her mind.
How many people in the world
do we see out theretrying to be number one at something?
(35:48):
I want to be the best.I've got to be the star.
Make me the center of attention,you know, or the opposite, right?
I don't want to be seen.
But either way, often what that iscoming from is what place did you have?
Where were you? Did you get enough?
And that and that little world,whether it is either of those,
you know, just give me all the attentionand I'm satisfied or,
(36:10):
you know, I want to be unnoticeable,
that that's all you
think you need to besatisfied is really something.
I mean, that just speaks volumesabout all of us.
I have a question, though.
So this thing that feeling thatthat moment of glory,
let's say,where you get that attention from
(36:30):
or you wish you got it from your parents,I feel like we still know that it exists.
You've either read a book,you watched a movie,
you saw your friends interact,
and you feel that essence of that.
What does that mean?
I mean, it makes me think that somehowwe know that there's that feeling.
(36:52):
I don't even knowhow to put it into words.
But we we don't feel it,but we want to feel it.
We've seen it over there.
You weren't in that movie, right?
But you you've heard the.
Story and you like it.
I mean, why do you like it?
I mean, why do you how do you know thatfeels like love if you don't have love?
Well, there is a part, right, that,you know, people
(37:13):
respond to thatwe are wired to respond to that.
We long we long for that.
You know, And then the question is,can we tolerate it?
Will we allow ourselves to have it?
In what way might we sabotage it?
But I think, yes,we recognize that as human beings,
that that is something desirable.
(37:35):
We do and and do.
We then try to mold our own existencesinto that or,
you know, catch ourselvestrying to believe that what we have
is that even though it doesn't feel likethat thing that you want to feel.
All of it, you know,I mean, then I think you have it and or,
you know, it exists, you felt it or,you know, whether it was fleeting
(37:58):
or you got some little taste of it,something or you didn't.
And then you have to just see it in moviesor read about it.
And then the mind will set about doing
any and all things to justifywhat you have to deny what you don't.
To quiet the pain, to deny the pain, to
(38:18):
try to get it, to keep yourself from it.
It is anything and everything,but that is what we are all busy doing.
That is what we are all
doing,obeying an imprint and wrestling with it
to see where and what kind of lovewe are actually allowed to have.
And walking downsome crazy paths trying to very.
(38:40):
Very, very as as individualsand as the world.
Yeah.
She says She didn't light upwhen I walked in the room
it feels complicatedbecause I know all of the hard work
she did was for the familyso we could have a good life.
Maybe it was also to fulfill her,which I get.
So it isn't likeshe was just hiding out from us all day.
(39:02):
But it also felt like work came first.
And then she was always taking care of hermother, who had a lot of health issues.
And we were somewhere down the list.
And she tells me she had a dream.
In her dream, she says, I'm drivingto the valley and get stuck in traffic.
So I get off the freewayand end up walking through a Thai village
(39:23):
and there are poor people waiting for foodto be delivered.
It finally starts to arrive.
Then I am at Melanie's and there is sometalk about something with Eric,
like he's doing something and Melaniewants a job decorating the set.
AustinMelanie's husband has a job on a film.
They tell me I can sleep on their guestbed since I drove so far.
(39:46):
But I go to their placeand this woman, Brandi, is there as though
she lives there.
She's happy to see me,but has a bunch of friends with her
and they're in the guest bedroom,so I have nowhere to stay.
So I have to leave.
I make a funny comment to themand I go, Then she tells me her thoughts.
This dream is all over the place.
(40:08):
I had it last nightafter a really long day at work.
I just fell into bed and was outpretty quickly.
I did go out to the valleyto see these friends recently.
Melanie is a friend of many yearsand her husband is Austin.
They are an interesting couple, I think.
Well matched.
She's very smart,a little intense at times
(40:29):
and can be controlling,but also can be very generous.
He's a little strange, very funny,but kind of keeps you at a distance.
He's a science guy, a PhD in chemistry,so very smart
and not the best socially,but I get him enough.
He had a rough childhoodand kind of raised himself,
and I think he just lost himself in books,so he's more comfortable there.
(40:52):
She kind of bridges the gap for him too.
They aren't in film,
so I'm not sure why this is about his jobin film and her doing set design.
Then she tells methat they just had this awful situation
where they adopted a puppyand had it for a while,
and then it turns outthere were all these health problems
and they ended upreturning it to the breeder.
(41:13):
I know it was a hard decision for them,but it was kind of like,
How could you do that?
But they felt like the breeder knewthe puppy had problems and didn't
let them know.
I don't even know all the details.
It was heartbreaking
and I was just hearing about itfor the first time when I was out there
and there were too many people aroundto get the whole story.
I felt so sad hearing it.
(41:34):
I really felt for the puppy
and who would take care of itand make sure it had a good home.
I think they also worried they wouldn'tbe able to take care of the dog
in the right way
because they both had very demanding jobsand what if it needed too much?
But it sounds like a rough decisionand just heartbreaking.
And I asked her about Brandyand the guest bedroom and she said, yeah,
(41:57):
she doesn't even knowMelanie and Austin, but
she was my neighbor when I livedin this apartment during Med school.
She was beautiful and friendlyand just a great person in the dream.
She's there and happy to see me,but there is so many people there
that isn't room for me.
I don't want to make a big deal out of it,but I'm hurt.
(42:18):
I did drive a long wayand it would have been nice
if they had made sureto find space for me.
So I said to her,I think the Thai village is about the ties
to your parents and you had to feed them.
They were poor, meaningthey didn't have enough love
given to them by their parents,not enough food.
So you would have to do it
to take care of them,nourish them with your achievements.
(42:42):
Melanie and Austin are alsoyour parents who didn't want the puppy.
The puppy Is you there, baby?
It looks like you were wantedon the surface.
You were invited to stay.
But then there's no space for you.
No wonder you fell into bed last night.
You would be exhaustedfrom taking care of them.
The idea now would be to cut the tiesso that you can free yourself
(43:06):
from taking care of people
who didn't have space for you and moveinto finding those that do.
Of course, that may mean you worrythere won't be space here for you either.
So that's where we left it.
So this is importantbecause she gets to it.
There was no space for me.
(43:26):
There simply was no space.
Space would be the equivalent of love.
There was no loving placein the mother's mind
or in the father's mind for this babyto come really
have that kind of foundationsit in that learn to love herself, know
she's valuable, and then go outin the world and pick accordingly.
(43:48):
What did she do with that information,those feelings?
She came to them with you.
She cried and she cried a lot.
And then she denied it.
And then she felt it some more.
And she dreamed about it some more.
And she did what we call working through,which is you sort of, you know, two steps
forward, one step back,two steps forward, one step back
(44:09):
as you metabolize this new idea.
And this is not an easy idea.
And oftenthis comes up early in treatment.
And then if the patient doeswhat the patient does with it,
and it may stay as a small threadand then usually someone will get moved
aside a little there
some amnesia about this,and then it gets opened up again
and hopefully can get really taken upin a meaningful way.
(44:33):
But her mind is telling her very quickly,here was the situation.
There wasn't a place for you.
So you learn to protect yourself.
You're not going to get hurt.
Why would you keep giving your number out
if you already knowthere's no guest bedroom for you?
You're just going to get hurt again.
You're just going to get hurt.
It doesn't matter how much you feed them,how much you achieve,
(44:53):
how much you take care of everything,and it all look nice on the surface.
She was invited to these people's homeright in the dream.
And in reality, her parents got pregnant.
They invited her in, right?
They they didn't knowthey had no bedroom for her.
They didn't know that their feelingshad not allowed that to happen.
(45:15):
And that's a really important piecefor us.
We all have to understand thatall of our hurts, all of our traumas
get in the way of love getting through.
So either we don't get it or whateverwe have.
Maybe diminished and or block,we assume, I'm trying to be so loving.
I'm working all these hours, I'mtrying to do this for my family.
(45:36):
And that isn'twhat's the love part of that isn't coming?
Well, we think just having a baby is love.
Right? Of course I love you.
And I truly believe,you know, most mothers are not walking
around, not thinking,not wanting to love, not thinking.
They don't want to love this babyor not thinking that they have in
(45:58):
some way,you know, disconnected from love.
But they have and they just don't know it.
And this is why we want to talk aboutall of this and get this really clear.
And if you look around the world again,
as I've said many times,are we doing loving things?
But we're not intentionally, for the mostpart, being, let's say, bad ad.
(46:19):
I mean, we're not a woman who's carryinga child and is going to have this
baby is excited and knowing that
this is coming from a place of love.
There's no harm intended on the surfaceat all.
None at all.
And for the vast majority of people,they are,
(46:41):
of course, in a state of mind to saying,But I love this baby.
I wanted this baby.
Maybe I worked hard to get this baby or,you know,
I felt so lucky to have this baby.
And there are wonderful experiences.
And to those people,I would just say, look, generally fine.
Just keep loving as much as you can dothat.
Do that,keep doing that, lean into that. Right.
Dads or whomever, partners or whomeveryou know is involved.
(47:04):
Caretakers nurturethe person who is caring this baby
because the more love that personis feeling, the better off that Dyad is.
And we want these dyadsin really good shape.
We want that mommy baby couplein a really lovely,
juicy, abundant state of love.
(47:25):
But even there, we may find placeswhere people think
they are consciously being as lovingand thoughtful as they can be.
And yet,guess what? They too have an imprint.
They have ancestorswho did not get all the love they need.
And so often there still are placeswhere that love gets jammed up,
doesn't find its wayin, doesn't allow the mother to freely
(47:49):
give herself overto this wonderful feeling with the baby.
We work with what we've got. That's right.
So if it's going well, I would say, great,Whatever you're doing, keep doing it
right, amplify it, and people around youhopefully support you in that.
We need all of that.
You know, any of these policies
we have around the worldthat are not supportive of mothers.
(48:12):
Bad idea.
Really, really bad idea.
You don'tyou know, if you don't want to make sure
that mothershave all the housing and food and security
that they need to carry a babythe whole time without worrying
that their life is in some wayin jeopardy and insufficient.
And if you don't want to make sure that'sa really bad idea because you will get
(48:36):
an entire populace who has come throughwhatever that trauma is,
you know, And that's just the experiencein the immediate right.
You know, whateverher history is obviously plays in.
And then however, policiestreat that woman.
But if you don't
want to give her a voice at the table,if you do not want her to feel
(48:57):
you're going to have trouble,
and it's not just going to be troublefor the woman in the baby.
Remember, the woman gives birth to malesand females,
both partsof the next generation of people
who will grow up and turn aroundand take care of all of us.
So I think it behooves everybodyto really think about that and
recalibrate, take a better look and say,
(49:20):
Now what are we all doing hereas human beings?
What is our purpose here?
And is it to really make moneyor is it to learn to love each other?
I'm not saying I'm anti money,of course, fine, make money.
But I think if money is your goal,if power is your goal,
it will be a disaster and at some point itwill fail and it will fail in a big way.
(49:43):
Empires crash.
They crash.
So if we can get everybody to realize thatlove,
love is the place to be loveand going inside, understanding yourself
so you can find out where you're not opento love, where you didn't get it.
What you aredenying about your own history
(50:05):
and change that and then start to sell.
You know, Dr. Bail,you say, well, you had to be careful.
And a lot of people have spiritualpeople say this, which is,
look, you may be lucky in this lifetimeand life is pretty good.
And you may look at the person of a nurse.
She thank goodness I'mnot that person who doesn't have
whatever it is, X, Y, and Z,you know, or has to live a certain way.
(50:28):
But in the next lifetime, that may be you.
You may want to make sureif you've been given something good,
you try to give everybody
around youas much good as you can, as much love,
because we never know wherewe're going next.
Who are we going to be next?
And you better hope the other peoplehave tried to make it better for you.
(50:53):
And even if you don't gothat far down that path,
there's it's like ajust in case that would help. You
want us spread this love, You know, just
just in this onelittle existence on earth?
I think so, you know,And so you have to yourself,
(51:14):
am I being loving now,I'm not saying be a martyr.
I'm not saying you have to suffer.
I want to get that clearbecause a lot of people mistake
being loving with suffering. Right.
You just have to take everything.
And that's not the point of this.
And that brings me toI said there's two parts to your question.
Let me answer the second part.
Bail really felt thatthat original spark of love when you say,
(51:39):
but you you see it in a movie, even if younever got to see it in a movie.
right.
Or maybe you even see it like,that is I'm repelled by it almost,
because I've I've so never had this,but I know it is powerful.
It's a feeling. It's a feeling.
But he would say thatfeeling originated with God
and that in his mind, fundamentally,
(52:01):
we all carry a
perhaps very small or distant
in our mindsnow experience of being one with.
And this isn't about religion in his mind,this was about spirit, the Divine,
and this is about the Divinebeing the provider
(52:21):
of pure, abundant love.
And we were intended
to have that to exist with that.
But our trauma has been so heavily
piled on top of thatthat it's hard to find it.
Yes, I think he would say, look, we'veall come down to earth to learn lessons.
(52:44):
So you don't remember
that as much as perhapswe need to remember it or be tuned into it
and the traumas and the different things
we go through, challenges we go through
whatever our earthly curriculum is sothat we can learn and evolve,
so our souls can mature, learn things,and we may put ourselves.
(53:09):
That's how I say,who knows who you may be?
People may disagree with that.
But Bail said here in his mind,Here's how this is working.
So we are holding thisdistant memory of pure love.
And it was blissful and amazing,as you can read.
You know, it's like thatthat person lighting up it
(53:31):
when they see you, but,you know, magnify that.
So we've all got this kernel of that.
And so I think there is also a part of uswhen we are in our earthly relationships
where none of them
are going to be completely fulfillingbecause they cannot be divine.
So there is always a part of us,I think, sort of lament
taking the losswhen we are down here of that feeling.
(53:55):
I wonder if those little glimpsesare just a nudge, a reminder like, yes.
Did youdo you feel that that felt so good?
Don't you want more of that?
Let's go get it.
Everybody stop fighting with each other.
Stop doing horrible things to each other.
Stop having war.
Stop chasing money and power.
(54:17):
It's the wrong thing.
Go for love.
Go for love.
And when you listen to dreams the wayBail did,
the way those of us who do this workdo what?
Come to over and over and over and over
is the lack of love that people feel.
And so for Daphne,did she get to a place where she
(54:42):
could understand and feel that love?
Daphne is working on it.
It is an ongoing process.
But she knows. Itnow. She knows it, right?
And now she knows when she meetssomebody she's going to pay,
see what she feels first and then pay.
Really careful attention to her dreams.
What is this asking me to do?
(55:03):
Is this relationshipsupporting me in my highest good or not?
Do I have to cram myself into,you know, bend myself
into a pretzelto make this relationship work?
Am I willing to do that?Why would I be? Well. Well.
Hopefullyshe wouldn't be willing to do it.
Now, I will say, of course,sometimes that takes a long time
to work throughbecause you will fool yourself, you know?
(55:27):
But it seems like this.
Okay, well, then, see, you know, if youhave to experience this and see, go ahead.
But eventually, hopefully,you come out the other side and go, I yes.
Again, I got confusedand I was really choosing to stay
with some symbol of my mother and father.
Right.
And that's why that dream is so important,because it really says break the ties.
(55:51):
Scary. Incredibly scary.
But those have been making you suffer andyou have to get enough of a view of that.
You have to see all the waysin which you have suffered.
Calling this love,suffered, suffered, suffered, calling
this good, protecting your parents,obeying your imprint.
You have to see enoughof that to where you go,
(56:14):
okay, I get what I do.
Like she came in askingwhat's my part in this.
Well, here's
your lesson to learn and what a blessingthat you get to learn this because
then, yeah, you don't have to repeat itover and over and over.
And that'swhat the whole world needs to see,
is that we are goingthe wrong way when we chase
(56:35):
all of these external thingslike money and power.
You want to divide upcountries, move families,
split people up,make this one good, that one bad.
Take money from this one.Give it to that one.
That's all the wrong thingto be focused on.
Some sort of immediate satisfaction
that you think you're going to have,but you don't really get.
(56:59):
Yeah, it's all too separated from feeling
fundamentally loveand it is all too intellectual.
And I think that's where we've gotten offtrack and we got way too lost
and we have to find our way homeand that is through feeling.
And your dreams will take you there.
Well, thenwe're going to have to do more of this.
(57:20):
And we've just opened upseveral different topics
that I think really ought to be discussedmore about love and spirituality,
our connection to divine, how we find outabout these things through our dreams.
Okay.
Yeah, I'd love to. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, listeners and viewersfor joining us today.
(57:43):
It was great.
Let us know what you thought about it.
See you next time. Bye, Loren.
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