Month: February 2020

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Working With Your Dream: How to journal associations

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This is a sample of one of the written prompts for the course, a free offering to give you a sense of how to use journaling to explore associations to your dream. The course will go beyond this to include both written and live group discussion, video presentations, responses to questions and more. It’s not too late to join us! You can still sign up here.

 

Module One: Journaling to explore associations to dream elements

Welcome to the beginning of a deeper exploration into the world of your own dreams… online and in the company of others. I am so glad you have chosen to join me in this grand experiment! And because you have come this far, it’s safe to assume you are curious about your dreams and aware of their tremendous value for self-exploration and growth.

Above all, I want you to enjoy this journey, and come away with many practical ways to engage with your own dreams. So I will offer prompts, personal examples, coaching and a venue to share the feedback and experiences of your fellow travellers as we experiment with the best ways to unlock the tremendous potential inherent in our dreams. I will introduce one new practice each month so that you have the time to explore it at your leisure, try it with several dreams, ask questions and develop a feel for it.

 

Journaling associations

Seeking associations to dream elements was introduced by Freud as a way to tease out the so-called latent or hidden meaning behind the dream. Modern dreamworkers do not believe that the dream is trying to hide its message in some kind of code. Rather, the strangeness of dream language comes from the quality of dreaming consciousness, which draws more from the image and emotional processing centres of our brain than from our logical, rational mind.

This brings me to an important point. Because dreams do not come from the part of our brain that processes in a logical, sequential fashion, it means that we need not seek to understand our dreams from this perspective. Let go of the need to make logical sense of your dream, and instead treat it as an experience, a work of art, a metaphor, a message from another realm… this frees you up to simply play with the images, and allow them to infuse you with the complex feelings they carry.

 

Frog dream, an example

I will offer you an example of the process from my own dream life. I would suggest you start with a simple dream, and see where the journaling leads. Try to remain open-minded and curious, exploring what arises from your dream images with no particular goal in mind. This opens up your right-hemisphere functioning, the non-logical side of your brain that is most aligned with dreamwork. Here is my dream text:

I dreamt about a sleek, very large brown frog that I had picked up out of a square container. There were other elements to the dream, but I have forgotten them. It seemed very important to hold on to the frog, despite some other tasks distracting me. I was considering making it a pet. It was huge for a frog, and instead of reptilian skin, it had a silky brown coat, very short hair, gorgeous brown colour. It was warm and alive and seemed fine with being held.

 

My Associations

In the introduction to this course, I wrote about a stunning dream of swimming in a pool of frogs when I was pregnant with my daughter Grace, now 20

I just took a day trip with Grace to Idylwild and bought a big brass frog, with a plan to acquire similar objects for a sand tray collection

The frog’s short-haired coat reminds me of my dog Savannah

The frog itself is more pet-like and cuddly than a typical frog, more a dog-frog

I think of frogs as powerful healing symbols, but also warnings because when an ecosystem is in trouble, frogs begin to disappear

 

I could go further, but want to stop here and notice that I am already beginning to get some sense of this dream frog, which at first seemed like a complete mystery. Its qualities are becoming fleshed out, and it seems connected with my daughter, affection, health… and it may also be a kind of a warning.

 

A word about dream dictionaries…

At this point, you might be tempted to consult a dream dictionary that explains what your dream image means. I am not a fan of this approach, except possibly to augment and amplify your associations after you have explored them thoroughly. If you are still mystified by a dream image once you’ve worked with your own associations, then a symbol dictionary may bring up additional ideas that resonate. But if you go to a dictionary first, the book’s idea may stick and prevent you from seeing the uniquely personal relationships you have with the image.

That said, if you want the help of a dictionary, I recommend An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper (Thames and Hudson, 1978). It offers interpretations of symbols from various spiritual traditions. If I look up frog, it says this: Lunar and a rain-bringer; fertility, fecundity, eroticism… and the text goes on to offer short descriptions of what the frog means in Celtic, Chinese, Christian, Egyptian, Graeco-Roman and Hindu traditions. All seem to point to the frog as abundant and fertile… and in the Egyptian tradition, frog is protector of mothers and the newborn, so it is a lovely image to dream of when pregnant.

 

Staying close to the image

The trouble with dream dictionaries and even taking the associative process too far, is that it takes you away from the immediacy of the image itself. So when you play with associations, always refer back to your dream. In this case, I need to make sure I don’t lose touch with my silky brown dream frog as I explore more generic ideas about frogs.

Another way to explore associations is to get an embodied sense of the image itself, and see what comes up from the inside about it. When I do that, I am reminded of the sense in my dream that it’s important to carry this frog with me, not to put it down. I can feel the weight of it in my hand. It makes it awkward to do the other tasks that are calling to me in the dream, but the sense of deep importance of the frog comes through loud and clear. One thing I have taken from this process already, is the need to stay connected to my daughter even more. She is away at university, at times extremely stressed, and in general, just feels too far away. So after writing this, I plan to reach out to her.

I could go further, but I don’t want to burden you with too much to read. I hope this gives you a sense of how to begin. Each module has a space for your comments and questions, and I hope you will all be moved to share something of your own experience as we go: what came of the process, what works for you, what doesn’t, and where you have questions. Above all, enjoy!

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Do your dreams both fascinate and mystify you? We have answers!

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Dreams are invaluable allies in our relationship with ourselves, but for most people, they seem like a nonsensical mystery, or they are barely ever recalled. How do we remember and make sense of them? I have some answers for you…

When I wrote my first book, A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge, 2019), I spent more than a year researching ways to help therapists guide clients to use their dreams as a pathway towards an enriched, authentic life, and toward greater freedom from mental health issues. Now I plan to make this information accessible to everyone, whether you work clinically with dreams or not. So many of you have asked me for ways to personally work with your dreams that I am now working on a course and a book on this fun and fascinating topic. And I’m hoping you can help me by joining my pilot course.

 

Free video series answers the most common questions about dreams

When I talk about my work and writing about dreams, the first thing people tend to ask is how to remember their dreams. I have the answer for you here as Part 1 of a 3-part free video series. Part 2 explains why it is so important to pay attention to dreams: they can even save your life! And Part 3 offers three dreamwork practices you can use right away to deepen your experience and understanding of your own dreams.

The second question people tend to ask me about my clinical dream book is, can I use the information as a guide to understanding my own dreams? Is it written so anyone can understand it? The answer is yes, although is written mainly for clinicians, it is written in a user-friendly that is accessible to all.

 

Overcoming the challenges of working with your own dreams

But also no, it’s not the best guide to dreamwork for yourself. This is because there are special considerations when you are working on your own dreams. It’s just much easier to spot the foibles of others than it is to clearly see the blind spots in ourselves. So we tend to transfer this bias onto our own work with dreams. However, there are many ways to compensate for this and develop a deep connection with yourself via your dreams, and I will be teaching you all about these, and other ways to overcome potential challenges of personal dreamwork.

From March 2020 onward, I will be offering an ongoing program in dreamwork for yourself that will culminate in the publication of my next book. Each month, we will learn about and try out a new self-dreamwork practice and discuss our experiences as a cohort. We will talk about what was amazing, and what fell flat. We will brainstorm ideas about how to glean the most from our dreams, and share our breakthroughs.

This is a pilot course that will ultimately be offered more widely. The first cohort will be limited in size, and you will receive a discount in return for your feedback, active participation and willingness to act as part of a focus group of sorts on the topic of personal dreamwork. So it will be more interactive and hands-on, with more instructor involvement than future versions. With your permission, I may include some of your thoughts and dreams in the book itself! And of course if you want your dreams to remain private, I will completely respect that.

 

Check out the free video series

For a taste of my teaching, and more on the topic of working with your own dreams, enjoy this series of short videos. If you have already decided you want to join me for the course, you can get more detailed information and register here. Space will be limited, and this discounted rate ($297) and higher level of interaction will only be offered this one time as we co-create the course and enjoy discovering the most effective self-dreamwork practices together!

Sweet dreams, Leslie

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Come home to yourself via your dreams

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Is your inner life getting lost in the fray? Are you feeling overwhelmed with information, tasks and all the shiny objects that bombard us from the online world? Yes, this is another invitation, but one with a difference. This is an invitation to slow down and look inward, an opportunity to come home to yourself through your dreams.

If you have ever been utterly transported by a dream, immersed in a startlingly-real other world that has set your mood and train of thought on an entirely different path than is usual, then you know the power of dreams to evoke transformation. Most people I talk to about dreams are curious about them, fascinated even. You can sense they are pregnant with deeper meaning, but often frustrated that you cannot penetrate their mysterious nature.

Maybe you don’t dream very much, at least not as much as you used to. You may wake with a sense of having dreamt something profound – having solved the world’s problems (or your own) in your sleep — only to have this remarkable insight slip away the moment you open your eyes. Or you could be someone who recalls your dreams vividly, but then remains mystified by them.

 

Letting a big dream pass by without reflection is a huge missed opportunity

All the dreams that pass by without you actively engaging with them are missed opportunities to tend your inner life and reconnect with your depths. Dreams are the most direct, creative and personalized path to connecting with what is most important and meaningful to you. Unlike other forms of inner work like meditation and mindfulness, dreams are speaking directly to you. They’ve been called the ‘poor (wo)man’s therapist’ because they help us process our most salient emotions and memories night after night. But they are even more helpful if we know how to tend and work with them.

Would you like to be able to recall, record and work with your own dreams? Would you like a clearer understanding of their nature, and why they are so important? Or are you already working with some of your dreams via a dream group or therapist, but want a reliable way to entertain the dreams you don’t get a chance to discuss?

 

Your questions answered in a free short video series

If you said yes to any of the questions above, I have some immediate answers for you. In three 10-minute instalments, I tell you:

  1. How to recall more dreams
  2. Why dreams are so important
  3. Three simple practices aimed at making sense of and deepening your connection to your own dreams.

If you like what you see, you may want to join me in my 6-month online course on how to work with your own dreams. If you are intrigued, but not sure, check out the videos to get a sense of my teaching style and the material we will cover. And read on as I explain more.

 

A leaisurely, guided inward journey in the company of others

This is not a typical online course, but more of a guided inward journey in the company of other dreamers. The pace will be leisurely, allowing time for you to gather dreams, to spend time with the practices offered, and to reflect on them with other like-minded dreamers. The course, starting in early March, will be uniquely collaborative because it is the first time I’m offering it. In return for your feedback and active participation, I am offering a discounted rate.

The initial cohort will be a kind of focus group for the book I am writing on the topic of personal dreamwork. The class is also the first step in a comprehensive dreamwork certification program, so you can continue to deepen your dreamwork practice beyond this course if you want to.

 

How did I come to value dreams so much?

I have always been a bit of a dreamer, both day and night. As a kid, one of my favorite activities when I came home from school was to sit backwards on the couch and stare at the huge maple in our front yard. I would lose time as I drifted into the world of my imagination. People could shout in my ear and I wouldn’t hear.

Fast-forward many years to my 20-year career as a psychotherapist. As part of my training, I worked with a Jungian analyst, and as we opened up my inner life, I began to dream prolifically. When I was pregnant with my beautiful daughter Grace, I dreamt of being immersed in a forested pool of frogs. As her birth approached, I began to dream about my own very premature birth, not an easy one, and in fact, I was lucky to survive. My dreams helped me access and process this dramatic and triumphant start in life, weaving images of myself in an incubator with another near-death experience in a frothy river. (See my TED-style talk on nightmares for more of the story.)

In my work with clients, with dream groups and in the many classes I have taught, I have consistently found dreams to offer healing images, ways forward where none seems possible, and strikingly apt and densely-packed vignettes that are perfect for the person who dreamt them. Consistently, dreams bring just what is needed in the moment.

But almost all of us need help unpacking the treasures in our dreams. I have written a book for therapists on how to do this for clients. Now I am writing a book and a course for everyone interested in their dreams, and how you can begin working with them on your own. You don’t have to be a therapist, all are welcome.

 

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Four Reasons to Work with Dreams… and at the risk of being dramatic, they can even save lives!

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By Dr. Leslie Ellis

The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of my recent book which outlines 4 excellent reasons to work with dreams. This list is aimed at psychotherapists, but holds true for all dreamers! So, why work with dreams?

They point to our most salient emotional concerns

It may seem that we don’t need dreams to do this, but that we are always well aware of our most pressing emotional concerns. However, human consciousness is not always straightforward or consistent, and people can be very good at unwittingly deceiving themselves. In fact, one of the most popular forms of therapy (cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT) was founded on the premise that our mind leads us astray and distorts our experience in a number of ways. One example is rationalization, a habit of talking ourselves out of our feelings using ‘rational’ arguments, such as, “I’m not sad that she left; I didn’t really love her anyway.” We can often fool our conscious mind, but such a person may dream of losing something of great value and wake up crying. If they pay attention to their dream, they will realize that they are in fact very sad about the loss of their relationship. Dreams are like that very good friend who is willing to be honest with us even when what they have to say is not easy to hear.

Dreams can also provide therapy clients with a way to introduce important yet deeply personal topics in the course of therapy, subjects they may want to bring up but are reluctant to do so due to fear, embarrassment or cultural norms that discourage personal revelation, even in therapy. A researcher (Goelitz, 2007), who works with clients preparing for death, found that dream work brought the focus of the session to the deeper emotional concerns rather than the more typical discussions about physical symptoms and treatment. She noted that the dream work helped her clients feel less alone and better prepared for death. She was convinced that these discussions would not have taken place had they not been facilitated by a dream.

Dreams bypass our defenses and speak the truth

Dreams tell the truth, even when such truth is uncomfortable and defended against in everyday awareness. During sleep our prefrontal cortices, responsible for, among other things, rational thought and executive functioning, mostly shut down for the night. During dreaming, our internal editor, and our moral authority also go to sleep. That’s why our dreams can sometimes be bizarre and why normally taboo subject matter such as explicit sexuality and violence can often appear in our dreams. At times, it seems as though our dreaming consciousness is trying to get our attention by delivering its content in the most flamboyant or dramatic way possible. It helps to know that dreams are often metaphorical, not meant to be taken literally. For example, I had a dream that I was eating horseshit and kind of enjoying it even though I was well aware of how disgusting this would seem to the people around me. I laughed to myself when I understood the dream’s message might have to do with a lecture I had listened to a few days’ prior that I found highly entertaining and yet filled with ideas I considered completely far-fetched.  Because I liked the person, I was trying to remain open to their ideas, trying to take in and digest the material, but having trouble doing so. The dream captured the complexity of my feeling about the situation with economy and humour.

There is considerable clinical evidence to suggest that dreams carry emotional truth that is often difficult for the dreamer to assimilate. One of the major benefits I have seen in working with dreams is that it can help clients to see and truly experience an unconscious aspect of their personality or behaviour that is not congruent with how they see themselves or want to be. For example, a client I will call Michael had a dream that he was walking on a beach and came across a group of people sitting in a circle, and his cousin was there with them smoking a crack pipe. Michael had a strong judgement about this, as smoking crack was something he would never do. But if, as some theories suggest, characters in a dream represent aspects of ourselves, then Michael was like his dream-cousin in some way. In the dream-work he did, I asked him to ‘be’ his cousin on the beach, and when he imagined this, he felt an attraction to the pipe, and then a dawning of awareness that this feeling of addiction was familiar to him as it coloured the dynamic of his relationships with the women in his life. He was flooded with shame and a heartfelt desire to change which fueled transformation in his relationship and many other aspects of his life.

 

Dreams can bring a new and wider perspective on a situation that is stuck

History provides many good examples of how a dream can bring a creative new perspective. The person who invented and patented the first lock-stitch sewing machine solved the main challenges to developing a reliable machine because a dream pointed to the solution that had long eluded him. Elias Howe, who eventually became the second-wealthiest man in the U.S., came up with the novel idea of putting the hole in the ‘wrong’ end of the needle from a dream of a spear fight between warring native tribes. In the dream, some of the warriors’ spears punctured the fabric of the tents, snagged loops of thread and pulled them back through with the tips of their spears. Dreams are the sources of many great inventions, including the periodic table and Einstein’s theory of relativity. For someone who has studied a subject deeply but who has become stuck in a fixed way of looking at the problem, dreams can bring the fresh creative inspiration that was elusive. Sometimes ‘sleeping on it’ can bring unexpected and creative answers.

Dreams are embodied, and present us with an internally-generated world that is detailed and appears very real to all of our senses. This total immersion brings us in touch with the magical quality of dreaming. A dream is a richly-detailed world that is experienced as entirely real while the person is dreaming it. Even for those who experience lucid dreaming and become aware they are dreaming while in the midst of it, the experience feels very real. This aspect of dreams is what makes them so compelling, and such a useful tool in therapy for assisting clients in stepping out of their ordinary way of experiencing or seeing things. A dream can bring a broader perspective, a new way of seeing, a shift from ordinary consciousness, or habitual ideas, a step toward change.

 

Dreams provide diagnostic information and can show clinical progress

There are many ways that dreams can provide diagnostic information about clients, although the subject is a complex one because dreams can be cryptic. According to Oliver Sacks (1996) dreams are, “directly or distortedly, reflections of current states of body and mind.” Neurological disorders can alter dreaming processes in quite specific ways, and these can vary from person to person. Sacks gives the example of a patient with an occipital angioma who knew that if his dreams turned from their usual black and white to red, he was about to have a seizure. Some other examples Sacks offered are loss of visual imagery in dreams as a possible precursor to Alzheimer’s, and recovery dreams presaging remission from multiple sclerosis. Sacks hypothesized that the dreaming mind is more sensitive than the waking mind to subtle changes in the body, and so appears prescient because it picks up subtle early cues.

In some cases, this premonitory aspect of dreaming can even be life-saving. Famous dreamworker Jeremy Taylor offered the example of a woman from dream group that met regularly who dreamt of a purse of rotting meat. The dream was so disturbing to her and the other group members, the woman felt unsettled enough to have a diagnostic pap smear which turned out to be negative. She insisted on further testing which revealed she had a particularly aggressive form of uterine cancer that would have killed her had she not caught it in time. At the time of the dream she had no symptoms and was about to go on a trip – she credits the dream and the dreamwork for saving her life.

Not only can dreams be indicative of potential health changes for better or worse, they can also be used to track clinical progress. Tracking shifts or progress via dreams can be an easier task for therapists than using a dream to make an initial diagnosis because it is often easier to spot incremental change in the pattern of dreaming than to decipher something completely new. It takes some time to get to know the unique world of each dreamer, and paying attention to a series of dreams will make it clearer when something significant has changed. For example, in my research into the nature and treatment of recurrent PTSD nightmares (Ellis, 2016), specific kinds of changes in dreams that had been recurring repeatedly, sometimes for years, appeared to coincide with trauma recovery. This observation is supported by research that sampled 94 trauma survivors and found the closer their nightmares were to replicating the actual trauma event, the higher their level of related distress. For trauma therapists who track dreams, the progression from concrete to less realistic, more imaginative dreaming can be seen as a sign of clinical progress.”

 

Dr. Leslie Ellis offers online courses in personal and clinical dreamwork, and is opening a dreamwork certification program in 2020. For more information see www.drleslieellis.com or join her email list  if you want to receive blog posts, and training opportunities.