Category: Course information

How to work with your own dreams: Stay engaged with them

By Dr. Leslie EllisJuly 7, 2019

I’m feeling celebratory because yesterday I pressed ‘SEND’ on the very last step in writing my book on the clinical use of dreams. Happy and tired, like I’ve just given birth – which, in a way, I have. Now I want this long-term labour of love to be read widely, and to reach those it’s intended for. Hence, this blog, intended to help spread the word about the book, and to be a vehicle to continue sharing my expanding knowledge about how to work with dreams. I expect to be a student of dreams for a long time.

The question I was asked most often in the past year and a half, when I told people I was writing a book about dreams, is, will it help me interpret my own dreams? Can anyone read it, or is it just for professional therapists? Most seem to be wanting some dreamwork self-help, which got me thinking about what kinds of things might facilitate doing dreamwork on one’s own.

The first caveat is that I think it is always better to tell a dream to a partner or group because we can be amazingly obtuse about our own dreams. Dreams often refer to things we repress, and as we revisit them, the same biases are present in our attempt to make sense of our dreams. However, there are lots of situations where you might want to do some personal dreamwork: if you have no one else available, if you want to revisit a dream that is still reverberating with you, or if you have a backlog of dreams you can’t get to in your dream group or therapy session. Sometimes a dream just lingers, its striking images flashing through our minds during the day, and inviting some form of engagement with the dream.

Let the dream fill you up

There are many things that will open up the dream to you in spite of your inherent tendency to dismiss or overlook some key aspects of it. The first is to write it down in detail along with your impressions and associations to the dream. Then read the dream back and attempt to re-experience the dream, especially the emotion it brought with it. In sampling that emotion, perhaps ask yourself if this feeling is familiar or trying to tell you something, or maybe just linger in the feeling and don’t try to figure it out. If you let it fill you up, it will speak to you in some way that may not be predictable in advance. You can’t get the message by speculating about how you would feel if such a thing were to happen, but rather by having the experience in your bones, or your belly, or wherever it seems to live in your body.

You can draw a sketch of the dream. This also has the potential to quiet the analytic part of you that will prematurely try to decipher the dream as if it were a puzzle to be solved. Drawing a dream shifts you into the right hemisphere, the associative, experiential side of the brain that is better suited for dreamwork. As you draw, the image may speak to you more directly from the dream itself than from your written account, and surprise elements may creep into your drawing.

Both carrying the dream images and emotions with you, and making a drawing of the dream are ways to continue the engagement with your dream over time. The big, numinous, moving dreams we have are worthy of this level of engagement, and the process can shift and change, sometimes over a lifetime.

Nightmares are easily treatable, though too few seek help

By Dr. Leslie EllisJuly 6, 2019

Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective, and that the earlier nightmare disorder is treated the better. Current nightmare research was presented at an international dream conference held in a 900-year-old abbey in Kerkrade, The Netherlands. In this post, I will summarize the nightmare studies of greatest clinical relevance.

Michael Schredl conducted a four-year longitudinal study on nightmares and stress and found that nightmare frequency is generally stable from childhood onwards. He thinks nightmares may be due to emotional regulation issues rather than genetics. He said what increases nightmare frequency and distress is a rise in current anxiety and stress levels (vs. trait stress). Frequent nightmares in the past also predict frequent nightmares in the future. In terms of clinical implications, Schredl suggested that for those who suffer from frequent distressing nightmares, the earlier they seek treatment the better.

Too few seek treatment

Sadly, very few people seek help for their nightmares. Kateřina Surovcová conducted a qualitative study of the experiences of social dream sharing of nightmares. She noted that only one in 8 people seek help for their nightmares despite their detrimental effects. People are reluctant to share nightmares for fear of being seen as crazy, and because they don’t want to burden others with the darkness of their dreams. Yet talking about nightmares can bring a welcome sense of relief.

Another recent study, a randomized controlled trial by Carolin Schmid which compared two established imagery-based treatments, showed that all treatments are effective at reducing nightmare frequency and distress, even the control condition! For the many people who leave their nightmares untreated, it might help to know that virtually all treatment options are likely to be effective.

Just one treatment is effective

In the study, Schmid compared three different imagery-based methods. The first is imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) which asks the client to imagine a new ending to their distressing dream and then rehearse it. The second is exposure therapy, in which the client is repeatedly exposed to their nightmare imagery. The third, an active rather than waitlist control, guides clients to imagine a safe place. Interestingly, all three methods worked equally well, and all worked with just one treatment session. So, in treating nightmares, it really is true that any treatment is better than no treatment, and the resulting decrease in nightmare frequency and distress occurs after just one treatment.

Schredl noted that in nightmare studies and clinical treatment, the distress caused by the nightmare is the most important variable, and the frequency is of secondary importance. He said people’s attitudes toward their nightmares matters. This is another area where clinical intervention can be very helpful. I can offer a personal example from my practice, an approach useful to any therapist wondering how to approach a challenging nightmare.

Improving attitudes toward nightmares

The images in nightmares can be gruesome and upsetting. However it helps to suggest to those who experience such dreams that the images are not meant to be taken literally, and that they may even be refer to something dramatically positive. Popular dreamworker Jeremy Taylor saw dream images of death, for example, as indicating a major transformation such as the cessation of an addiction. A client of mine dreamt of dismembering a woman, and this image lost its disturbing quality once she considered the ways she felt profoundly divided in her own life and could see the image as an apt metaphor for this.

In my practice, I aim to encourage people who have nightmares to explore them with open curiosity, and in the course of experiential exploration, to befriend the dream images as much as possible. This shifts the dreamer’s attitude toward their nightmares, and as a result, they can often find them less distressing. This is one way to work with nightmares; what the research suggests is that almost anything works. So as a clinician, there is no need to shy away from dreamwork with clients who have nightmares, and in fact, good reasons to forge ahead.

If you are interested in learning more about nightmares and their treatment, sign up for my short, focused online course. Because I feel this material is important to disseminate, the course is always open, is self-paced, and currently discounted during the virus crisis. Please ask your clients if they have nightmares, and let them know they are treatable. CLICK HERE for a free PDF for clients: What You Can Do About Your Nightmares. Or check out our Short Focused Course on Nightmare Treatment using THIS LINK.

Dreams

Dreams: Mysteries solved and unresolved

By Dr. Leslie EllisJuly 3, 2019

Welcome to Demystifying Dreams! I will begin by stating that to resolve most questions about dreams is an impossible task. Although we understand more now than ever before, some key aspects of

dreams remain a subject of considerable debate. For example, there is no consensus on the purpose of dreaming, or even if they have a purpose, and a wide-ranging set of ideas about their source and what they might mean. Their ongoing mystery is part of what makes them so alluring.

What I can do is provide clear and concise information about what we do know about dreams with an aim to helping those who work with dreams professionally proceed with greater skill and confidence. This blog will also appeal to those who want to know more about dreams in general: how to remember them and what to make of them.

I started this blog because I have just written a book on the topic of how to understand and work with dreams. The book is primarily for therapists who want some clear and simple tools to help their clients constructively explore their dreams. However, since I aim to keep the writing concise and accessible, it will also be of interest to anyone with curiosity about dreams. I welcome and will address your questions and comments.

A sampling of future topics

How to recall your dreams. Often the first thing people say when I tell them I’m working on a book about dreams is that they don’t dream, or don’t remember their dreams. The fact is, everybody dreams about two hours every night. When deprived of dreaming, we will spend a greater amount of our sleep time dreaming until we make up for the lost dream time. Our bodies treats dreaming as essential. So it isn’t that you don’t dream, but rather, don’t recall your dreams. There are physiological reasons for this and ways to improve dream recall – I will explain these in an upcoming instalment.

Why we dream. This is a question that has no hard and fast answer, and likely there is more than one answer. There are a few plausible theories that have been increasingly supported by research. A popular notion is that dreams help consolidate memory, sifting through the elements of our daily experience, making associative links to the past and enabling us to retain what is important. Another well-supported idea is that dreams help regulate emotion, which could explain why most of us feel better in the morning than when we went to bed.

Why work with dreams? The main reason is that dreams can facilitate more efficient therapy by bringing the conversation right to the heart of matters that concern our clients most deeply. They open up challenging topics that clients find hard to bring up otherwise. They are unfiltered honest pictures of our client’s inner worlds, and once we understand a few simple things about the metaphorical language of dreaming, we can easily help our clients tap into this valuable resource that too often gets ignored. (For a fuller treatment of this topic, see the next blog entry.)

Dreams

Why work with dreams? They are a fast track to deep waters

By Dr. Leslie EllisJuly 3, 2019

Why should we work with dreams? For psychotherapists, dream work can deepen and accelerate the process of therapy. Many clinicians and clinical training programs reject dream work as too esoteric or antiquated for modern psychotherapy, but I believe the ability to work with client’s dreams is an essential aspect of a course of psychotherapy, and a critical part of any therapist’s skill set. Dreamwork is how the whole enterprise of psychotherapy began, and I can offer numerous reasons to bring psychotherapy back to its dream-centric roots.

I will begin with a personal example which demonstrates how dreams can facilitate more efficient therapy by bringing the conversation right to the heart of matters that concern us most deeply. This story will show how dreams can reach far back into our personal history and weave together experiences that have important features in common.

A matter of life and death

The subject of this clinical example is literally a matter of life and death. I was born two months’ premature, just three pounds and although survival rates for preemies have improved dramatically since the mid-60s, back then I was not expected to survive. While I have no explicit memories of those first precarious days, I know that at the time, there was no understanding of the physical holding and comfort every newborn needs to thrive. Instead, we were kept in pristine incubators and touched only as needed to meet our basic needs because germs were considered the biggest threat to survival. It was almost two months before I was deemed healthy enough to go home, so my start in life was marked by minimal physical contact and a deep sense of aloneness.

I had another near-death experience 17 years later. Feeling all the invincibility of an adolescent, I attempted to dive under a waterfall into a glacial mountain river. I got caught in a strong current that pulled me deep under the surface. Many years later, I had a vivid dream that blended images of both of these experiences. I was in a clear glass box that was caught in the whirlpool of a river, and when I reached out for help, no one was there. The dream brought intense feelings and sensations of that day on the river back to life and it put me in direct contact with a deep, familiar sense of aloneness. I was in therapy at the time with a Jungian analyst so naturally, I told him this dream. In that unforgettable session, we enacted the dream, and when I reached out for help, he took a firm grasp of my hand and met me there, reaching across the years and letting that newborn part of me feel his clear and solid contact. It was so unexpected it sent a shock wave through my body.

Working with the dream increases its impact

The work we did with that dream was probably the most profound of any therapy I have done. Yet if I had not had the dream, I think I might have stayed with more everyday subject matter. This dream took me into much deeper, more meaningful terrain and was a catalyst for change at an implicit level that is difficult to describe. Some impactful dreams bring about changes like this all by themselves, but sometimes, as in this case, the dream was the catalyst, but the change took place in the context of therapy. I would suggest that even if the dream itself is transformational, working with it in therapy provides a venue for integration of the insights and concrete realization of the changes the dream has the potential to engender. Dreams unfold in the telling, and can stay relevant and alive, and at various stages in our lives can reveal additional facets of meaning.

Clinicians who do not pay attention to their clients’ dreams are missing an opportunity to add a compelling dimension of depth, meaning and emotional authenticity to the therapy process. Other benefits of working with dreams in clinical practice include the fact that dreams are creative and engage clients in the therapy process. They point to our most salient emotional concerns. They bypass our internal editing process and normal defenses, and so are unflinchingly honest representations of our life situation. Dreams can bring a new and wider perspective on a situation that seems otherwise stuck. They provide diagnostic information and can be indicators of clinical progress. They help to regulate our emotions, and working directly with the feelings dreams engender may strengthen this positive effect. They can be a safe pathway to working with trauma. The ‘big’ dreams we occasionally experience can literally change our lives, and dream therapy can facilitate and integrate this transformation.

Much of what we know about how clinicians use dreams in their practice is captured in a meta-analysis conducted by Pesant and Zadra. The researchers found that while most therapists do work with dreams at least occasionally in their practice, the majority are not comfortable doing so because they feel they lack expertise or the necessary specialized training. In fact, it is most often the clients, not the therapists, who initiate dream work. The study also found evidence that dream work helps increase clients’ self-knowledge and insight, and increases their commitment to the therapy, which can be a predictor of good therapy outcomes.

Each of the benefits of dreamwork is discussed more fully in the book I have just written about the clinical use of dreams, and I will also address these benefits in future blog posts. However this post offers one of the most compelling reasons to do dreamwork with your client: because dreams allow your clients to take a deep dive into the things that matter most.

Dreams

Slippery fish: How to remember your dreams

By Dr. Leslie EllisJuly 3, 2019

When I tell people I work with and write about dreams, often the first thing they say is, “I don’t dream.” Or sometimes, more accurately, “I don’t remember my dreams.”

We all dream what is in essence a feature film worth of dreams every night, but the vast majority of these nocturnal movies are not merely forgotten, but not laid down in accessible memory in the first place. Dreams reside in implicit memory and most of them slip back into this unconscious realm before we have a chance to catch them. But there are some reliable ways to improve your dream recall.

Flamboyant dream expression

Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of your dreams are not finished? They tend to end right in the middle of something that is striking or scary enough to wake you up. I think this is why dreams tend generally to have such a flamboyant way of expressing themselves – it often takes something quite dramatic for a dream to break through to consciousness. Some dreams are so vivid and engaging, we wake up with their images still resonating in our minds and bodies.

Still, it takes a deliberate effort to recall even some of the most fascinating dreams. Many dreamers have the experience of a stunning dream that wakes them up. They think, “Wow, this is something I will not forget,” only to find that by morning all they remember was the experience of having a big dream but not the dream itself.

Lie still, linger with your dream

Our most vivid, emotionally-toned and complex dreams happen later in the sleep cycle, toward morning. I find that if you are able to wake up naturally and have some time to linger in the dream world before you leap out of bed and start your day, you have a better chance of catching hold of your dream before it slips away. If you lie very still when you first wake up, the dream is more likely to stay with you. And if you rehearse it in your mind a few times and then write it down before you get on with the business of your day, you will find that you have not only captured this dream, but others will come.

The more we pay attention to our dreams, the more they are likely to respond back to us. I have worked with psychotherapy clients’ dreams for about 20 years and found that even those who profess not to dream were able to recall dreams once I started asking about them and talking in depth about the dreams they did bring. At first people who don’t profess to dream much might capture only a snippet or two and not think much of it. But even little scraps of image can reveal themselves to be significant if they are inquired into with deep curiosity and respect.

Write them down right away

To sum up, to remember your dreams, begin by taking an interest in them and going to bed with the intention of recalling them. Keep a dream journal by your bedside. When you first wake up, don’t move, but linger in the space in between waking and dreaming and see if you can recall anything at all from the night, even images or fragments that seem tiny. Rehearse what you can recall in your mind a few times – dreams are like slippery fish wanting to escape back into the deep waters of our unconscious. Once you have the dream clear in your mind, write it down, ideally before you do anything else.

If you tell your dreams to someone else, work with them in a group, draw the images they bring you, reflect on them and enjoy them, more will come. You will start to see patterns and appreciate their startling creativity and complexity. They are like an honest friend who is not afraid to tell you the truth, even if it’s painful. They can become your great ally.