When Two (Or More ) Heads Are Better than One: Dreamwork With Others

Doing dreamwork by yourself on your own dreams can be like trying to see the back of your own head without two mirrors.

  Linda Schiller

Welcome dreamers,

If this post  seems a surprise in the series on nightmares, that may be both true and not true.  I had initially planned the next post on the big nightmares  that often have a source in trauma.  However, some challenging life circumstances got in the way of this intention, and I was happy to find that I had stored this post for a time when I needed one and didn’t have the time to write from scratch. In truth, it is perfect timing for a conversation about dream sharing with others.  When we work with our most challenging dreams having a guide, a companion, or a group is an invaluable aide to help us stay grounded and centered as we  journey through the dark nights of the soul.  So here we are:

Dreams usually arrive in our consciousness as conundrums.  We usually have to spend time hanging out with the dream material to unravel it’s coded messages.  As we get more skilled in attending to our dreams, we can get pretty good at it, especially if we can catch our own puns and plays on words.  Problem is, most dreams come to us fairly encrypted.  Just as we can often see some one else’s issues or truth more clearly than our own (who among us can’t identify (ahem…) just what our spouse, child, parent, etc. should do to be a better person!).  We often hit the same blind spot when we  attempt to decode our own dreams as we do when we try to see our own “issues” clearly.  Our dreaming self offers up it’s mystery into our conscious minds,  but  if we want more than it’s initial offering,  we may need to enlist the help of others:  from those who can see more clearly the backs of our heads and into our blind spots.  (FYI, even Freud and Jung rarely considered their owns dreams completely analyzed if they worked on them alone.)

The flip side of this coin, as we discussed in a previous blog, is that only the dreamer can truly know the resonant meaning of his or her own dream.  This is because only the dreamer has the first person access to their dream, and only the dreamer can say how it relates to their own life.  Richard Russo quotes Jung as saying “…to truly understand (another’s) dream, we would have to know everything about the dreamers life- something only the dreamer is capable of.”

Jeremy Taylor, based on the work of Montague Ullman, designed what I call the “Code of Respect” for dreamwork with others:  When we offer an idea about the meaning of a dream, we preface it with “If this were my dream…”  “If this were my dream, I would wonder about the horse in the corner of the field.”…  “If this were my dream, I would want to know the significance of that bright red color in her dress.” … “If this were my dream, I would wonder if that child in your dream was a younger part of yourself; it reminds me of what you said about your life when your parents got divorced when you were six”.  You can be as specific or general as your insight takes you, but if you preface it with this phrase, then you are offering the option of your opinion to the dreamer, but not insisting that your explanation is correct.  We can also receive our own insights from working  on some one else’s dreams.   What might catch my attention in your dream is something that has significance for me- whether or not it does for you.  Thus, we get do a bit of our own dreamwork with other people’s dreams- what a nice benefit for sharing dreamwork.  So, if you are working on another’s dream with them, pay attention  to own your own projections!

The ultimate is dream sharing is being with a group- a dream circle.  I have been in a personal circle of my own for almost 30 years.  We know each other pretty well at this point, and on occasion don’t even get to the dreamwork if we have a lot to catch up on, but we have held the frame of dreaming together as bond and a structure to our monthly meetings.  We’ve dreamed each other through births, marriages, illnesses, deaths, career changes, surgeries, milestone birthdays and now into the empty nest phase for some of us (not me yet though! – mine is the youngest of the group’s  children at 15.)

I have also facilitated dream groups for over 25 years.  Again, the bonds formed in the circle often extend out of the circle as well.  If you chose to form a dream circle, be clear about whether some one is in charge, or you have a rotating leadership, or a “self help” model with no one in a leadership role. Set up a format and a structure that works for you, and then stick with it.  So many groups without formal leadership devolve into “just chatting”, and then loose momentum and die out.  As a group worker with training in group dynamics and group process, I know that these are some the biggest reasons for group failure: lack of a clear purpose, lack of clear goals, and lack of clear structure.

Choose your fellow dreamers as carefully as possible; it doesn’t have to be people you already know, but since dreamwork is such an intimate sharing, you do want to be able to trust the members to keep confidentiality and treat each other respectfully.  One option is, that you can choose whether or not to share your “aha” with the group– it is always fine to say “oh’ I’ve got it”, without divulging the details if it feels too personal to share.  When I teach large classes in dreamwork, I always give people this option.  This creates more of a sense of safety to go as deep as you want, and still have choice and control over what you disclose.

Dream well, may your dreams bring you home.

Linda Yael