Please or to access all these features

Mental health

Mumsnet hasn't checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you have medical concerns, please seek medical attention.

do you think you can act out something in a dream which makes you feel better?

2 replies

ThatVikRinA22 · 09/05/2012 23:00

that it can give some kind of "relief" in real life?

this is going to sound bizarre, i was tempted to put this in chat where i knew it would disappear but thought i might sound a little unhinged!

without going over old ground i had some very specific therapy for childhood trauma, and the therapist said that it "unlocks" the mind so that you are free to move those memories to where they belong, the therapy was called "rewind" therapy and takes the emotion out of the memory while still leaving the memory in tact. She said i may have vivid dreams following the therapy.

seems to have worked and ive been fine. Usually works within on session.
This morning i awoke to remember a very vivid but rather satisfying dream, in which i confronted my abuser, and i shouted and shouted, vented my fury, and i was really eloquent and i said all the things that i feel like i should have said if id ever had the chance. I remember very vividly shouting at him that he was an abuser. The reality is this will never happen because he is dead, so thats pretty final.

but it stayed with me and felt pretty bloody good to do, even in a dream. These are feelings and emotions i suppose i have never confronted, until the therapy. I suppose it brought all the anger i should feel to the fore, albeit subconsciously.

I dont remember feeling anger at all during the session, just extreme sadness (i could not speak for sobbing to begin with, as she asked me to remember an incident in order to hook the emotion with which to start the therapy) but this sadness diminished as the session progressed.

Do you think this is my brains way of processing what happened? to act out in a dream what i should have done? interested in peoples thoughts on this, or if this has ever happened to anyone else.

cheers

OP posts:
madmouse · 09/05/2012 23:04

I'm tempted to say does it matter? Hang on to the good feeling and the power you had in the dream.

Saying this as an abuse survivor whose abuser lives in a different country and whose abuse continued in a country that now says its too late to prosecute.

BertieBotts · 09/05/2012 23:19

In my experience, yes. When I was trapped in horrible EA relationship with XP, I had a series of dreams about my ex-before-him (will call him ex-bf) who I met up with and would just talk to, I can't even remember what was said, although I think he was encouraging about me leaving XP, but he was kind and although I felt sexually attracted to him we never had sex in the dreams, which would have been unlike him. (If I had met up with him in real life it's highly likely I would have cheated on XP).

In the dream we just used to meet, and talk, and maybe hug, and it reminded me of what it felt like to be safe and loved and cared for. I had a series of these dreams and I'm sure they brought me a lot of strength at a time when I felt very powerless. I used to wake up and miss him terribly, although I wonder now whether what I was missing was the sensation of being loved and safe.

After leaving I had just two more dreams about him where we met up but for some reason it wasn't quite the same, and we were supposed to (finally) have sex but then in the end I changed my mind, said goodbye to him and walked away - and I've never missed him at all since. Even when accidentally coming across pictures of him, I don't feel anything at all. It is bizarre.

I think that your brain can process/play things out which are too frightening or impossible to process in real life. Especially if perhaps you have worked something out via therapy and your brain doesn't have a concrete story to work these around - perhaps it's a way of making sense of things?

New posts on this thread. Refresh page