The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (2 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
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Page v
To our wonderful children, Daniel and Sarah,
and the future of their relationships
 
Page vii
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the many people who have been so helpful and supportive in the preparation of this book and the exploration of the dreams contained in it. Special thanks to our colleague, friend, and adviser, Amy Lemley, whose support and clear thinking saved us on many occasions. Thanks also to our wonderful children, Daniel and Sarah, our living dreams, for their generous gifts of dreams and energy.
Thanks are due to our many friends who generously provided material from their sleeping and waking dreams used in this book. They include Russell and Linda Childs, Karen and Lily Collins, Myrna and Dick Corson, Sharon Davie, Linda Gonder-Frederick and Jeff Frederick, Jane Heblich, Vialla and Hugo Mendez, Karen and Howard Pape, Raven Ruffner, and Grace and Burt Zisk. Thanks also to Elizabeth Zintel, who shared her visions and dreams with us before her untimely passing last year.
We are indebted to those who helped us with the development of ideas in this book, including Ronald Fineman, Kathryn Korbon, E. Ann Hollier, Brooke Jones, and all the contributors to
Dream On
, our friends in Couples Coaching, and those hundreds of people with whom it has been our privilege to work over the past twenty years. Fond appreciation is also given to Janice Koch-Libbin and Michael Sheras for their constant support with the variety of things needed to complete this book.
We are also grateful to each other; our relationship was the fuel for this work. We acknowledge our love and need for one another and the abiding commitment we share to our couple and our family.
 
Page ix
Contents
Preface
xi
Chapter One
The Wake-up Call
1
Chapter Two
There's More Than One Way to Dream
17
Chapter Three
Learning the Three Rs of Dreamwork: Recalling, Recording, and Reviewing Your Dreams
35
Chapter Four
Couples and Dreaming: Creating a "Dream Couple"
61
Chapter Five
Commitment: Creating Couple Visions Through Dreamwork
79
Chapter Six
Cooperation: Developing Teamwork Through Dreaamwork
105
Chapter Seven
Communication: Using Dreams to Enhance Couple Sharing
131
 
Page x
Chapter Eight
Community: Sharing Your Couple
159
Chapter Nine
Family Dreamwork: Parents and Siblings
175
Chapter Ten
Family Dreamwork: Children
201
Chapter Eleven
Expanding the Horizons of Dreamwork
233
Chapter Twelve
Waking Up to a New Future Together
261
Bibliography
277
Index
279
 
Page xi
Preface
We have always been fascinated by the mystery, intensity, and complexity of both dreams and relationships. Our dreams brought us together (we became acquainted at a dream seminar) and keep us together (we regularly share our dreams and create visions). The larger community of our family and friends is an integral part of our dreamworldboth in sleep and in waking time. Without them, neither this book nor our relationship would have manifested itself so powerfully. No couple or book is created in a vacuum or outside of a context; it takes commitment and support from many people. It is those people who helped us express the vision we created while writing
The Dream Sharing Sourcebook
. Together we spoke our joint proclamation, "We are the source of infinite support, power, and creativity." Friends, family, editors, coaches, and clients all played a part in making the words a reality.
We are grateful to all those who contributed their dreams and visions to this book. They represent the essential parts of us all as they are expressed in our dreams and in the universal unconscious. Some of these individuals are listed in the Acknowledgments. Throughout the text, their names and those of others mentioned in their dreams have been changed to protect their privacy.
We feel privileged to be able to share our experiences with you, the reader. We hope that this book will prove as useful for you to read as it has been enlightening for us to write. To author a book about being a couple, as a couple, has given us
 
Page xii
untold opportunities to live our own ideas. As of this writing, we remain together, happily sharing our dreams and our lives. For us, our life continues to be a dream, a vision of how we can all live and love in a way that makes the world a better place while allowing us to fulfill our greatest dreams. Pleasant dreams!
PHYLLIS AND PETER
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
 
Page 1
Chapter One
The Wake-Up Call
What if you had a friend who was completely honest with you and told you things about yourself that even you couldn't see? What if this friend could help you work out difficulties in your relationships with your life partner and others close to you, advising and supporting you on a daily basis. ''Sounds too good to be true!'' you might say.
The fact is, you already have such an adviser. This personal friend is in your dreams, there to speak with you whenever you are prepared to listen, ready to give you insight and help you work through problems. This idea may sound strange, yet we have found this approach to be an invaluable resource for relationships. Consider the following personal example:
Just after waking, Peter lies in bed recalling the images from a dream he just had. He looks over and sees that Phyllis is awake. "Would you like to hear my dream?" he asks. She nods and listens.
 
Page 2
The Wake-up Call
I am expecting a wake-up call. I stay right by the phone so that the call won't wake you up. I go over to the stove for a minute and hear the phone ringing. I run over to get it, but you have already picked it up. I feel guilty.
After hearing his dream, Phyllis then asks, "Do you often feel guilty about waking me up?" "Not just about waking you up," Peter says. ''I feel guilty a lot of the time. It worries me that I can't always take care of you the way I would like."
This dream of Peter's is one of many we have shared that demonstrate to us the power of using dreams in dealing with our couple. It led to an intimate discussion about some basic everyday concerns in our marriage and opened the door for us to continue communicating about them. It turned out to be, in fact, a "wake-up call" for both of usfor Peter to talk about his feelings more openly, and for Phyllis to acknowledge him for the many times he went out of his way to show her special consideration. Without his sharing this dream, we may not have recognized the need to work on an important issue for us. These kinds of concerns are common among all couples, though they may not be expressed.
Making relationships work has been an issue for men and women throughout history. The twentieth century has brought us through the traditional family, the feminist revolution, and the men's movement. Now, on the threshold of the next millennium, we have an opportunity to integrate these elements in a way that creates a new kind of couple relationship, something greater than the sum of all its parts. Designing this kind of expanded partnership may well be the task of the next generation, just as developing inner personal awareness seemed to be for the present one. Finding ways to develop and maintain

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