The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (28 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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person present tense, you can more fully experience the characteristics and feelings of that part of yourself. Fritz Perls, founder of the Gestalt theory of dreamwork, describes reliving the dream as an essential part of taking responsibility for creating it. You don't need to know anything about drama to act out the parts of your dream. Just let yourself get into it, and accept whatever comes. Perls advises, "Lose your mind, and come to your senses." There is no better way to get the message your dream characters or objects have for you than by stepping into their shoes and speaking their words.
Begin by visualizing your dream character or object, then take on the role and describe your basic characteristics and beliefs. Now create a dialogue: Ask it questions, then switch roles and provide the answers. You can also have your partner play interviewer as you act out various parts of the dream. Some possible questions are: "What do you want from me?" "Why are you coming up now?" ''What is your message for me?" "Is there something valuable I need from you, or do I need to get rid of you?" There is no proper script to follow. Just take it wherever it seems to go. If you come to a dead end, go on to another character or object in the dream. You will know when to stop when you get to some new insight or sense of closure, such as Rachel did in her "Bluebird'' dream. It may feel awkward at first, but keep trying, and you will find it becomes easier and more fun with practice. Invite your partner to try acting out his dream as he gets involved in the excitement of yours. Pretty soon you'll be putting on your own dream plays just for fun!
 
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Using Dream Language in Waking Life
Once you have learned to use dream language for dreamwork, you can apply it in your waking life as well. Doing so will enable you to take more responsibility for your behavior and thoughts, which will help improve your communication with your partner and others. Let's say you are late meeting your husband for a special event; you both end up missing it and get into an argument. Rather than blaming yourself or your partner, you can say to yourself, "I have me be the late part of me and argue with the husband part of me." Thinking about the events in this way allows you to take responsibility for your actions, which may open up a new awareness about your motivation or feelings behind being late. It may also reveal some of your attitudes about your husband or the "husband part of you" that you may not have been aware of before. You can then share these insights with your partner in much the same way you would discuss a dream. You may find that it is easier to talk about the situation in this way.
Managing Conflict Through Your Dreams
The first step in dealing with conflict is to acknowledge that it exists. Conflict in a relationship is not only inevitable, it is also necessary and even desirable. If ignored, stored-up negative feelings can threaten the quality, if not the survival, of your couple. Many people are afraid of conflict, however. You may be one of those who avoids facing problems in your relationship for fear of losing your partner, or of being hurt physically, economically, or emotionally. Yet you may also know the cost of "playing it safe"losing intimacy, honesty, joy, and satisfaction with your couple.
 
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Fortunately, there is another way approach to conflict when it arises in your relationship: Look at it as an opportunity to create new methods for meeting both of your needs and taking your couple to a higher level of functioning. That opportunity is readily available in the form of your dreams and visions. Ways of using them to manage conflict in your relationship are described in the following pages. You may be surprised to see how your dreams often reflect your perceptions of and feelings toward your partner more clearly and honestly than your waking interactions do.
Acknowledge the Conflict and Your Part in It
A relatively painless and productive way to acknowledge the presence of conflict in your relationship is to bring it up through sharing a dream in which the problem appears. This enables you to address the difficulties in a personal context, while at the same time keeping some initial distance from the anxiety that one or both of you may have regarding the topic at hand. Discussing the conflict through a dream also allows you to take responsibility for your own perceptions of the problem, as we described earlier in the section on dream language. By using dream language, you can discover how you put, or "project," your own characteristics onto your partner. Too often we blame the other person for the problem rather than owning our own part in it. Acknowledging the offending part of yourself in the dream makes it possible to communicate about solving it.
Janet found this way of proceeding particularly helpful in dealing with the issue of sexual dissatisfaction in her marriage. She found it easier to address the sensitive topic with her husband, Cesar, by sharing the following dream, even though it presented them as divorced.
 
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Divorced
I'm at a meeting with several couples. Cesar and I have just gotten divorced. He is theremarried to Marie. I notice how patient and relaxed he is with her. I see the positive part of his not being very passionate, that is, his calmness. I can't believe that he and I are not together. I'm very upset.
This dream allowed Janet to realize how upset she would be if she and her husband got divorced. Noticing this fact and sharing her feelings with Cesar through the story of her dream made it easier to bring up other topics such as their sexual life. When translating the dream into dream language, Janet said, "I saw that the divorced part of me related to what I really wanted to 'separate' fromnot Cesar, but my own dissatisfaction with our marriage. I was also able to own the 'not very passionate' part of myself that was contributing to the problem, rather than putting all the responsibility on my husband." Janet and Cesar then began to talk about how they could improve their sex life, which they had not been able to do before.
State Your Couple Vision
Once you have identified an area of conflict that you want to discuss with your partner, either through a dream or during your waking life, begin by stating your couple vision or proclamation to each other. No matter how upset you are, don't go any further until you have done this. Otherwise, you'll be starting from "behind the eight ball," that is, from a negative attitude about what's wrong with your relationship that will block your progress. If you start from the place of proclaiming that "We are soul mates," for example, you establish a much more solid foundation and commitment. This allows you to stay focused on your vision for your couple and not lose sight of what you value in it.
 
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You may have to stop and remind each other of your joint vision several times during your discussion. This is what one couple did while working on plans for a trip the wife was about to take. Sometimes the couple would have to take a break and then come back to it, each time starting with their couple proclamation of "We are soul mates." They reported that this kept things from getting ugly and allowed each of them to feel safe while discussing the issue, which they had been unable to do in the past.
Accept Negative Feelings
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of dealing with conflict is acknowledging negative feelings of anger, hostility, jealousy, or aggression. We may be concerned about our own level of control or our partner's reaction. Only by fully accepting and confronting these darker or "shadow" sides of ourselves can we learn to share and manage our feelings in a constructive way. These negative parts of ourselves are often difficult to admit to or recognize.
One way to get to the shadow side of yourself is through your dreams. According to the renowned dream theorist Carl Jung, this negative aspect of the self exists in every human being in some form or another; it often shows up as universal dream symbols or archetypes that he called "shadow figures." These figures may take the form of a thief, a murderer, or any threatening figure. Once you own this figure as part of yourself, you can take responsibility for it and get a message from it. In this way, you can get in touch with your shadow side through your private dreamwork. After you have confronted and accepted these feelings, you can discuss the problem area more openly and effectively with your partner. Brenda used the following dream to help her accomplish this with her partner.
 
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The Broken Record
Frieda and I are listening to music in the living room. I break one of her records and apologize profusely for doing it, but secretly I feel gleeful.
This dream alerted Brenda to her anger about Frieda's habit of explaining things over and over, like a "broken record." After seeing this and accepting her desire to get back at her, Brenda was able to talk it over with Frieda in a calm way. Once Frieda understood Brenda's dream, she agreed to work on changing this aspect of herself.
One of the hardest negative feelings to deal with in a close relationship is jealousy. You may feel jealous of a romantic interest or any person or thing that takes your partner's attention away from you: a job, hobby, children, or other commitments. It may be especially difficult to address this issue if you feel it is silly, unjustified, or unbecoming to be upset about it. One way to manage this is to address it through a dream, as Tina discovered in a dream about her husband, Mike.
His Song
Mike and Barbara go off somewhere to practice a song they are going to perform with Mike's guitar. I notice they've been gone for over three hours. I'm angry. I go ahead and fix dinner for the kids and myself and then clean up the dishes. I'm getting more and more angry. They finally come back, and I tell them how I feel.
Tina had this dream shortly after their second child was born. Mike had recently returned from a three-day business trip and visit to his mother. She had been unaware of how angry and jealous she was until she put those feelings together with the clue about the three-hour time period in the dream.

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