The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (39 page)

BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
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Page 194
Howard shared this dream with his parents at breakfast the next morning. Interestingly enough, his mother told him that she had had a dream that same night in which she was giving a speech at the school about both Howard and Susie leaving. (Further examples of such "mutual dreams" are discussed in chapters 10 and 12.) She told Howard how sad she felt about the family no longer being connected with the school, and encouraged him to talk about how it all felt to him. He reported how strange it felt to have Susie "pass away" after all those years together at the same school. He didn't think they were that close, but this dream alerted him to the impact of the loss and the importance of his relationship with his sister. The whole family then created a vision of being connected as they went through the separations that were rapidly occurring in their lives. This helped them all acknowledge their feelings and communicate more about the losses as they took place.
Once we leave home and embark on our adult lives, it is more difficult to maintain close contact with siblings. In the mobile society we live in today, brothers and sisters may live hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Even being in the same town can be a challenge in maintaining a close relationship as adults or in working out long-standing problems between you and your siblings. Living apart, however, can open up opportunities that may not have existed when you were living in close quarters and were likely locked into rigid family roles.
As an adult, you have a chance to negotiate a mature relationship with your brother or sister that circumvents your old patterns. Often one sibling (usually the older) has a caregiver or peacemaker role, while the younger takes an irresponsible, rebellious, helpless, or "victim" role. It is tempting to continue these roles even after leaving home, especially if you haven't learned any other way to behave. Fortunately, it is possible to
 
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change unwanted patterns of behavior, and your dreams and visions can open up new options for doing so.
Throughout her life, Shirley had taken a caregiver role with her younger sister Karen. Now, in middle age with her own children, Shirley wanted to create a different kind of relationship with her sister, one that allowed them to have a friendship as equals. Hard as she tried, though, she couldn't seem to break out of the old patterns. She became more and more frustrated until she worked on the following dream.
Help Me!
I'm at a meeting in a hotel, sharing a room with Karen and some man. I try on his clothes, including a brown suit. Suddenly I realize that we haven't checked out yet, and that our plane reservations home haven't been confirmed. I get nervous. I go to the registration desk, but there's a long line. I feel more upset and angry. I notice that it's now 1:30, and that the plane is scheduled to leave at 2:30. I call Karen on the house phone and say, "Help me!" She says, "I'm too busy." I yell at her. She gets mad at me. I feel bad and apologize to her. I wonder what to do. I feel guilty and wrong.
Shirley had this dream a week before her sister was scheduled to come visit her and her family for several days. Her strong feelings in the dream were a clue that there was something important there to work on. A group of friends on a weekend retreat helped her make sense of it. Shirley came to see that she had always felt responsible for making sure Karen had a good time and was happy, just as her father (in the brown suit) had done while he was alive. She had "tried on" this role, used it for a long time, and now it didn't fit her anymore. However, she hadn't "checked out" of the old family structure (the hotel) that kept her and her sister trapped. She wanted to
 
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be in a relationship with Karen where she could ask her for help rather than taking care of her, but when she did ("Help me!") and her sister got angry, she felt guilty and gave up.
Shirley's friends helped her act out the dream through role-playing. One played the role of her sister and encouraged Shirley to express her feelings directly. In doing so, Shirley realized how angry she was at Karen and how much she wanted to change the destructive patterns in their relationship. In switching roles and playing her sister, Shirley could understand how painful it was for Karen, too, to have conflict between them. She could also own the Karen part of her that wanted to be taken care of. This helped her to stop complaining and blaming Karen for the problem, and to start focusing on solutions. "I'm done being the caregiver," Shirley said, "and I want to build a new kind of relationship as equals." She created' a vision of them having a wonderful visit together the next week, with Karen being responsible for herself and having a great time. Sure enough, this is exactly what happened. When they started to fall back into the old patterns of relating, Shirley remembered her dreamwork and allowed Karen to solve her own problems. Karen left saying, "This is the best vacation I've ever had!''
Once you have worked on a dream and made some changes based on what you learned, your dreams will often automatically come up to reinforce those gains. This is the power of your unconscious and conscious mind working together in support of the goals in your waking life. This happened to Shirley two weeks after her sister's visit, as reflected in the following dream.
Excess Baggage
I'm with Karen in a leather repair shop. I tell her to leave her suitcase there with the repairman to be fixed, so that it will be ready when she leaves the next day. She thinks about it,
BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
5.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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