The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (9 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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to write down your whole dream. You can always transfer your notes to your regular dream journal later. It is best, however, to bring your dream journal with you when you travel, because different surroundings and more free time often trigger higher levels of dream recall.
Be sure to keep your notebook and a pen close at hand. Seeing the journal can be a cue in itself to remember to pay attention to your dreams before you get up or think about the day's plans. Use a pen rather than a pencil so that your writing doesn't smudge and the entry will last longer. Make sure your pen hasn't run out of ink; it's amazing how quickly your dream can disappear while you go look for something to write with. (To be safe, you may want to keep an extra pen handy for you or your partner should either of you need it.) You may want to keep pens in all the various places you go to record your dreams: the study, sunroom, kitchen, even the bathroom. We have sometimes found the toilet to be ''the best seat in the house'' for having a quiet place to write down a dream first thing in the morning.
Now that you both have all the right tools, you are ready to write down your dreams. To get the most out of your dream journals, be consistent in how you record your dreams. Create a way of journaling that stays basically the same no matter what the day or dream. Having a regular format will make interpreting your dreams easier. You will also be able to go back and find particular dreams later, because you will know exactly where to look for them.
We recommend the following format, which you can adapt to your own needs. It may make things simpler if you and your partner follow the same procedure, though this is not absolutely necessary, as long as you are consistent and each of you knows what the other is doing. Whichever style you choose, the follow-
 
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ing suggestions should apply to all the aspects of your dreamwork, whether you do them together or separately.
Date: The first thing to do, either the night before or that morning, is to write down the date and day of the week somewhere at the top of a new page in your journal, leaving a line or two of open space. Write the date in the same place on each page each time (we suggest the upper left-hand corner). Use either the date of the morning or of the night before, but be consistent. If you are some place other than your own home, note that location next to the date. This information may help you later when interpreting the dream. When you finish a notebook of recorded dreams, be sure to label it with the dates of the first and last dream, and keep it for future reference.
Tense: Write down your dream in the first person, present tense, as if it were happening in the moment, or as if you were telling a story. For example, "I am flying over our house and hear a loud noise." (You may have told the dream to your partner in this way already. That's fine; now write it down so that you have it to work on later.) Recording the dream in this storytelling style may be awkward at first, but you will find that it becomes easier with practice. It is crucial for bringing the dream images, feelings, and details to life by putting you back into the moment of the dream. Once you get used to it, you'll find it is the only way to record, share, and listen to dreams effectively. If it is easier for one of you to write down the dream while the other shares it, try that, and then read it back to your partner just as he or she told it in the present tense. You may find it enjoyable to be the "scribes" for each other's dream lives; or at times you may want to keep a particular dream private. Just make sure that you and your partner agree to respect each other's needs and privacy, so that you don't inhibit the creativity of your dreamworld.
 
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Content: Write down everything that you remember about the dream, no matter how seemingly trivial or embarrassing. Like an expert reporter, try to include as many details as you can, including colors, sounds, location, direction, size, or anything that stands out or seems different than usual. If you are not sure about something, note your uncertainty with a question mark or describe all the various possibilities that occur to you. Be sure to record your dream feelings, especially how you feel at the end of the dream. They are important clues to the dream's meaning. If your partner neglects to include how he feels at the end of a dream, ask about it. Wait until your partner has finished writing down or sharing his dream before you ask questions, so that you don't interrupt the memory flow.
After the dream report is finished, you may want to ask the dreamer specific questions about particular characters or images. This kind of dream "interview" can be very helpful in interpreting the dream, as we describe later in this chapter. Do not be concerned about correcting your own or your partner's grammar or spelling in recording a dream. Those "mistakes" could, in fact, give important clues to the meaning of the dream. Like Freudian slips, they may reveal your unconscious thoughts or feelings in subtle ways. In any case, just be legible. As long as you or your partner can decipher what you wrote, being ''correct" really doesn't matter. Just let it flow!
Title: Once you have recorded the dream, go back to the top of the page and write down a title for it. This will help you identify the key aspects of the dream to work on and analyze, and it makes it easier to locate the dream later. You and your partner may want to choose titles for your dreams together, coming up with two titles or one agreed-upon title for each dream. Don't be too technical here; see what comes to mind first. This process may reveal your respective feelings about the
 
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dream topic. For example, a husband who had a disturbing dream about having grown large breasts told his wife about it while they were in the car. She asked him how he felt in the dream. After hearing how upset he was, she suggested the title "Upset About Breasts." He then came up with "Bonkers About Boobs." They had fun creating the title, and it gave them something to go back to later that they could easily remember and relate to. Whether you develop the title as a couple or individually, try to choose one that captures a key element of the dreamthe most distinctive aspect ("The Wake-up Call"), an intense feeling ("Bonkers About Boobs''), a major character ("Mr. Big''), a key object ("Eight Tennis Balls"), a significant event ("The Divorce"), an important message ("Relax and Enjoy Yourself"), and so on. For a very long dream, you may want to add subtitles in the margin of your journal at places where the scene or action changes. If it seems like a totally different dream, you may want to start recording it on a new page.
Key words and feelings: Now that your dream is in written form, you can start playing with it. You and your partner can have fun and get some ideas for analyzing your dreams by highlighting key words. Use your pen or colored markers or pencils to circle key words and underline particularly emotional parts of the dream. Develop a system that works for you, and practice it regularly. Simply acknowledging the feelings that come up during or while writing down a dream can help greatly in understanding the dream and your own internal process. Pay special attention to the feeling you and your partner have upon awakening from a dream; you may sometimes awaken from what seems like a negative dream feeling quite good, or vice versa. These feelings give important clues to the meaning of the dream. For example, one man had a very sad feeling at the end of a dream in which he was walking around
 
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the grounds of a retreat center he loved. The sadness was a clue to his difficulty in leaving the workshop he had been attending at the retreat. If he had not paid attention to the feeling in the dream, he may have missed the importance of sharing his feelings of connection and loss with the people he had met at the workshop.
Similarly, when you make notations of specific characters, places, objects, directions, sounds, actions, colors, numbers, feelings, and so on, you will come to see how they can help you later when working on your various associations to these aspects of your dreams. You and your partner may want to review each other's dreams to see if it seems like either of you has left out some significant element that might be useful for understanding the meaning of the dream.
Dream index: Once you have highlighted the key elements of your dream, you can now, or at a later time if you wish, note them in your own personal dream index. You can buy a dream journal that has the format for an index already set up at the back of the book, or you can create your own. Set up alphabetical columns in the back of your dream notebook to record particular dream symbols or themes, noting the page from the journal on which they occur each time. Or, keep an index with 3 × 5 cards of your specific dream elements, specifying the dates or titles of the dreams in which they appear. Having an index of your personal dream symbols allows you to examine them in a series, which can help you understand the hidden messages of your dreams. Some baffling or nonsensical dreams may make perfect sense later when the same theme or symbol appears again in a subsequent dream in which its meaning is more clear, or the two dreams taken together may help elucidate the meaning of both.
With your partner, compare the themes and key words you
 
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have recorded in your index. You may be surprised to see how many similarities you share with your partner. Noticing how your shared symbols evolve over time can also give you clearer evidence of the changes in your relationship in waking life. For example, the presence of children as characters in our dreams hold different meanings for us now than they did twenty years ago, when we were just beginning to think about them. Having a dream index as a resource to review can offer you and your partner a unique perspective on the history of your relationship. For this reason, some couples like to celebrate their anniversary by reading over the last year's dream entries in their journals. New Year's Day or birthdays are other landmark occasions to engage in this interesting ritual.
Day's events: After recording your dream, you may want to jot down the events or thoughts from the previous day or days that stand out to you. Ask your partner, if available, to remind you of anything that seemed significant, and write that down, too. Often our dreams are related to something that happened or came to mind the day before. Taking the time to think about these things may jog your memory to recall more of your dream or give you clues to the dream's meaning. You may also note any day's events or dream elements that seem different from your normal waking life, such as your house appearing much larger or smaller than it actually is, your spouse acting in ways that you would not normally expect, your body changed in some way, and so on. These discrepancies can provide additional clues to understanding the dream when you examine it later.
Message and resolution: Leave space at the end of your dream story to write down the main message of the dream after you come to understand what it is. (We give some suggestions for reviewing and analyzing your dreams in the next section and in the following chapter, though at times the meaning may
 
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be clear to you right away.) Once you have come to some understanding of the dream message, write down how you intend to use it and share that intention with your partner, or develop the plan cooperatively with each other. One way to use the dream message is to "proclaim a vision" for yourselves as a couple. How to create such a vision is described later. You may also find it useful to record the results of your proclamation at a later time and to report to your partner about your progress.
Drawing: Save additional space in your dream journal for drawings of dream characters, objects, or events. Your pictures do not have to be elaborate or artistic. Even stick figures can capture the unique aspects of a dream, clarify some of its meaning, and put you in touch with your feelings. Sharing your drawing may communicate more clearly to your partner than describing your dream story in words can. If your memory of the dream includes color, use it in your drawing to enhance the mood, tone, or healing power. Different colors can add meaning to the dream by their personal or symbolic value. Think about any special associations a particular color might have for youyellow might have been your mother's favorite color, pink might remind you of the room you had as a child, and so on. There are also some common associations with various colors that may fit your dream images. Green is often associated with growth or healing, white with peace or purity, black with the unknown or hidden feelings, gold with value or riches. We describe how to use drawings or artwork with your partner to enhance both your waking and dreaming lives in chapter 5.
As you start a routine of writing down your dreams, you may notice that you begin to remember your dreams more frequently and that the details are more evident; even so, you may still go through some dry spells. Hang in there, and keep supporting each other in your dream journey.

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