Finally need to deal with this and have now had this dream.

[Patie]

The dream.  I am sitting outside my mother's house around a large glass table in a circle with a number of people.  My aunt is to my right, the man I am seeing to my left.  I sense my younger sister is across the table and my mother beside her.  I say sense it is them because there are a number of people around the table but the ones I am aware of are those I have described.  The sun is shining.  Then, my other sister arrives, (next sibling to me) and I internally panic.  I panic because my partner is with me.  I am afraid of her loudness, brashness and provocative behaviour.  Next, in panic I get up and excuse myself to go to the bathroom.  I return to find that my sister has gone outside the gate to have a cigarette with my boyfriend.  I am internally uncontrollable with fear and anger.  When she comes back I am getting into the back of a car with her and I behave very badly by grabbing her mouth and saying "you've been smoking" and making a scene of it ..... like an older child sister telling!!  It jumps from the car scene to the destination hotel and as I am entering I pull my boyfriend aside and say "by the way, it is off, you are now free to do whatever you like". 

This dream is very important in that I have been dealing with my family constellation this year with a therapist and through other work myself.  I am not 20 as it may sound with the nature of the dream but 45, divorced for eight years. I think the gathering described may relate to my fathers 20 th anniversary coming up soon.  This significant dynamic between my sister and I - abuse.  I have learned my experience was far more severe but I became suppressed creatively and sexually to counteract the opposite in my sister.  The dream is very reflective of real life feelings but I do not know how to finally break away from these chains I am in.  As eldest, I have had support role in family all my life, and picked up pieces, been drawn on from sister, and energetically have to keep my life very private as the dynamic is draining.
Can you help?

[Tony Crisp]

Patie - I do not think it is about your father’s 20th anniversary, but about a very powerful scene of your inner relationship with your family and others near you.

The circle is how we describe those in our life that are important. The sun also suggests that in some way this is a very positive dream. The positive thing is your expression of anger. I know anger is usually considered a negative emotion - and of course it can be if it is used to injure someone - but my experience of working as a therapist for over 20 years that anger is a primal emotion and holding it back turns it back into you where it does enormous damage.

What can you do? To quote from dream dictionary, “Whether you show or repress anger in dreams it is important. This is because like any other basic or instinctive response, anger uses tremendous resources of emotional and physical energy. The repression of emotional energy can be a key factor in the breakdown of health, and in the lack of positive and creative self expression. Blocked emotional energy tends to attack your sense of wellbeing and body if it is stopped from external expression”.

Here is a man’s description of exploring a dream in which a toilet leaked in a house he and his ex wife lived in: “I remembered times when I had frightened my two young sons by suggestions of my unexpressed violence; like the time I held my sons neck. I looked into his eyes and knew that with a flick of my fingers I could kill him. He looked at me and knew. My children must have known they were dealing with a dangerous animal. Survival for them meant the cunning, bravery or abasement necessary to deal with such a creature. With these feelings alive I got into the room that was previously unknown and the toilet. The toilet was all the undealt with shit which arose between my wife and I while we lived together. The room immediately reminded me of the way I had described my awareness of my sexual stagnation during the first dream - like a room that had been closed for years and had been unopened”.

But here is a description of how it can be released.

Later I found quite few of these nodules of pain on my back, and then I learnt how to really express anger from my past by beating hell out of cushions with a stick or a rolled up newspaper. Then slowly the nodules disappeared.

Another experience I witnessed was a young woman who had a muscle in her back that was like solid iron. When I massaged it and pressed on it she started to scream, not in pain but in anger. She went on banging and shouting for some minutes spontaneously and when finished she said, “No wonder I haven’t talked to my sister for years - I was so angry with her”.

So I would suggest you beat hell out of your sister on some cushions. It can help to act out anger by hitting cushions or an armchair with a rolled up newspaper. Acting it out can often lead to a real release and then you can see where it all started. You may need to do it without feelings and automatically at first, but if you keep on it will slowly become real. You will probably need to do this a number of times over a period of time to feel the results. It is important to let any feelings be expresses and not to feel guilty about any negative feelings to people. In releasing them in this way you are not hurting anyone, but you are clearing out your unexpressed darkness.

Tony