Crush Crushed

We can be crushed by difficult events, by an accident, by criticism or even by our own moods. Sometimes we allow parts of us such as love, creativity or sex slide into non-use or are crushed. See Avoid Being Victims

Many dreams of lovers are a painful and often desperate affair where the dreamer longs for the attention and ‘love’ of someone she or he has a crush on. These are often a natural part of growth where in dreams we wrestle with powerful emotions until we emerge with more mature responses. See Beware of Love.

Losing someone is often described as crushing one, but that is usually because we have a mistaken idea of what death it. The example describes this.

Example: I lost a very good friend. Two weeks before her death I told her loved her like I loved my Grandmother. When she died, I was crushed…..I had to get totally to my self to cry. I cried my eyes out….She came to me and told me to stop crying, she was happy and fine. I asked her” What does it feel like to be dead.” She said to me ” Don’t be afraid of death, it’s like a DREAM. Don’t worry about me…..I am happy.” I have never worried about her again….and I don’t worry about dying either.

Often it is our own inbuilt attitudes, probably from our culture or parents, that do the damage. The following is from a young woman who believes that if she has a baby outside of marriage it will be taken from her. This strikes right at the heart of a young woman’s emerging womanhood. Having a baby is the epitome of femininity and being female. The fact that your babies are taken by force is an awful demonstration of crushing you as a woman, and also making you feel powerless. The fact she was naked and felt like an animal giving birth strengthens the theme of her facing the most primitive feelings of motherhood. And I do not mean primitive in a negative sense.

Example: My friend and I have been having these dreams where we are both pregnant. In mine, my babies are always taken away from me. (They are twins.) I don’t want to let them go but they are forcefully taken and sometimes I am forced to get an abortion. Sometimes I feel helpless and like an animal giving birth I have no clothes on and I’m constantly being watched. Afterwards the twins are immediately taken. I fight and scream for them but I am always overpowered by something. I’m fourteen and a virgin.

A crush on a person – can also crush your feelings and sensitivities.

 Example: I’ve had a crush on this guy for 6 or 7 years, and we’ve been best friends (fell through for a year but got right back on track). The dream ‘occurred’ about two/three weeks after him and his girlfriend (quite… well she’s not exactly the faithful looking/sounding/acting/etc. type) break up (dream was about a week ago, currently they are still together). I don’t quite know what all happened, but I wake up in my own bed, opposite side of where I am ALWAYS on, laying across him. He’s shirtless, has his arm around me resting kind of on my shoulder.

But there is a factor that is possibly the major one in what attracts us to a partner. It is that for millions of years prior to our emergence as humans we existed as mammals, and fact a part of our brain is named the mammalian brain.

Example: I dreamt of being with a woman who was desperately seeking a man. I was also with my own female companion. I believe the woman had been suddenly dropped by her man, and I and my partner were close and with her.

Still in the semi-awake state I tried ‘being’ the woman, and had a very clear response. I experienced being her, but was also me with experience of seeing into myself in some degree. I saw that the woman, like most of us, was a female creature whose instinctive drive was to find a mate. But she was not aware of this as an instinctive drive but as a personal feeling. As such she had become, like many women and men, lost in a huge web of personal ideas about whether they were attractive, sexy, with many complications about love, gender mixed with childhood unconscious traumas and the heartbreak all that brings.

As our present brain evolved it developed four separate ‘brains’ or levels, each with its own memory, motor and other functions (David J Mahoney, 1991). Each new level, as it developed, elaborated on and extended the function of the preceding levels. So, from the spinal cord the hindbrain and midbrain developed. The first level of brain that developed beyond the spinal cord has been called the Reptilian Brain. This is because what we carry within our human brain is still found in reptiles. This ‘brain’ often encompasses several parts of the physical brain. The second level is called mammalian brain.

The neurologist Paul MacLean gave a definition of these physiological and psychological facts of our brain in 1990. He said that these levels of the brain work like “three interconnected biological computers, [each] with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”. See Levels of the Brain and Dreams

So we are still largely influenced by both the reptilian and mammal brain, especially in the basic life urges – to survive, to eat and to mate. We think that our attraction for a partner is our personal loving feelings, but it is our urge to find a partner coloured by enormous fantasies. The fantasies are to lead us to believe we have found ‘The One’, so we fantasy our way into such feelings and mistake them as ‘OURS’ – as, ‘My Love’ – ‘My Emotions’.

What follows is that we return to using all the instincts of our mammalian background, added to the tactics we used as a child in our attempts to get the love and attention we so desperately needed – anger and placation are two fundamental ways. Buy flowers, cook great meals, be caring, or feel frustration and rage. We cry, withdraw, try a new approach, experience depression and even try being alone to see if it helps. Then a feeling of failure or inadequacy overcomes us. Maybe we or no-good as a person. Perhaps it is that we are un-lovable and we feel guilt and shame. If that doesn’t satisfy we turn to blaming. It is all our partners fault. However, if you fail to understand this situation, if you do not have the tools, this struggle can go on, and on, and on, with partner after partner. BUT if you understand the mechanics of your crush, then you are ready to start a decent relationship.

Many people can recover from crushing life experiences or inner despair by knowing that we all have a process that can bring relief. Such compensation may also be used to deal with things missing from ones life, such as a sexual partner or social achievement. See Life’s Little Secrets; Dead Husband or Ex

Depending upon the culture we were raised in, we can unconsciously put an image to the power of change and transformation that we experience. People in all ages, all cultures and all social circumstances have experienced what is often felt to be a divine influence touching them in some way.

I believe through observation that such long held and powerful traditional beliefs are based on something functional. The description of compensation is an example of this. To be able to survive crushing life experience is a real achievement, not an imagined one, and is therefore functional. Using an image to evoke hope and motivation doesn’t make it less of an achievement. But the idea of a saviour or holy figure links with patterns of love and strength actually lived by others. They are then patterns remaining in the collective experience of us and can be accessed. When we touch these powerful racial memories we may clothe them in the image of our cultural hero or saviour.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Does you dream show you a way out of the crushing experience?

If not see Incubating a Dream.

Are you aware of what led to the feeling?

Is it shown as someone else being crushed?

See You are the Projector – Resistances – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams