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Author Topic: Beat-up face  (Read 5075 times)

Omega

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Beat-up face
« on: May 18, 2016, 08:36:16 AM »
I am dancing with a man with blond hair and beard on the roadside by a shed, at my family home. It's the comedian Keith Lemon who I can't bear in real life, but in the dream I have none of the associations at all and I'm friendly. He gets closer and closer and kisses me, he's very passionate. I feel attracted to him. He says something like you've got to try things out, I say to him this experience is ok, because I'm exploring understanding the world through direct experience rather than thought. Then he gets into a white van and leaves, it's evening.

I go inside the house and look in the mirror and I'm horrified to see my right eye is so bruised and  swollen it's closed, then I notice my other eye is also swollen but not as black and distorted, in fact my whole face is totally beaten up and I have a red rash on my chest, I momentarily wonder at him kissing me looking like this, but mostly I'm just in shock at the state of my face and the severe damage. I'm saying beaten up as it's the only time I've seen faces look like that.

Another scene I'm outside another house with my grown-up niece, she's sleeping in an animal burrow with her feet sticking out. I notice then in a part of the garden the ground is made from Madeira cake instead of soil, it looks golden and perfectly baked I taste a bit. It starts to rain. I take out an umbrella, a younger neice arrives all happy and excited as she always is.

I am inside in the family home kitchen, this older niece is sitting at the table crying because she's missing her granny, my mother, which shocks me really; I can't say anything, because I don't miss her at all and it won't be possible to explain to my neice, nor do I want to, how badly she treated me..  So I just comfort her for her own pain..

*edit - one thought I have.. given I dreamt of the stalker the previous night who 'would return'..
..that this was an example of my inability to recognise dangerous men, so in the dream I am not tapping in to my knowledge that I dislike and distrust this man. I believe I am exploring but he's really calling the shots, not me.
I end up with a severe beating. I know it could be interpreted on many different levels, but as the stalker dream was so powerful, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think this man might have been the return he promised..
« Last Edit: May 18, 2016, 09:32:22 AM by Omega »

Tony Crisp

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Re: Beat-up face
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2016, 01:09:20 PM »
Omega – When I write an interpretation of anyone’s dream, I am simply giving my opinion. So weigh my response against what you observe of your own life experience.

I say that because I feel you are still looking at your dream as if it is real life situations instead of a view of your inner life. Dreams often tell us stories in images to illustrate our inner world. So I see the story says that you are in harmony with an aspect of yourself who sees things with a sense of humour that you do not usually go along with.

He – this aspect of you – says you need to try things out – in other word try new ways of experiencing life. You say you are exploring understanding the world through direct experience rather than thought.

This direct experience leads you to the next series of images and feelings. You see your whole face is totally beaten up. Your face in dreams illustrates your unconscious self-image – beaten up – and the right eye maybe says that your view of the world might be badly distorted.

Then you possibly compare your niece’s way of life with your own. Some of it feels well done, other aspects you have other experience of. I feel that your comforting her for her own pain, is partly you dealing with your own pain. This come because you have learned to care for others, and therefore yourself.

Tony

Omega

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Re: Beat-up face
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2016, 06:56:16 PM »
Thankyou Tony. I am interested in this idea of falling into looking at dreams as real life situations - or not.. It does indeed hold questions I have yet to resolve for myself..

It's certainly a question to be aware of, of falling into that assumption, that the dream is a real life situation. I am conscious of not falling into this however, as seen in my reflection on the dream 'Blood'

However the subconscious mind is well known for being the store-house of repressed memories, so to me it seems equally important not to assume that the dream is only a reflection of an inner growth process.

But as you said at the start - weigh with my life experience, which is what I add here..

In my personal case I know for a fact I suffered extreme trauma, that for specific reasons, including  blacking out, being drugged, complete repression... I can not remember and in my real life I am in a therapeutic process trying to cope with and heal that. These dreams link to known real life situations I'm afraid. Though they also blend metaphorical healing content and reflect a re-living/healing of the very real experiences..

So it is a challenge,  this weighing, to know which is which..how much of each..how to let the dreams surface and engage with them in a validating way..

Thank-you Tony, I wonder what your thoughts are on this area of dreams, the subconscience and trauma?
« Last Edit: May 20, 2016, 10:33:03 PM by Omega »

Tony Crisp

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Re: Beat-up face
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2016, 10:36:58 AM »
Omega - True the unconscious stores trauma, but dreams are not simply representing memory but the homeostatic/self regulating process.

That is not only my finding. To quote From Dreams and Nightmares by J. A. Hadfiled - who was a pioneer of psychodynamic psychotherapy in Britain, who became an influential figure at the interwar Tavistock Clinic.

“There is in the psyche an automatic movement toward readjustment, towards an equilibrium, toward a restoration of the balance of our personality. This automatic adaptation of the organism is one of the main functions of the dream as indeed it is of bodily functions and of the personality as a whole. This idea need not cause us much concern for this automatic self-regulating process is a well known phenomenon in Physics and Physiology. The function of compensation which Jung has emphasised appears to be one of the means by which this automatic adaptation takes place, for the expression of repressed tendencies has the effect of getting rid of conflict in the personality. For the time being, it is true, the release may make the conflict more acute as the repressed emotions emerge, and we have violent dreams from which we wake with a start. But by this means, the balance of our personality is restored.”

"If a branch of a tree is cut, new shoots spring out; if you injure your hand, all the forces of the blood are mobilised until that wound is healed and you are made whole. It is a law of nature. So it is psychologically: every individual has potentialities in his nature, all of which are not merely seeking their own individual ends, but each and all of which serve the functions of the personality as a whole. Our personality as a whole, like every organism, is working towards its own fulfilment."

Tony