Tag: dreams and trauma

PTSD Dreaming, Part 2

December 7, 2023 / kirstenbackstrom

In the previous post, I wrote about how trauma-informed dreamwork can be meaningful in restoring well-being for those whose nervous systems have become disregulated by overpowering experiences. Here in part two, I’ll use some of my own dreams as a case study to reflect on dream themes that are typical when people are recovering from trauma.

It’s especially important not to over-think trauma-related dreams but to attend to the impressions they leave in the body and emotions. For people with PTSD, sense impressions in dreams can often be disturbing or confusing. Dreams may be difficult to describe or fully experience because the nervous system views disturbance and confusion as threatening, and is mobilized to react by “fighting” (denying the validity of the dream experience), “fleeing” (forgetting or fogging the dream memory), or “freezing” (becoming overwhelmed). Even vague trauma-related impressions can be emotionally intense, and can leave the person feeling haunted if the dream remains unexplored. Regardless of whether these dreams seem positive (helpful), negative (disturbing), or neutral (mundane or confusing), there is tremendous healing potential in giving care and attention to the specific sensations and emotions they bring to light.

In groups or with a therapist, theater and bodywork are wonderful tools for PTSD dreamwork. Playing the role of a dream figure allows a person with PTSD to experience themself as someone who is not “the one with the problem.” A dream scenario can free them from the need to make sense of a chaotic situation, as it emphasizes the dynamic flow of interacting characters rather than following a linear storyline. This flow—interpersonal and often playful—is particularly meaningful for those whose lives have been reduced to a series of reactions. Bodywork generally involves a similar freedom from the need to seek cognitive solutions to somatic problems. Instead of analyzing the dream’s imagery, bodywork helps the dreamer to focus on the sensations that arise as the dream is recalled, and to explore those sensations through breath, touch, or movement.

If a group or trained guide is not available, there’s still a lot of dream exploration that can be done on one’s own. When working with PTSD dreams, always engage with intense sensations and emotions in small doses, returning to a baseline of safety frequently so you (the dreamer) can trust that you have a choice about how much to experience. If the dreamer can’t access a baseline of safety (free from physical agitation and anxiety), then it is not a good time to work with disturbing, negative dreams. Positive dreams, however, can be appreciated anytime.

If your life has been impacted by trauma, as mine has, here are some types of dreams you might recognize, and approaches you might consider.

Some dreams offer a glimpse of life energy and possibilities. Others may set up problems that have solutions, requiring some effort but bringing a sense of accomplishment. Such dreams are simply to be savored, as they give the body a direct experience of what is needed for healing.

Mouse In Trouble: A frightening storm. Through the window, I see a mouse huddled on the ground. I plunge into rain and wind, and nudge the trembling creature into a container, but she wriggles out again. She is afraid of me and won’t cooperate. I keep trying until finally I’m running down the trail with the mouse at least temporarily contained. She escapes just as we reach the sheltered place I’ve found for her. It’s a dry area under a shed, and there’s a cereal box lying open there. The mouse goes into the box and gobbles cereal. She must have been starving—she is so thin and frail. She knows I helped her, so she’ll be willing to trust me from now on.

[This dream suggests ways of reassuring my own traumatized body. I can savor the mouse’s sense of safety and fullness, as well as the dream ego’s experience of having the courage to go into the storm, the patience and gentleness to ease fear, and the capacity to provide nourishment and protection to vulnerable aspects of myself.]

Especially early on in the healing process, some dreams may seem ugly, discouraging, shocking or nightmarish, leaving the dreamer feeling worse rather than better. You’d probably want to forget such dreams as quickly as possible, but it can be useful to notice how they affect your body. Try allowing your body to respond naturally, with exaggerated gestures, sounds, or facial expressions that convey the revulsion, anger, hopelessness or fear the dream evokes. Repeating these gestures vigorously (or imagining them, if they’re too intense to enact) can be cathartic and empowering.

Eating Lizards: I am eating a snack of small lizards from a paper cup. This is supposed to be one of my favorite treats, but as I become aware of what I am doing it becomes more and more revolting. I look at the last lizard and wish it were actually alive so I could let it go—but it’s dead and I have to swallow it.

[This dream captures the misery and shame of painful experiences I was unable to stomach. As I recall the sensation of swallowing dead lizards, I allow myself to make faces and gag, shaking my head. After a while, revulsion is replaced by sadness. I can feel the strength of my longing that the last lizard might live after all—that I might live.]

During the worst times of PTSD, I had violently frightening nightmares where I found myself drowning, being eaten alive, or fighting with dead-eyed attackers. Other dreams evoked grief and helplessness as I watched loved ones being harmed, or saw my home swept away by floodwaters. It was difficult to find a gesture that would encompass the enormity of such images, but I could respond by imagining myself screaming—letting the scream carry all the pain that I was unable to contain or express otherwise. Paradoxically, intense emotional pain represents a very powerful suppressed life force, and by screaming it out (in my head—it was too strong for my voice), I actually felt energized. I let the scream go on until the pain broke like a wave into crying, shivering, deep breathing—and finally receded so I could rest.

Recently, I’ve been having dreams that give me direct experience of being free of PTSD.

Spacewalk: We journey into deep space, beyond the known universe, on a mission. My beloved and I met on this spaceship journey; we are trying to figure out how we will maintain our connection once we have returned to our home planet. For now, we share the freedom of deep space where none of the laws of physics apply. We can actually go outside the ship without spacesuits, and walk on the emptiness, which is like walking on stars. We’re surrounded by sparkling lights and infinite, rich darkness.

Every dream is a healing journey into deep space. May we all step into emptiness and experience the infinite, in darkness and in light. We can trust ourselves to come through our most difficult experiences, restored to our home planet, reunited with our inner beloved.

[This article was originally published in in the Winter, 2023 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Natural Light: Dreaming Into Death, Dreaming Into Life

June 7, 2023 / kirstenbackstrom

[This article was written during troubled times: the early days of the pandemic, when, like many others, I was suffering the impacts of collective and personal traumatic events. In such times (which can be anytime), dreams provide perspective—inviting us to see things as they are, in the shadowy half-light where nothing is absolutely certain. In dreams, death and life receive equal space, darkness gives way to light when light gives way to darkness. Dreams don’t accept the good/bad duality we impose on our experiences, they invite us into paradox. Here, I explore such riddles, and accept the dreams’ invitation to walk in the dark.]

When animals (including human beings) are seriously ill or badly injured, they can experience a pull toward death that may become as powerful as the drive to live. Perhaps this is nature’s way of easing suffering. When survival seems unlikely, dying becomes easier.

I saw this when our feral cat friend Harold was living out his last days. It was winter, and we’d set up a space heater and a bed for him on our doorstep out of the wind. For a while, he kept warm, but finally insisted on leaving this comfortable shelter to wait for his death in the open, in the cold sleet. We tucked a towel around him, and he accepted it, but clearly preferred to let himself be chilled, to hasten the implacable process of dying. It was painful for us to watch, but perhaps not so painful for him. Mostly, he lay with his eyes closed, purring at the sound of our voices, otherwise patiently still.

In 2019 I went through a major spinal fusion surgery and spent weeks in the hospital struggling with heart problems, intense pain, choking episodes and total physical helplessness—and this condition helped me understand Harold better. While one part of me progressed toward healing, another part of me prepared for potential death. For months after surgery, my physical craving for rest, which would give my body the opportunity to recover strength for new life, was also allowing for the possibility of leaving life behind. Profoundly, instinctively, I needed to withdraw. Eating and drinking required tremendous effort. I hovered in a dreamy, half-sleeping state all the time. I had no inclination toward the future, and felt no real connection to the past. This was strangely peaceful. It would have been easy to die. From the perspective of my physical body, the damage caused by years of degenerative illness and a brutal surgery might be irreparable. Even as I was getting better, my body also contemplated letting go.

Turning away from dying was difficult. Supporting the healing process meant hovering in limbo, in that animal place where the instincts take over. I had to let lethargy consume me, let myself rest at the deepest level, yet hold myself back from death. My dreams reflected the ambivalent nature of this recovery period:

Wanting to Sleep: Restless, I get out of bed and go into the living room where there are lots of people. I realize that this must be a dream because it’s the middle of the night and there shouldn’t be people here, but even though I know I’m sleeping, I still feel exhausted. I try some lucid explorations like asking questions of the dream figures, knowing I can do anything I want. But I don’t really want to do anything, don’t want to be lucid. All I want to do is go back to bed and let myself sink into deeper sleep.

Plunging Into the Graveyard: There’s a little patch of graveyard nearby. A skeleton is just sitting there on a stump or gravestone. How can this be? Is it real? A boy wearing bulky plastic bones attached to his body like armor dives off the rail fence and plunges headfirst into the loose, loamy dirt of the graveyard. He disappears into the ground as if it were a pool of water. We’re all shocked, waiting anxiously to see if he will resurface. He doesn’t.

My dream journal was filled with dreams like these, but also with dreams that suggested a definite movement through the “dying” process, rather than the finality of a “dead end.”

Walking In The Dark: I’m in my late teens, responsible for a group of 12 to 14 year olds. It’s night. I lead them through a city, through unfamiliar urban neighborhoods. Now, we’re facing a downhill sloping sidewalk that plunges into total darkness. I tell them to put away their flashlights; our eyes will adjust. We begin to descend. The kids are whispering to each other nervously. At first, we can’t see anything, but then we get used to it, and the darkness begins to seem safe. There’s enough natural light to go on.

Now, over a year later, I am still feeling my way forward in darkness or semi-darkness, trying to sense the “natural light” that will show me where I am going. My “eye” (I) is still adjusting. The dream reflects the vulnerability, but also the potential, of a coming-of-age process as the part of me that is leading is barely older than the parts that are being led. Yet the confidence of the dream ego to “put flashlights away” and guide the whole self safely downward and inward, into the dark, suggests that a decision has been made. Unlike in the earlier dreams, there is no doubt that progress is possible, no question that we will keep going.

The world as a whole is going through some dark times right now, and it’s natural that many of us are experiencing a tendency to withdraw in exhaustion or dive into the grave of our own fear, anger, and despair. Sometimes, we dream of giving up. The earth herself seems unsure which direction to take, since ultimately death is as natural as life. Yet even as death and dissolution are possibilities manifesting around us and within us, healing is also happening. We stand up, we walk together, we learn. The natural world and the human world are the same world, even when we are divided and pulling in different directions. Outside my door, where Harold went to meet his death, squirrels and birds are eating birdseed together in the cold rain, keeping themselves warm and fed and alive. Personally, I waver every day, but even in uncertainty I recognize my own strength, and yours.

May our hearts sustain the courage, collective imagination and energy we need to explore an unknown future. May we be willing to go inward and downward into the dark, without the probing light that insists on knowing the outcome of our efforts. May we let our “eyes” (our I-dentities) adjust. May we choose life, and find our way.

[This article was originally published in the Winter, 2021 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Dreaming Emotional Experience

May 7, 2023 / kirstenbackstrom

[This “Dream Alchemy” column, written in 2020, describes how the strong emotions experienced in dreams can contribute to emotional flexibility and resourcefulness. Sometimes emotions in dreams can be overwhelming, and, as in the case of nightmares, may even cause the dreamer to close down rather than open up. Still, dreams always have the potential to be healing and meaningful, though framing the experience of the dream in a positive way is essential. I hope that this article serves as a positive frame for even the more difficult dreaming, and waking, experiences.]

Dreams are often emotionally intense. They can exaggerate ordinary feelings to a ridiculous degree, but they can also give us an opportunity to experience our most profound emotions in their full richness and complexity. It would be impractical to feel everything so intensely under ordinary circumstances in our waking lives. We might be moved by the death of a neighbor’s old dog, or frightened by the prospect of giving a presentation, or angered by a politician—but generally those emotions are contained within socially appropriate bounds. In dreams, however, we may discover our tremendous capacity for passionate, consuming and often contradictory feelings. Discharging strong emotion in dreams can be healthy, relieving us of repressed energies. More significantly, I believe that our dream feelings can help us to know ourselves, acquainting us with the depth and breadth of the emotional faculties that allow us to experience the world as we do.

I’ve been reading a thick book about 9/11. The subject matter is certainly disturbing, and the book isn’t particularly well-written as it tumbles repeatedly into the twin traps of sensationalism and sentimentality. Yet I keep on reading, because immersing myself in the details of this iconic catastrophe gives me a chance to witness, from many different angles, how we human beings respond to shocking, overwhelming circumstances. I want to understand who we are in the immediacy of extremity. How do we cope with chaos and pain? How do we face death? How do we make sense of the incomprehensible? How do we interact with one another in the midst of shared crisis? What makes us compassionate and courageous, and what makes us lose ourselves in selfishness?

The heroic stories from 9/11 have become legendary, representing the best responses that we might have in a desperate situation. But there are other stories, too: stories of the terrified people who abandoned injured companions or ignored pleading strangers; stories of officials who couldn’t face the sheer horror of the situation and persisted in following inapplicable protocols—ordering people to return to their offices, assuring them that everything was under control. Such unhelpful (or even harmful) responses are just as natural as the heroic ones, but we all hope that we’d come through with courage and compassion in a crisis. Among the survivors, it’s often those who were not heroes who suffer the most excruciating after-effects of a tragedy, in shame, self-justification or regret.

So, what makes the difference? I don’t think heroic behavior comes only to those with special training or religious faith, or to unusually “good” people as my 9/11 book simplistically implies. My sense, after reading these stories, is that those who are already familiar with their own intense emotions can more often choose to act on their strong, natural feelings of empathy in spite of their equally strong, natural feelings of fear. In a crisis, both kinds of feelings will arise simultaneously, but some people manage to make brave choices about how to respond to those feelings and some don’t. If we know from past experience how profoundly afraid we can feel, then we’re less likely to be overwhelmed when our feelings are most extreme. If we’ve felt this way before, then we’re less likely to ignore the reality of a terrifying situation because we can’t face the fear, and less likely to deny our empathic connection with others who are also afraid.

Few of us have felt such a nightmarish level of fear in our waking lives, but many of us have felt it in dreams. Our dreams may provide us with an opportunity to practice the full range of our emotions, so that those emotions won’t take us by surprise and overwhelm us in a crisis. Just having access to our own emotional range also expands our repertoire of responses in any situation, and makes us more resilient human beings. And, finally, the intensity of dream emotion can give us a more vivid experience of our whole selves, showing us who we really are and can be.

In dreams, I’ve been in a village under siege when the enemy breaks through the gates. I’ve been accosted in a dark parking lot. I’ve been stalked by a monster. In these kinds of dreams, I’ve been amazed and ashamed to find myself in the kind of panic that prevents me from caring about anything other than saving myself. Since the emotional centers of the brain are more active in dreams, I get a glimpse of how visceral and irresistible my fear can be. Dreams also show me how compelling desire can be, how violent rage can be, how wrenching grief can be.

I don’t know if those who behaved courageously in the surreal horror of 9/11 had previously “practiced” with fear in their dreams, but I strongly suspect that they were all people who had some previous experience of their own vulnerability. If we’ve never been vulnerable, we might expect that we can handle most situations, and we’re not likely to respond well when control, even of our own emotions, becomes impossible. But if we’ve felt the raw vulnerability of being emotionally triggered (in dreams or in waking life), we’re less likely to need to deny our unfamiliarly out-of-control “negative” feelings, and we’re more capable of choosing which feelings to act upon. During the events of 9/11, many of those who managed to follow their courage and compassion in the midst of their terror were later able to integrate the pain of what had happened rather than be broken by it, because they had connected with something within themselves more deeply meaningful than the fear.

Dreams show us the “positive” feelings as well as the “negative” ones. In one of my recent dreams, a friend of mine who has been in a wheelchair for over twenty years suddenly recovers the ability to walk: She looks radiantly healthy; her injuries are healed. Joy and tenderness well up in me. In tears, we lock eyes. I reach out to touch her shoulder, her cheek, unable to find words. The feelings we share in this moment fill us completely: wonder, love, exquisite hope…

I can’t describe the power of these dream emotions. For the first time, I felt how profoundly moving it would be to see my friend standing, walking. In waking life, this friend and I know each other well and can speak openly about many things, but we never express, or directly experience, feelings this intense. I know that I care about her, and feel saddened at the thought of the challenges she faces on a daily basis, but I didn’t realize how very deeply I care. There’s some obvious projection in this dream, since I’m just beginning to allow myself to imagine the possibility that my own physical disabilities might heal—so the wonderful tenderness I feel is, on one level, for my own potential healing as well as for my friend’s. In the dream, I care more deeply for her, and for myself, than I could ever have imagined. But, the central experience of the dream is uninhibited joy—an emotional vulnerability and openness that extends beyond either of us to encompass all beings everywhere as we struggle with limitations and pain, yet long to stand in the shining wholeness of who we really are.

When we allow ourselves to feel all of our emotions, as we do in dreams, we are likely to find that profound compassion coexists with fear. Our capacity to feel is virtually infinite. Our best actions can arise out of the fullness of our feelings. No matter what challenges we face, we can recognize ourselves in each other, and choose to feel with and for each other. In moments of extremity, we can’t know who will behave heroically and who will not—but we will all be longing to live up to the best in ourselves. Even if we can’t literally stand and walk, even if we can’t simultaneously feel our fear and act on our courageous love, we can trust that the potential for every possible response exists within each of us. We can feel it in our dreams.

[This article was originally published in the Winter, 2020 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

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