What am I running from?

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runningaway

I haven’t posted anything about my therapy on this blog for a long time.   The truth is that lately I’ve been losing interest in my therapy and haven’t even been wanting to go.   Since my sessions are never unpleasant or traumatic, I really don’t know why.  I know I’m not cured, though that thought occurred to me briefly.    Sometimes uncomfortable emotions come up in session, but I actually look forward to those, because it means we can work on them.  They’ve never been cause for me to want to run.

But recently, even while I’m in session, I keep talking about things that have nothing to do with therapy, or even with me.  My therapist correctly pointed out that he sensed I was avoiding something that’s coming up.

In our last session we began talking about an early childhood trauma involving my mother, when I was about 5 -7.  I skirted around the issue and told him I couldn’t give him details, but I was starting to get emotional.   It’s not something I’m able to talk about yet, even with my therapist.  Not even here.  It brings me too much shame even now, but I remember exactly what happened as clear as day.   He wants to explore this with me and I do too, but…I’m afraid to.   It’s too shameful.    But the avoidance started several weeks before this.

So I’ve been losing interest.  This week I felt too tired to go so I didn’t.  That hasn’t happened before.

I just had a dream that may shed some light on what’s going on, because the real reason is occluded even to me.

The dream involved a usual theme that occurs in many of my dreams. Somehow, in spite of my limited income, I had come into ownership of a vast house, so vast that I kept discovering rooms I never knew existed and had never seen before.  Exploring my new home was exciting, but in the back of my mind I knew I really couldn’t afford this house.

There were strangers in the house, as if it was some public place.    I walked through a doorway that opened out to a huge industrial kitchen with huge flat stainless steel cooktops lining an entire wall.  All these random people were cooking — bacon, eggs, steaks, you name it.    I turned to some stranger and told them I owned all this.   I told them that before, I had lived in a one bedroom apartment (my actual place has two bedrooms).  I admitted I wasn’t sure I could afford all this but that I would try.

One of the strangers I met was a very attractive man in his thirties.  (In my dreams I am always younger than my real age).    He seemed interested in me and kept following me around, trying to start a conversation.   I was interested but reticent, so I may have seemed disinterested, even though I wasn’t.   We found a room with tables that had numbers on them, as you might find in a restaurant.

The man invited me to sit down at one of the tables with him, Table #30.   Reluctantly, I did.  He was friendly and asked me many questions.  I was attracted and interested, but also afraid.   As I am in real life, I felt threatened by his interest in me.   But I was willing to get to know him better.  My attraction overrode my wariness.

I admitted to him I was afraid of relationships but that I’d be willing to give one a chance under the right circumstances.   He seemed understanding.

I got up for some reason that I can’t remember and then came back to Table 30.   He was gone.   A woman sitting at a nearby table told me she had seen him leave and drive away.  I was disappointed.  I wondered what I’d done.  I knew I’d never see him again.

I wanted to write this dream down before it fades from my memory, but I haven’t thought about what it could mean yet.    I’m going to mull it over today and if I figure it out, I’ll write another post later.  Right now my brain isn’t working and I just want to go back to bed for a few more hours.

22 thoughts on “What am I running from?”

  1. Great dream! In classic dream analysis, a house represents the Self. I have a recurrent dream where I am cleaning a really big house. I plan to start at the top and work my way down. It’s a big, old fashioned one-family house. I also plan to do laundry. I’m enjoying the project but I never finish in the dream. Not that I don’t finish. It just doesn’t show the whole thing.

    I am also less involved in my Cluster B blog lately. What seems to be happening with both of us is focus on current events and The Fourth Turning as it relates to the politics of today.

    You talk about not being “cured.” Is it possible that these “personality disorders” are just personalities and not disorders?

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    • I like to use dream analysis “bibles” as well and I agree, discovering “houses” and things in them (in my dreams I often discover old books and libraries) can represent aspects of self (in spirituality, gifts) one has yet to make full use of.

      We are often afraid of taking that last step to flip open our past that paradoxically enables us to break free and expand.

      Otter, fear not – said every entity of GOD. The fullness of truth will set you free – no guilt, no shame.

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    • You tell Otter: ‘You talk about not being “cured.” Is it possible that these “personality disorders” are just personalities and not disorders?’

      I agree that Otter should not consider herself “not cured”. (Hi Otter, we are talking about you, lol.) However, I do not believe the pain/fear/ptsd – whatever it is she still feels – is “a personality” OR a “disorder”.

      As long as we are TRYing to find truth, not except a lie we, or others, say about ourself (“That’s just your personality”) we are not disordered.

      Fear and emotional angst are just imperfect (often misleading) signals that there is still something we should/need to “look at” or examine – before we can really realize our full potential. But here’s the trick. The inner critic, or satan – if you’re a theist – wants you NOT to look there, not to unpack our most painful memories, because it is precisely through the mystery of your greatest suffering, that, once seen objectively, you realize you were – and are – innocent.

      Once you realize fully “it was never your fault” “you were just a kid” “you were not culpable for that ‘sin'” there is a huge breakthrough, in which many aspects of your personality, gifts laying dormant, that can be now not only now used properly, but have built up deep, sturdy and powerful roots, often beyond our own current understanding.

      These gifts are much like, in my opinion, the roots of a tree or plants that lay dormant all through winter but burst into life in the spring.

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    • It’s possible. I always have those dreams of not finishing something. They drive me nuts! Yes, I agree we have both been so involved in the political sphere lately it’s interfering with more internal, psychological work. I feel like its all connected somehow, though.

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      • I think involvement in the political sphere is healthy growth. After becoming self aware we “expand” and recognize similar patterns of abuse elsewhere, the “might makes right” attitude and brainwashing, vs the innocent, vulnerable, suffering victims (what I sometimes call the weeping feminine – though she is not always female – because innocence “receives” abuse by the corrupted entity). The worst evils in society are always a “brute” force.

        But another reason I think it is healthy is because we are more “out” of ourselves at this point, beginning to forget ourselves and think of others – the correct responses to stress already having rewired our brain and operating automatically, without conscious analysis.

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        • I feel like all my “training and education” in narcissism has prepared me for some sort of role in the political sphere, though I’m not sure exactly what that role is yet. I’m asking God to guide me to find answers. I just know there’s a connection though, and everything that happened before was a kind of preparation. But what does one do with this knowledge?

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  2. Your dream is fascinating and significant to me Otter. I own a kaffee haus restaurant made out of 100 plus year old barn. It is currently under expansion remodeling to make it an event center, to host fabulous European festival events and weddings, that all persons can utilize, regardless of socioeconomic status.

    It has an alpine kitchen where I have even given cooking lessons.

    It is Little Shepherd Cuisine. I have long since intuited this place would exist, not to host events for wealthy donors to raise money to donate to abuse victims, but have wealthy donors host meals and tickets to events so absolutely everyone could be fed (through music, beauty, food, art, science) the culture of life. I believe most in society at this point in time are to some degree suffering from CPTSD, and need to unravel it.

    Just before I read this post I woke up from a dream of my own, where my brother wrote me a letter saying “I know how to use a gun, will pull the trigger softly. You’re fired.”

    For years his codependent actions with my untreated mentally ill mother (who targeted me and my business for destruction) have wreaked havoc.

    When I awoke from this dream I was not scared. I turned towards my picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Mary holding the Christ child as he gazes at the instruments of His own death, carried by angels, which I plan to hang out in the open, in my barn.

    I prayed. “The barn is not Larry’s. He cannot fire me. The barn is not even my own, because I gave it to You and Your mother a long time ago. You can hire and fire whomever You wish.”

    This is true. So, in one sense, my barn might be the place of refuge you indeed own. Even when I served old,authentic European recipes I explained to my customers these were not my creations but their own culinary heritage and birthright, which our current culture has discarded.

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  3. I’d also like to add that although your dream is unlikely to “literally” be about my life and my business, I believe “higher dreams” that are spiritual in origin can have multiple applications that are all true at the same time – by way of analogy – kind of like parables in scripture, and how things in the Old Testament, prefigure the New. Time is often irrelevant in dreams, the past is the future, or the future is the past. And God speaks to His own in similar (but with the potential to be infinitely different) language. We are all His own.

    However, I would just like to mention something regarding the part in your dream where you meet your “true love”…

    A while back a kindly prelate mentioned “the Stones of David” in a sermon, and I asked him what these were. He said they were those gifts from GOD like the sacraments that were intrinsically “good” (in a sense, our birthright) that make life “happy” – true marriage and family included. The Culture of Life. These things, I believe, God WANTS to bestow on us, beyond our wildest imaginings, even in this life. But if we are trapped beneath a strong inner critic we often fail to trust enough in His goodness and love for us to receive them. We fear He could not love us that much, when He does, and wants us to give up on our own “efforts” so He can simply bestow them.

    As well, along with planning to host live band events, dances and weddings, I actually have started Meet Up groups at my restaurant for people interested in spirituality, unraveling their past and psychology, among other things, to bring the right people together.

    Just sayin, Otter…

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  4. I’m not great at interpretations but I’m not too bad at singling out some symbols:

    -The man who followed you around and sat you down at the table is (most likely) representative of your therapist. (You probably figured this out by now.)

    The food being cooked…I would think it must symbolize nourishment and abundance (?) satisfying a hunger. (It’s all meat or eggs (animal products as opposed to vegetables so I found that interesting. Through history meat is food that the wealthy ate.)

    Otter: you mention in your post that you began losing interest before a certain past traumatic event that you are afraid of talking about, came up for you.

    I’m thinking the memory came up in your body and subconscious before you consciously knew about it, therefore driving you to ‘lose interest’ in therapy itself.

    The subconscious is a powerful thing.

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    • I actually didn’t think of her therapist – but that is so cool – it applies. But we also have a “therapist” relationship with our potential “other” because our true spouse would be like the missing puzzle piece like a key to a lock or a lock to a key, revealing the mysteries of life to us. We are often foolishly frightened to discover what’s beyond that “door” when it’s really our hearts fondest desire.

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  5. LSG, the barn sounds wonderful! Otter, I too have house dreams. Very interesting to read the comments about the possible symbolism. I have also been told a house represents yourself. My most recurring house dream takes place in my family’s house, which had 3 floors, my bedroom on the top, and also the only room, with a landing that led into a crawl space attic. The bottom floor was a daylight basement (huge) with three mostly unused rooms. In the dream, I am sleeping on the top floor, and am wakened by the realization that people (other than my family) are in the house. I go down the spiraling staircase, and the closer I get to the basement, the more frightened I become. I don’t go all the way down the stairs, but peep down into the basement from one of the upper rungs of the last set of stairs. I see a kind of encampment, with tents, etc. and comprehend that complete strangers are living in the basement! And I realize they have been living there for a long time without my ever knowing! I told my dad about the dream once. He was my non-narcissistic parent, and he said he used to have a similar dream… he grew up in a an old house on the east coast with a fifth floor attic no one ever used. He dreamed he woke up in the night to discover strangers were living in his family’s attic. We laughed and called it a hereditary dream… but now, I’m going to look deeper into it, I think. Though the dream was recurring since I left home (20 years ago) I haven’t had the dream since I got married, which has been 7 years now. Hm. I’m definitely going to explore this.

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    • Alice, that definitely sounds like a “bedrock”loss dream to me. So you are more self aware, at “elevated” height, but one of your parents was a narcissist. Therefore you realize your foundation was not “whom” you “thought” it was.

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  6. I like that, LSG, very much, that some dreams are God reminding us what we ‘know’ …

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