A Dream

Gregory came to me in a dream for the first time last night. If you are uninterested in thinking about various interpretations of the meaning of dreams, scroll down to the photo of Gregory and continue.

Freud (1900) considered dreams to be the royal road to the unconscious as it is in dreams that the ego's defenses are lowered so that some of the repressed material comes through to awareness, albeit in distorted form. Dreams perform important functions for the unconscious mind and serve as valuable clues to how the unconscious mind operates.

According to Jung, dreams are a way of communicating and acquainting yourself with the unconscious. Dreams are not attempts to conceal your true feelings from the waking mind, but rather they are a window to your unconscious. They serve to guide the waking self to achieve wholeness and offer a solution to a problem you are facing in your waking life.

A different theory suggests that dreams are the result of our brains trying to interpret external stimuli during sleep. For example, the sound of the radio may be incorporated into the content of a dream.

Another theory uses a computer metaphor to account for dreams. According to this theory, dreams serve to 'clean up' clutter from the mind, much like clean-up operations in a computer, refreshing the mind to prepare for the next day.

Yet another model proposes that dreams function as a form of psychotherapy. In this theory, the dreamer is able to make connections between different thoughts and emotions in a safe environment.

A contemporary model of dreaming combines some elements of various theories. The activation of the brain creates loose connections between thoughts and ideas, which are then guided by the emotions of the dreamer .

*I would add the possibility of a spiritual connection to those whom we have loved who have died.

Now on to the dream:

I dreamed that I was watching Gregory writing something on a card. I remember thinking "Is he really going to try to write out that entire thing?"

He then began to staple the card to a small cork board propped against the wall. After he securely stapled the four corners of the card onto the board, he continued stapling in a line across the empty board like an automaton doll out of control. (Automaton: A mechanical device made to imitate a human being like in the movie "HUGO.")

I got angry and wanted him to stop stapling. I had a stick in my hand and was going to hit him on his back but I didn't want to hurt him so I poked him in his right temple.

The stick penetrated his head, in my mind through to the brain, and he stopped "dead" in his tracks. I was horrified. I had inadvertently killed him. I waited for the blood to begin spurting out but instead, I woke up.

At first I continued to be horrified but set myself to interpreting what and why I had dreamed. I immediately said out loud, "Gregory, you and I had better get more accomplished at communicating." And I laughed out loud. 

I could almost "see" what he was writing but could not remember. In thinking about it, maybe it was the poem by Friedrich Holderlin which I put on the back of Gregory's memory card and that was I passed out at his memorials.

Behold! The lovelier blue of heaven

is gathered in my friend's eye

and from his unclouded brow

beams highborn fidelity.

More brightly it is written here

than in gold upon our door;

Where good men love one another,

joy dwells ever and evermore!

I fell back asleep and when I awoke a few hours later I had a headache pain in my right temple (the same side where I poked Gregory.) Then I remembered that Gregory and I used to say; in relation to our love, our unspoken communication, and our constant awareness of each other even when apart, "I carry you in the upper right hand corner of my brain with love." Nice to re-remember that.

Dream Information taken from
http://psychology.about.com
http://www.dreammoods.com
http://www.simplypsychology.org

True Emotions - Untrue Triggers

The quotes below are taken from The Five Levels of Attachment by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. You may be familiar with The Four Agreements by his father Don Miguel Ruiz. Both books have been important helps to me with improving the quality of understanding my beliefs and behaviors as well as in dealing with Gregory's Alzheimer's.

While I have always recognized emotions as a part of being human, I felt that emotions out of control were a bad thing. I never thought of them as an anchor to how I am feeling about myself or my environment.

I wrote about this recently when I realized that when dealing with a difficult interaction between Gregory and myself, my emotions would seemingly inappropriately explode. It turns out the emotions were real and I needed to honor and give them notice. The difficulty was that old expectations in my relationship with Gregory were triggering the emotions and the triggers were no longer true.

For example now and then I would interpret Gregory's behavior as showing his not caring or not trying hard enough to behave in a way that I was used to. Turns out the emotions caused by my interpretation was real but the trigger was no longer true. He does the best he can but the Alzheimer's is what at times scrambles his behavior, not his lack of caring.

I realized that I was still allowing the old triggers to cause my emotions when if effect, the old triggers were no longer true. I needed to look at those triggers and delete them while adding new triggers and new emotions, like feeling nurturing in place of feeling anger when Gregory did something that looked like a lack of caring when in reality it was that he could no longer focus on the issue at hand.

A short while later, I came across this discussion in Ruiz Jr's book which reinforced what I had already begun to understand:

"It is important to keep in mind that our emotions are real and should not  be ignored as if they don't exist or stuffed away as if they aren't valid. Emotions create the most authentic anchor we have to ourselves.

"The whole spectrum of emotions--fear love, jealousy, insecurity, anger, joy--is very real. But here's the thins: What triggers those emotions may not be real. 

"Our emotions--regardless of the triggers--are expressions of ourselves. These are the important questions to ask: Are we aware of the triggers? Do we know if the trigger is based on reality or if it is based on faulty information? Is the trigger based on an attachment to a certain belief or expectation?

"Uncomfortable emotions are like car alarms: they let us know there is a problem to attend to, a wound for us to wrk on, thus allowing us to see our own truth. Whenever an emotions gets triggered, it is the opportune moment to ask questions such as: What is this about? What agreement is at the heart of this? What attachment does this threaten? Do I really believe this? Is it important? Answering these questions gives us the opportunity to examine our beliefs and choose whether or not to continue to believe.

"We honor our emotions by realizing that they are an expression of how we feel and what we are going through. We look at what has triggered our emotions, while still allowing ourselves to simply feel. We further honor our emotions by having the awareness that they may have been triggered by something not based on truth. Thus we use our emotions as a tool for transformation, because they completely expose whatever agreement has been hiding beneath the surface.