Auschwitz as a dream metaphor ...

I've always been a very prolific and vivid dreamer and have been able to harness my dreams to help me with my self awareness and personal development.  Even before I began my counselling training and all of the self-exploration work which has come with that, I used to love my dreams and would often find the answers to life or study questions in them.

The unconscious mind tends to work in metaphor or very literal meanings, so uncovering the messages in dreams can be challenging, but also fun and hugely enlightening.  I love working with dreams that clients bring to our sessions; it never ceases to amaze me the messages the unconscious can leave behind in a seemingly random dream.

Last night, I dreamt I was on a camping trip and I was sleeping in one of the male barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenhau.

I knew immediately that the dream related to my experience of my new eating plan, but I wasn't sure just how.  I thought of all of the seemingly obvious connections between an eating plan and concentration camps.  I thought about the idea of the plan instilling a sense of deprivation, hunger, terror or torture.  

But that just didn't sit comfortably with me; that's not my experience of the plan.

I smiled to myself throughout my drive to work at my unconscious connections to Auschwitz.  And then because of the positive feelings, I'd been left with following the dream, it suddenly became clear to me ...

My dream was actually about choice, freedom and relief. 

I 'm choosing to take part in this eating plan.  I'm in complete control of it and if I decide I don't like it, I can stop it at any time.  The choice of what to eat is always mine.  

I'm free in a way in which the victims of Auschwitz and other concentration camps weren't.  I have the freedom to stop and walk away at any time I choose.

And this then linked to my past eating disorders.  The relief comes from the recognition that I am not controlled by this plan in the way in which I was controlled by food when I was experiencing anorexia or bulimia.  The Auschwitz of my dream was symbolic of my relationship to my own eating disorders.  


And I've walked away, I'm free ... and that's a hugely empowering confirmation; even my unconscious agrees that my eating disorders are history ...

Which is what I believe leaves me in a good place from which to be researching the subject and working with people who are currently still experiencing the torture, deprivation, dread and hunger of their own Auschwitz ...

... to embrace the feminine

Immersing myself in the concept of my new website, ‘Embodying Change’, I’ve been reflecting on when the holistic, embodied experience first caught my interest. I’ve been aware for many years of the limitations of talking therapy … as someone who is naturally intellectual, I’ve always had a tendency to intellectualise things and try to understand everything via words with my rational, conscious mind. I realised though that this wasn’t always effective in understanding myself or trying to bring about personal change. I then discovered the importance of bypassing the intellectual level (the ego) and accessing the unconscious via creative ways of exploring and working … which has proved hugely beneficial for me.


And what this reflection has brought to mind for me is a workshop I participated in a number of years ago … it was a weekend workshop facilitate by Natalie Rogers (daughter of Carl Rogers, the ‘founder’ of Person Centred Therapy) based on her ‘Creative Connection’ process of therapy.

Across the weekend, we engaged in a variety of creative ways of connecting with our Selves, our bodies, and thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories, and our unconscious. Natalie facilitated us in using dance, drama, our voices, guided visualisations, story-telling, metaphor and the use of various art methods (drawing, painting, collage, sculpture) to explore the issues arising for us across those 3 days.


For me again, it was the power, or knowing insistence of my unconscious which amazed me. Someone I loved dearly had very recently died and consciously I’d expected to find myself accessing and illustrating those very present and raw feelings … however, my unconscious had other plans …

As each exercise led into the next one, I realised that the things I was creating in art form and accessing via my bodily expression were all about my sense of self as a woman … and more specifically, my sense of self as a women within my own female body. Prior to this weekend, and as a woman with a history of eating distress, this was something I hadn’t fully appreciated; to begin to access this acceptance and appreciation was hugely significant and symbolic for me.

Many people living with eating disorders live at a distance from their bodies. They become disconnected and aren’t able to easily access their embodied experience. The body becomes a separate thing, an object, to hate or to change or sculpt into a more acceptable (for the individual) shape or size.

Towards the end of the weekend, Natalie facilitated a sculpture creating exercise with clay. Using guided visualisation, we were invited to work with a piece of clay, moulding and sculpting it into whatever shape or form was right for us. This was all done with our eyes closed, so we could engage fully with the clay in our hands, fully experience it and allow our unconscious to guide us in our creation.

As we paused in the exercise and were invited to open our eyes, I was surprised to recognise the distinct shape of a womb, fallopian tubes and ovaries. With my eyes close, I’d had no conscious idea as to what I was creating. And of course, the sculpture fitted completely with the rest of the things I’d produced earlier in the weekend.

We were then invited to re-engage with our sculpture. I’m not sure now, but I think this part of the exercise was done with music playing in the background. As I worked in a trance-like state, I was amazed to watch my hands re-sculpt my creation slightly and work it into more of a heart shape with outstretched arms.


The final sculpture was, for me, very emotive. Not only did it seem an inevitable conclusion to the weekend’s exploration, but it also symbolised a significant state of self-acceptance for me, and of my body as a female body with all the privilege and magnificence that affords me. The (my) heart reaching out with arms open wide to embrace the feminine …

It was also yet another confirmation of my continued movement away from my earlier eating disorder. For many years (both before and during my eating disorder), a lot of my self-hatred and un-ease had been directed at my stomach, which, in my mind, was never flat enough. For many women, a rounded stomach is natural … a female stomach has to house the feminine reproductive system, the start of life. A female stomach naturally has a covering of body fat.

And I find it now so sad that many women fail to recognise this, especially those with eating disorders or body image concerns. For many women, their stomach remains a source of self-hatred … when really is should be a focus of self-love and a celebration of all that is feminine.

So not only was that weekend filled with huge personal significance for me and the privilege of working with Natalie Rogers, it also reinforced for me, the power of working in ways other than the verbal. Taking away words, bypassing my intellectual / conscious mind allowed me to access learnings I wasn’t aware were ready to be offered and integrated. And because those learnings came from my unconscious and were experienced and processed in non-verbal ways, through the engagement of my whole body in the exercises … those learnings were experienced in a very profound and embodied manner … in ways too profound and deep for me to express fully in words here …

Playing in the Playground of My Mind

Appreciating where I am now,
Me, myself and I,
Playing in the playground of my mind.


The poem I posted earlier today has inspired the title of this blog … it feels like they’re both very much interlinked.

Over the last week or so, I’ve been very aware of the power of my unconscious. I’m realising how much of my learning and processing occurs at a level of which I’m not fully aware; a sense of ‘playing in the playground of my mind.’

After a training course last weekend around EFT and ‘tapping’ to release the emotions from memories and other events, I dreamt of myself engaging in a number of rounds of EFT. Three times through that night, I woke up, aware that I’d been ‘tapping’ in my sleep … I had no recollection of the memory or emotion I’d been ‘tapping’ on, but in my waking state, I knew I’d been working through something. Whether I’d been working on anything in particular, or whether I’d simply been processing my learning, I’ll possibly never know … but waking up three times tells me my unconscious was most definitely working through something; and definitely for my benefit.

The night before last I woke up through the night, again, ‘knowing’ that I’d been practising in my sleep, the NLP techniques I’ve been learning recently. Again, I had no recollection of exactly what I’d been doing, but I just ‘knew’ that I’d been practising and processing my recent learnings.

And then last night, I woke up at 4am with an ‘urge’ to write a poem (the poem in my previous blog). The words flowed easily and freely, beginning with the idea of playing in my playground in the sky. Originally, I wanted the poem to end with the title of this blog … ‘playing in the playground of my mind,’ but as I wrote it, that line no longer fit. And this blog entry feels like its resolution. I’ve not written any poetry or song lyrics for many, many years and so writing in that way felt like a reconnection to long lost parts of myself. And because the words flowed so readily and were available upon waking, I’m sure my unconscious had already started the process of composition as I slept.

And in the words of that poem was a very clear statement as to how I’m feeling right now … at a turning point in my life, both personally and professionally. No more head playing in the clouds, distanced, disconnected and disengaged, but a sense of integration, connection and groundedness in me, myself and my learnings.

Maybe it’s time we all learned to trust in the power of our unconscious and to set ourselves free to play in the playground of our minds….

Dreams

I love dreams … my own, & other peoples’. And I love working with clients’ dreams in the counselling room.

I think your dreams can teach you a lot about yourself … if you’re prepared to listen to them and work with them. Dreams tend to be metaphorical and rarely send their meanings literally … which is what makes them so fun … connecting to your unconscious, where dreams play …

People often ask me how they will know if they’ve uncovered the true meaning / message of their dream …. Because dreams are so personal and unique to the dreamer, when their true message is uncovered, in my experience it’s something that hits at a real gut / instinctual level, usually with a smile … one of those “a-ha” moments when you simply know that it’s right, you’ve got it.

I’m sharing this dream on here for a couple of reasons … to illustrate how meaningful our dreams can be, and also because it fits in nicely with my previous blog entry.

I had a dream sometime during Friday / Saturday night; it was about me realising that my eyes were red and bloodshot, and I was worried about other people noticing. On being reminded of this dream on Saturday morning, I knew that it had some significance for me and I made a mental note to spend some time remembering and thinking about it.

The timing of our dreams can be significant … this dream came to me at a time when I was talking and thinking about ‘moving on’, and what that means to me. And as written in my previous entry, I now know that for me, ‘moving on’ means letting go of my old Self, my old ways of being, & allowing myself to become more of my authentic Self.

Out walking this morning along Tynemouth sea front, meditating on this dream, its meaning suddenly made itself known to me … I realised that for me, red, bloodshot eyes probably mean that I’ve been crying, which probably means that I’ve been affected by something deeply emotional or something which had touched me at a deep personal level. A lot of this crying and emotional experiencing, has, for me, been done in private … often feeling too ashamed or vulnerable to let people see the true depth of the ‘real’ me. I remember times when I have felt self-conscious after a period of crying and wondered if people could see that I had been crying … I’ve spent a lot of time restraining the real me, not allowing the full potential of my Self to be seen or experienced.

What I realised today though is that I’m ready to ‘move on’ & to risk allowing myself to simply be me, to be that real authentic Self and to allow people to see me with red, bloodshot eyes.

Thank you unconscious …who would have thought that dreaming of red bloodshot eyes would be a message to me to move on towards being true to myself?!