Powerful Dream

[Dear Lianne]

I had a rather powerful dream this morning, but it was pretty funny, too Thought I would share because I think it refers symbolically to TMS.

I dreamt that I was with my husband in the renovated basement of our house (which is really nice). There are woods behind our house, but suddenly somehow a group of teenagers were eager to come into our back slider door and play a musical ensemble for us (it was like they were part of a school musical band of some sort - I forget the arrangement they were to play for us). There were at least 8-9 teens and they were very friendly and non-threatening.

While they were preparing to play us their music, I went to the other room in our basement and opened the door to find that there were hundreds of penguins in the room - LOL! But, in my dream, they were mostly baby penguins with a few adult penguins. They were jumping around all over the place. I was really annoyed and then I went to the main room in our basement where the teens were with my husband. I was angry with the teens and started to ask them in an angry tone where the heck they got those penguins, and why did they have the nerve to try to distract us with music and bring the penguins in???!!! I was really aggravated when apprehending them; the teens got out of our basement room and I talked to them briefly outside letting them know firmly that there may be repercussions for their having done this trick. I let them know that they may have to pay for the penguin cleanup. I said that I did not think they would be penalized by the police, but they would be reported to their sponsoring school. They all were rather timid in response, expressing some remorse for having tried to get the penguins into our home undetected. They left quietly.

Anyway, I woke up with an aching back and this just doesn't happen to me these days! I was so ticked at the teens that I couldn't shake the backache for a few minutes. It did disappear as I told my brain that I knew what was going on and it was the frustrated feeling of my dream content that had caused the pain.

Just so you know - I never had a dream about penguins before. Also, I don't have teenagers of my own nor do I work with youth. And last, I normally would be annoyed but would not be the disciplinarian. Finally, I did not watch TV shows or anything that alluded to penguins.

I have my own theories about this dream.

Any thoughts?

 

[veronica73]

This reminds me a lot of a dream I had right after I first read Dr. Sarno last year.

I live in an urban area where the houses are really close together, in a house with my boyfriend and a roommate. We are friendly with the next door neighbors and use the small space between our houses to store our trash barrels and gardening supplies.

In my dream we had the window open and were talking to a neighbor friend. All of a sudden lots of rats came up out of the area between the houses, crawled into my window and were running through the whole house. Everyone else in the dream seemed very calm and thought the rats were no big deal but I was mortified--now I'm the house with rats! They were so embarrasing to me that I was trying to chase them out of the house but no one else was helping me because they thought it was no big deal.

When I woke up I knew exactly what the dream was about--for me that "alley" between the houses where I keep the trash is like my unconscious mind. All of a sudden all of these emotions, all of these "unacceptable" aspects of myself (the rats) were escaping to the surface. No one else cared but I was horrified.

Your penguins seem a lot like my rats! And the basement makes me think of the unconscious mind.

 

[Leslie]

I don't know how the penguins fit in your dream exactly Lianne, but I hope my avatar of this guy doing his best penguin impression doesn't cause you to have another one tonight! As I was reading I was kind of thinking that your description of the room of penguins sort of seems as though it could be a metaphor for your thoughts or possibly life. Baby penguins are fuzzy, gray, and needy - all the things that most analyzer, TMS types are made crazy by. And there they were, a whole room full of fuzzy, gray, needy creatures, with a few random black and white grown ups thrown into the mix.

This must be the week for strange dreams. Mine have been getting stranger and stranger, but one in particular was really bugging me. I was floating along on this calm, tranquil stream when out of no where this woman I have never seen before grabs me and won't let go, she's not trying to push me under or anything, just won't let me loose. We float around a corner and we're headed towards a huge waterfall. I was struggling unsuccessfully to get away but she held firm, all the while telling me I was safe, I was ok, she had done this before and wasn't going to let anything bad happen. And then we went over the falls and I woke up.

I'm thinking this was my sub-conscious trying to undermine the progress I've made. I've been trying a few new "self help" techniques lately that I really struggled with at first but now am starting to see benefits from. One of those techniques required you to identify a "safe place" that you could picture vividly in your mind that you could not make any negative associations to. It took me forever to come up with one and when I finally did, it was a peaceful waterfall filled park my husband and I hiked last year. When I picture this peaceful waterfall I tell myself the positive affirmations of "i'm ok" and "i'm safe". I'm sort of thinking my sub-conscious was trying to create a negative association for my "safe place" so I would have to stop the techniques now that they're starting to help.