I often have dreams in which I must suddenly speak Mandarin because my translator has deserted me, or in which I fall asleep in the middle of my lecture. Sometimes, I am on an airplane that never lands, and I am never allowed to sleep. It is absolutely hell! Like Walhuter, I wake up and realize that I have often been successful in handling the challenges of translation and jet lag. I have relied on one of my students to provide translation if the translator isn’t present. And I have found ways to take naps in the early afternoon (replicating the nap-taking habits of my Asian students) or have found ways in which to avoid or rapidly recover from jet lag. My 2,000 miles of air travel have served me well, as have the many weeks of teaching throughout the world. I awake from my dreams, feeling pleased with my past international experiences. However, once again, I am grateful that I am now retired and no longer have to climb a tree to escape my traumatizing lions.
Third, we can successfully confront the traumatic challenge in our dream. When we wake up, there might not be any conscious recognition of this success; however, we might hold some vague sense that we are “OK” and look forward to the coming day. Alternatively, we might recall the dream and can “make note” of the strategy used to address the traumatic challenge for potential use at a future time.
I have had dreams associated with childhood traumas, such as being a painful source of parental disapproval. I have received a poor report card or have blundered on my childhood newspaper delivery route. In the real world, I often could find no place to hide from my angry parents. In my dreams, I will often climb a tree in our yard and find that no one follows me to the top limbs! When I wake up, these “successful” resolutions of trauma can be a source of new learning for me. What might I do when confronted today with disappointing performance on my part? Perhaps, I can find a “tree-of-escape” in my current life, where I can hide for awhile. . .
The trauma and accompanying anxiety can be addressed in a couple of different ways within the dream. First, it can be addressed through the action depicted in the dream. The dreamer reenacts the traumatizing event (or a near replica of this trauma) and this time moves against the intrusive event or person rather than remaining inactive and powerless.
The second way to address the trauma relates to a process called “metabolism” of the emotions associated with the trauma. As presented by Wilfred Bion, there are so-called “beta” elements that enter our dreams (Bion, 1995; Segal, 1992). These are the unprocessed (“raw”) feelings associated with the trauma—most of these feelings (such as fear, anger, frustration, hopelessness) being associated with anxiety. The dream provides a venue for “metabolizing” these feelings – which means converting the anxiety-saturated elements into elements that still exist, but now without all of the attached feelings.
