Tag Archives: dream

Dream analysis, dream interpretation. How we can best understand what our unconscious mind wants to tell us?

What is Self Knowledge good for?

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“Know Thyself” was written in gold in the forecourt of the Apollo temple in Delphi. There were those who believed it descended from heaven. Psychologists use this proverb as verification of their point of view such as: “See! Even the wise ancient Greeks told you so.”

Once, while attending college, I went to an exam for Clinical Psychology. Before the real deal, somehow my musician past came up when the examiner – therapist himself – responded with two words: – “Diffuse Identification”. I was quite embarrassed, and felt very uncertain but annoyed at the same time. Why?

I wasn’t sure if changing a career path is really identical with diffuse identification, but the labeling and using the exam situation for diagnostics made me mad. On the other hand, this provoked me to think about my choices: how did I gravitate towards a musician career and why did I change? It gave me pause and I reflected about those choices and circumstances – and also some recognition about the professor’s behavior: Why exactly did he show off with his instant diagnostic ability?

I am sure you can recall similar events from your life, and probably you agree with me: had we known more about ourselves, we would have responded more appropriately.

The worth of Self-Knowledge seems to be self-evident, yet filling the “whys” into words doesn’t come easy.

Let’s take this into account and determine the value of Self-Knowledge?

1 CHOICES

Before a career choice, I usually say to people to think about the following: one third of your adult life you will spend in your workplace! It has to be something that you enjoy.

Aha, but there is a catch! – It reflects on my priorities! I prefer joyful activity higher than money or anything else, but others might prefer money, prestige or authority above all. This is why I think every advice is somewhat lacking: it is based on the other person’s character, principles and values.

In the area of choices, the advantage of Self-Knowledge is the most obvious: the more we are aware of our characteristics, the better we chose a fitting job, partner, friends and lifestyle.

On every occasion, we need to overview hundreds of different variables:
In a career choice:
- Do I prefer money more than the joyfulness of an occupation? Can I withstand monotony? Do I have the appropriate skill for that particular job?

In the choice of a partner:
- Is the reliability of a partner more important than the physical attractiveness or the parenting skill?

In friendships:
- Do I need only a few but deep, honest friends or do I need the company of lots of friends even if the connection is superficial?

In a hobby:
- Should I join a book club or rather a mountaineer team?

In parenting:
- Should I force more clothing onto the children or only my “warm-loving self” makes me feel like I’m too cold for a single sweater?

2 CONFLICTS

The harder the situation becomes when we are in conflict with someone. How many times were you hit at your heart when you were told you are too quick, too slow, too lazy, too busy, never finish anything, unable to adjust, unable of doing things right… Hurtful and embarrassing, isn’t it?

It is, especially if you are not sure whether it is true or not? What action is necessary; thinking about a possible change, or arguing about the truthfulness of the statement?

When you have to argue or compromise, you really need solid ground. It must be determined what is rightful critique and requires admittance and what is a false observation and needs to be rejected. This is always hard in the heat of the moment.

Being clear and confident about our personality, skills and habits makes us less vulnerable when our character is criticized. If we know who we are, we can shake off the bad feeling from ourselves.

3 ACHIEVEMENTS – GOAL SETTING

The famous Hungarian Pianist and Composer Ferenc Liszt said: “The talent obliges.”

I agree. If you have talent you are expected to develop it and the same time you will be happy to practice it, not to mention how it will elevate your Self-Esteem. Find out your special talent! You will be a happier, better person if you know what you are good at – the more the better – and improve those skills.

Don’t say you don’t have talent! There is no person who is not good at something! If not skiing then cooking, if not cooking then maintaining friendships, if not that than solving riddles…

There are so many areas of the world from academic achievements to emotional intelligence, from athletics to music; I’m 100 % sure you can find something worthy to develop and set appropriate goals accordingly.

4 HEALTH and BALANCE

Being aware of your special type helps you to maintain your health and balance. It’s never the style or a certain type that’s problematic, but rather when someone drifts to the extreme.

Let’s say you’re an extravert person and love social gatherings. It’s OK, and a good choice for your type, but you need to allow some time to relax and withdraw otherwise you would exhaust yourself.

Naturally the opposite is true as well: if you are an introvert and you like to be on your own with a good book it is completely OK. However, you need to be careful not to isolate yourself completely.

Creating balance requires the knowledge of what is on one side and what is on the other.

5 SELF-ESTEEM

Self-Knowledge and Self-Esteem comes hand in hand. Until you know who you are, how could you be confident? What are you proud of if you don’t know your talents? Self-Knowledge is the best builder of Self-Esteem.

6 SOCIAL CONNECTIONS

I already mentioned that choosing the right partner is easier if you know yourself. Keeping up good connections, finding compromises and solving problems is also easier if you are quite clear about your own world. For example: it can be your needs, your expectations, your values, and your personality.

- By the way, the WISE LOVE program was designed to help partners to know themselves and each other in the above mentioned categories!

7 CHILD REARING

If you raise children you have one more reason to know yourself:

Are you short tempered? – You need to discipline yourself not to hurt the children with your temper. (Maybe Anger Management training would help?)

Are you impatient? – The next time when you’re about to lose your patience, you need to remember that your tension comes from your impatience, not from the children’s behavior!

Are you too permissive? – If you have difficulty deciding whether or not letting the children go or you need to stand up for discipline, this knowledge might help you to choose the right response.

In child rearing, everything is two sided: one is their behavior – the other is the parent’s evaluation of it. Bringing the best decisions requires deep knowledge about our traits: what are our reference points on which our evaluations are based?

You can even deepen this awareness by thinking back to your childhood and keeping in mind what sort of treatment helped you and what hurt you. Thinking about your parent’s habits and what came through to your parenting style, plus deciding if it is desired and willful or automatic can make a huge difference in child rearing.

8 UNVEILING OUR BLIND SPOTS

Believe it or not: we all are full of features we are unaware of that might be good or bad. Our conscious ego needs an effective filter in order to guide us through our everyday lives and not to be overwhelmed by contradictory thoughts, feelings and judgments.

We have an army of “self-defense” which saves us from unwanted complications: we can repress or suppress inconvenient feelings; we can bring up rational explanations which might be true, but not the real reason of an action; we can intellectualize; we can deny; we can separate the rational and the emotional component of an event. We might behave unacceptably but not willing to acknowledge it and avoid shame. Bear in mind, the list is long.

These unconscious defense mechanisms are helpful to relieve the ego from continuous struggle with our inner psyche. But if we let any or some of them dominate our psychic life and we are not willing to acknowledge the presence of some difficulty, weakness or bad behavior, we miss the chance to solve some potentially serious problems.

What lives in our unconscious might be terrible or terrific, but until it is conscious it affects, even directs our life without the chance of our ego conscious control. When we really want to keep the rein in our hand, we need to know how we conduct ourselves!

9 FINDING OLD AGE PEACEFULNESS

You might say: “Where am I from that? First I have to get a job, establish an existence and a family, I have to get a house, raise the children and save for retirement… ”

Yes you’re right. These come first. But what comes after if you have accomplished all of that? What will keep you happy and active when you don’t have to think about these assignments? If you want a meaningful old age – or even meaningful spare time in your assignment as well as full adulthood, you need to know what makes your heart sing!

Can you add more? I’d be happy to hear from you!
Are you interested? Want more about this topic?

A new, non-expensive online program: “Discovering ME!” is here! Check it out now!

 

The Magic of Dreams

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Mihaly Munkachy: Yawning Apprentice‘…I was by the cosmetics, standing before the mirror and trying to pull off a tiny piece of dead skin from my face. Instead of coming off, it pulled more skin with it. I wanted to get rid of them too, which pulled even more… and a bigger piece, one after another and it just wouldn’t stop. Slowly my naked face stared back at me with the pure muscles exposed without any layer of skin remaining. A cosmetician appeared behind me and nonchalantly stated: You will recover soon…’

I woke up and immediately realized I should have been in shock or at least scared but I wasn’t. I also felt that there is a very important message in this dream that I have to understand.

At that time I lived in Budapest, attended the University taking an evening course. Additionally, I worked for a living, but the salary was pretty low so it was hard to make ends meet. I received a good offer for a weekend “killer” job: we had to record and evaluate special high school entrance exam results from Friday to Monday. No sleeping except for a couple of hours when absolutely necessary. We were assigned to put data from paper into the computer error free. I was deeply ambivalent, because I needed the money and I was willing to invest the time and energy, but I was afraid that it would take so much out of me that it would jeopardize all the other assignments such as my daily job and university studies.

After some doubtful hesitation I fell asleep, and in the morning I got that dream. Soon I realized that it pictured a Hungarian saying: “You can pull 7 skins down from her…” in other words: she has plenty of back up to depend on.

I accepted the job, and took the lesson: dreams can bring incredibly valuable information from our unconscious mind. In this case it informed me about my background energy. But this is only one option among plenty of others.

People are interested in their dreams since the beginning of time. Most of us feel that they play a very important role in our lives, but not sure which way, or how we can interpret them. Should we take them literally? Should we buy a book of dreams for a solution?

None of them!

SYMBOLS

Sometimes it happens that a dream warns us of something straight ahead and if you are in the position to address it financially or have the required energy you can check or make sure you are prepared for it. – Most of the time when I dream I lose some teeth which translates that there is some dental issue to take care of.

In some situations, they are prophetic dreams, but in our everyday life we can be satisfied if we read our plain everyday dreams.

An average dream speaks to us in symbols – this makes them so fascinating and so blurry at the same time. Symbols are concentrated meanings of an idea or process. Often it contains a conflict and its solution at once.

In the analytic movement, Freud and Jung supposed a completely different approach to dream interpretation. I find the Jungian idea more convincing, so I will share this with you.

LANGUAGE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

According to Jung, there is no censor and hidden content in dreams as Freud suggested. Instead the dream is the language of the unconscious. It brings messages about what is going on deep inside our soul. It tells its story in symbols; we have to decipher out its meaning. As it is the dreamer’s soul, situation and life experience, only the dreamer can read the meaning; there is no book of dreams or a psychologist who can do the work instead. – We can help though with the interpretation.

MAGIC OF DREAMS

Dreams are considerably different from our wakeful reality. They have no space and time. They are full of magical transformations. One person can redouble; two persons can fuse in one. Scenes can be completely imaginary, or a kind of mix of two or more real places. Unrealistic happenings are common place: we might be able to fly or breathe underwater. Usually, dreams are very lively emotionally.

RECURRING DREAMS – DREAM SERIES

It is especially worth paying attention to recurring dreams or dream series. They are circling around an important topic. It can be unresolved conflict, forgotten desire or repressed needs. It also can be a warning that our life or our choices don’t go into the direction what we wished for, but time goes by without considering them consciously.

IMPORTANCE OF THE DREAMS

You might ask: “Why should I deal with them? What is unconscious doesn’t bother me! Let it stay unconscious!”

I strongly argue with this opinion. The unconscious is the home of many important things. It includes not only the repressed and suppressed memories and all of our contradictory feelings, thoughts, judgments, the so called complexes, but it is the store house of the positive and creative potential what we still haven’t developed in ourselves, as well as the “blueprint” of our lifelong personality development.

Either solving our everyday problems or normally going through our life stages, we need to collaborate with our inner soul. What we are “meant” to be? What kind of talents, desires we have, what kind of directions are a good fit for us? Not to mention, if some difficulties came along in our past, the psychological adaptation to the situation requires knowing the unconscious effects of the event.

Actually in the Jungian theory the personality development itself is bringing our unconscious material into our conscious mind and integrating the two of them.

With common sense: if you know your personality, your needs, expectations and values and your feelings clearly, you are able to direct your life in the most pleasant direction, aren’t you?

HOW CAN DREAM HELP?

The simplest way is when it informs us about our body’s state like in the dream above, like I had enough energy to take the job, or I have to go the dentist before it’s too late.

Another option is the complementary dream. Often our conscious evaluation about something leans extremely to one side. In this circumstance dream, it can represent the other side of the story. For example; after a tragic event in which a lady’s husband took an active part, the lady was completely outraged and disappointed to the degree of considering divorce. She dreamed about the death of her husband repeatedly. You might think: “Of course she wished the death of the husband.” But the emotional background of the dream revealed the opposite. She was completely, desperately sorrowful and could not imagine how she could possibly continue her life without her husband. After thorough consideration she was convinced that these dreams balanced out her daily struggle with the aftermath of her trauma. In her dreams she was able to feel the deep tie to her husband which was swept away by the fury in her awaken life. Without that help she might have divorced and later regretted the choice.

Very important dreams are the ones which work with archetypes. In those, an ancient archetype brings an answer to a present question or doubt. (Archetypes are common reaction types and its images for the humankind common experiences like life, birth, death, fear, light, men-women, and so on.) One of my friends was pregnant and as usual among pregnant women she harbored some doubt about how good of a mother she would become. One night she saw a dream in which a gorilla mother took good care of her baby. As a psychiatrist herself, she immediately understood the encouragement in the dream: our ancient past is full of good mothers from whom the “mother archetype” is derived: we can rely on this “instinctive mother” even if in our life we did not have the best experience with “good motherhood”.

CHERISH YOUR DREAMS

Listen to your dreams! – You don’t dream? No way! Sleep studies show that we dream every night about 4-5 times. But most of us simply forget them. You might try to ask yourself to remember them in the morning. Put a notice book near your bed. If you wake up at night, you can write down what you remember. Write down immediately because they fly away very easily as the conscious mind claims its territory! If you can recall only snippets, put them down. You can draw as well. I know; you cannot draw.  Me neither. This is not for art class! This is for remembering and understanding.

Your next dream could be the continuation or explanation of the previous one. It doesn’t matter if you don’t exactly understand what it wants to be. Ask for more dreams, more information. Sooner or later you will see a picture what your unconscious wants from you to see. Be prepared that this is not the reality: no crystal clear numbers and diagrams, you have to put up with some uncertainty.

Emotions are the best guides. If you feel something different than you expected – think about what could it be, or why do you feel that. When do you usually feel that way? – When I wasn’t horrified after the cosmetics dream I knew it is not a simple “horror dream”; it’s meaning is not that scary than the picture itself.

Also your feeling can show you if you are on the right path: if you feel happiness, contentment, the feeling of “eureka” you can bet this is what the message is about, or this is the way what your unconscious wanted to show you, or wanted you to take.

Engage in the dialog with your inner world and be proud of the form of expression which matches up with the best fine art.

Enjoy your dreams!

Questions? Comments? Don’t leave without telling me!