Dream: I’m in a neighborhood observing a scene. There is a car parked in the driveway. A boy (about 4 years old) is walking around the car looking for his friend (also about 4). There are also some adults looking for the missing boy. I sense that the little boy knows something about where his friend is. Finally, he lifts up the cushion of the carseat and finds him stuffed in there. I assume that the boy must be dead from suffocation. I think to myself “that poor little boy is going to have to live with the guilt of killing his friend for the rest of his life”. I see a man walking out of the house (dark hair, about 35 or so). I think it’s the dead boy’s dad. I realize that in the next few seconds he is going to find out that his son died. I do not want to be there to witness his anguish. It’s too much for me to bear so I quickly hop on my bike and ride away from there as fast as I can. I come to a fork in the road and realize I don’t know which way to turn. I pick the left fork and soon realize that I have no idea where I am.
The dream comes while I am in Greece. Although it does not seem to relate, it brings back a disturbing memory. When I was a little girl, I fed my baby sister some gasoline from an empty coke bottle. She started coughing and I got worried so I asked my Mom what happens when someone drinks gasoline. Mom went straight to the phone to call the “poison doctor”. I don’t remember much else about the incident except that I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. That guilt has stayed with me through the many years. I have apologized to my sister for it and we are best of friends but still…. I have lingering guilt.
Dream Session 3
We have just finished talking about some dreams that had pointed out that I am hiding this dreamwork from my husband Mark. Then we get into the dream of the two boys…..
Rodger tells me that essentially both boys are me. One is the guilty, caretaking boy who is responsible for the possible death of his friend. The other boy is hidden, dead, stuffed, trapped or suffocated inside a car seat. Dreams are weird… its not really possible to be stuffed inside a car seat …. but that was the dream. The boy is an archetype. As Rodger explains, the boy can often represent initiative, excitement, energy. I have lost that part of myself …. lost my boy self. Rodger asks me what happened when I was about 4 years old. The memory of my sister and the gasoline and the guilt comes back.
Somewhere deep inside, I feel the anguish of the guilt. In the dream, I project these feelings onto the guilty, caretaking boy and the father rather than feeling them myself. In archetypal language, I can not face the anguish of losing my boy self. In fact, I run away from it. I get on my bike and pedal as fast as I can away from it. Then I get to a place at the end of the dream where I “realize I have no idea where I am”.
As we continue with the session, Rodger asks me to close my eyes and look at the dead boy in the car seat. I look at him. I see him stuffed inside there. Rodger asks what I feel. Nothing. I feel nothing. I can tell that Rodger is hoping I will feel something but it is not there. Although I wish I could, I can’t manufacture a feeling.
Rodger gives me homework. Look at the dead boy in the dream and see what feelings come up. Somehow I have lost my boy self and the feelings of the loss are the key to getting him back.
As we are about to hang up some tears unexpectedly emerge. The feeling lasts for only a few seconds but it’s an opening. Rodger mentions something about the door opening just a crack. I didn’t think of it then but as I write this, I remember those words with the white font.
a door is opening….
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