In Gestalt Therapy, there is a popular technique called “The Empty Chair Technique” that is used to help clients explore and process unresolved emotions surrounding past traumas, interpersonal problems, disorders like depression, and other negative experiences. The client imagines a person, or a part of a person (such as their own depression), is sitting on the empty chair, and they engage in conversation. It is intended to foster honesty, understanding, and emotional release, and it can be a powerful technique if the client longs for that cathartic experience but has not had other outlets to express themselves before. But that cathartic experience can come from many different places — and ultimately, it comes from within.
Many people argue that our dreams are composed of fragments from reality with some going so far as to say that if you see a person you did not know in your dream, it is very likely your subconscious had processed the image of that person at one point in your daily life. This raises all sorts of questions related to simulations and realities. If a “real” person is made up of their behaviors, mannerisms, thought patterns, and those patterns are re-created in your subconscious during a dream, how real is that “simulation” in your dream? Taking it one step further, if you were unable to talk to a person in your life who had hurt you, what if you could talk to them in your dreams? Assuming that conversation went well, could that help you process your thoughts and emotions around that person and thus resolve a mental health concern?
During my mental health graduate program, I had a professor who briefly talked about an interesting niche he belongs to concerned with similar scenarios. He focused on the power of dreams as a tool to heal, and he had been practicing lucid dreaming as a way of interacting with his subconscious to heal. We know that during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, our brains process, consolidate, and archive thoughts and memories (one of the many reasons why good sleep is important). He told us about how he kept having these recurring dreams where a woman would appear, and he did not know who the woman was or what she was doing invading his subconscious. Eventually, he took over his dream and approached the woman and confronted her. While I do not remember the conversation he then proceeded to have with the woman, I do remember that it was a wholesome conversation, and that was the last time he had that recurring dream. Effectively, he addressed the issue within his subconscious that was leading this woman to re-appear.
Interestingly, I had a similar experience last year, even if it was not a recurring dream. When I wrote “I Hated High School”, the short story stemmed from a dream I had alluded to in a personal note. I had gone to bed one night, and my subconscious kept replaying altered versions of memories from high school. They were all much better than the original memory. If the original was plagued by guilt, embarrassment, regret, or heart ache, the dream version replaced those with positive alternatives — the way I would have wanted things to turn out. It was an interesting experience because most people will agree that they are not the same person they were five, ten years ago… yet, most people will also hold onto all the negative emotions from classmates that excluded them from a friend group 15 years ago. But imagine things had turned out exactly the way you wanted them to. How would the absence of that struggle have shaped who you are today?
I did not have any sort of conscious revelation immediately, but I kept processing the dream throughout the day. When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that I had been sweating in my sleep, and that I was happy to be awake. I was happy for what my life was on that day as opposed to life when I was in high school. That is not to say that I did not like my life when I was in high school or missed things from the time, but I realized that even if things had gone the way I wanted them in high school, I would not have been completely happy anyway. My present life, even with its own turbulence, is much more enjoyable than my life was back then. The million dollar question is: What changed?
Feed your head.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
