Help me control my dreams!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Background: Several months ago my best friend of over 30 years decided she no longer wished to be friends with me. It came completely out the blue and she refused to even speak with me about it, saying it wouldn’t be “productive.” The whole “break-up” was conducted via a couple of emails and the only reason given was that we live very different lives now. She is married, childless and a health nut who has left the US only once in her life and I am single, like my creature comforts (including junk food), and have worked overseas in different countries for the last 10 years. However, we have always stayed in close contact and I usually visited her at least once a year. I was completely blindsided and, obviously, very hurt and very sad – we were extremely close and have spent over three quarters of our lives being best friends. (I was her maid of honor and was with her when her father died.) I have dealt with it (and moved on, I think) at a conscious level and rarely think about her nowadays.

Problem: Every freaking night I have dream with her in it. So clearly at an unconscious level, the issue is still not resolved. The dreams aren’t bad or scary but I wake up every morning depressed and sad all over again. My dreams have always strongly affected my daily emotions and I need to stop this nonsense as it’s making me miserable.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can stop dreaming about this? Thanks, Dopers!

2

Clearly there are issues that need to be resolved. Pain and emotion that needs to be digested. That’s what is going on in your dreams.

One dream progamming method I was given (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t) is;

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Roll your eyes straight back either wide open or closed; hold this for 10 seconds. Say either out loud or to yourself;

“Tonight I chose to have a dream about (say your piece) and I experience it as complete now.”

Go to sleep.
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Other times I just go to bed thinking about how I need to dream about and deal with specific issues. Sometimes it can take a while.

You’re going to have to resign yourself to the fact that you ARE going to dream about her alot for some time. You have a deep connection there and it’s going to take a while to resolve it, mourn properly, and move on.

One part of this is that the people in our dreams do not necessarily represent the actual people, but parts of ourselves, our ideals, our goals, our desires. In some cases, the two (inner and outer representations) can be so closely tied that unraveling it is a gordian knot of thoughts, emotions and neuroses.

3

I quite like dreaming, it’s interesting playing out relationships in a parallel universe. Except in dreams, I always have a lot of confidence and things normally proceed the way I want it to… if only they’d happen in real life.

4

That really is weird. Who breaks up a friendship without a specific reason, fer chrissake??
If someone did that to me I’m pretty sure it would bug me for a very long time since I just wouldn’t be able to make sense of it.
I mean, in a relationship/partnership you can officially end it, and go your separate ways or maybe revert to being just friends, but friends are people you may see every day or not for several years. How do you decide someone else is no longer your friend, unless you have fallen out over a particular thing?

My WAG is that trying to figure out what may have led her to say that, talking about it here or with other friends if you feel you can, and getting it settled to some degree in your conscious mind may lead to fewer dreams. I think trying to control your dreams would be like treating the symptom and not the cause.

5

Well, exactly. That’s why it was so confusing and so difficult. I’ve talked about it with several of my other friends, let them read her emails etc., and they can’t figure it out either. The consensus was that she’s going through some sort of change in her life and can’t figure out what she wants. (There were also a couple of observations that she was terribly, terribly full of herself - which she is sometimes but, hey, she was my best friend and we all have our flaws. Apparently, she just can’t accept mine any longer.) It was even more frustrating because she wouldn’t talk about it and we used to talk about everything. It was almost like a divorce as she was one of the people that I thought would always be in my life.

I’m sure the dreams are in part because I felt so helpless to do anything about the situation and kept wondering how it might be my fault. Even though I understand on a logical level that I can’t do anything and don’t believe I am to blame, apparently my subconscious is still bothered by the whole thing. I don’t really know how to resolve that.

Chimera, I will try your technique tonight and see how it works. Thanks for the suggestion.

6

Surly Chick, there is another technique for lucid dreaming that I use with some varying degree of success: get into the habit of asking yourself, “Am I awake?” Don’t just answer yes to yourself straight away, but look around and check that you really are awake first. If you do this often enough, you will start doing it when you’re dreaming. Now what happens here (hopefully) is you ask your dreaming self if you are awake, but the answer will be something like, “Well, I just got served in the store by Abraham Lincoln on roller skates, so that’s probably a little too weird. I must be dreaming! Cool, I can now control this!”

It doesn’t always work that way for me as sometimes my response is to wake up (and I’ve trained myself to do that if the dream is unpleasant - again with varying degrees of success) but when it does work, it’s way cool.

7

I’ve heard about those lucid dreaming techniques before. The closest I got was lying in a semi-conscious state and believing a man in a dark cloak and hood came into the room, looked around, then apologised (wordlessly while speaking!) and left. My g/f asked why I didn’t think it necessary to panic about a strange guy in a cloak in the house while our daughter slumbered.

8

Surly Chick - I’d say, send her an e-mail getting out everything you’d like to say. How hurt you feel, how confused. How you deserved better from someone who has been like a sister for so long. Everything. Not to get an answer from her, but just to put out there your unresolved issues that are causing you problems.

Even if she doesn’t want communication, I think it would to you good to send it. What difference does it make that she doesn’t want you to be it touch? If she’s not your friend, you have nothing to lose, and peace of mind to gain.

StG

9

Surly, I’m sorry for what happened to you :(.
I’ve been in a similar dream predicament for a year. Although my parent’s divorce was best for everyone and having my crazy mom leave was the biggest weight off my shoulders I had ever felt, I still have dreams about her being at home as if the divorce never happened. I guess it was since this was my worst-case scenario- my mother being home again and everybody reverts to the previous miserable state. In my dreams I would yell at her all the things that I wish I could in real life: for being a dumb drunk, stealing, and not caring about the family. Why was she still in the house?! Why did dad even let her back in?! Leave!
She’s never going to change. She’s never going to regret what she did. There was no satisfying explaination. I think it’s the lack of a resolve, a sense of closure, that prevents these dreams from ending. It may be similar with you. The frequency of these dreams has died down over the year, but they still do pop up. I can’t end mine. I don’t know if I ever will. I hope you’re able to in some way because believe me, it does get very annoying after a while.
As for lucid dreaming, I used to be able to do this quite well when I was younger. As somebody above mentioned, try to question yourself in the dream. This environment doesn’t seem familiar. The people are weird. Am I dreaming? I would always bite my lip. When I realized that it didn’t hurt, I knew that I was in a dream and I would try my best to control it.

Good luck!

10

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and support! StGermain, I’ve already sent such an email which is why I feel I’ve done all I can on my side. There was no reply.

nikonikosuru, it’s good to know your dreams have diminished in frequency, and you’re right, I do think it’s a lack of closure causing me the problems. The good news is that I tried Chimera’s technique last night and it worked for the first half of the night but then I woke up and didn’t repeat it before I fell back asleep and had another dream about her. We were at a baseball game, drinking beer and just having a good time and, of course, when I woke up I was sad because I knew that part of my life is gone now. But the fact it worked at all gives me hope!

TheLoadedDog, at your suggestion, I’ve been asking myself all day whether I was awake or not. Unfortunately, I was… :wink:

11

Again, you’re probably going to have those dreams for a very long time.

The other day I had a dream where I was back together with my psycho ex (nearly 5 years after we separated), and in the dream, had been for a while. Now in previous dreams, when I realize I’m with her I freak out and leave or end the dream somehow. But in this one, it was a slow, dawning realization that we had been back together for several months and everything was working out…but coming on the heels of that, a more usual and sane Oh good god what the fuck is going on! RUN AWAY!!! reaction slowly built until I woke up.

Then of course, when I woke up I was all freaked out about how I could possibly have dreamt of being with her and everything being ok, after everything I’d gone through with her.

These dreams are a natural reaction, the desire for and rememberance of Better Days. The mourning of loss, even when that loss is not our fault (for both of us), and even when they are due to extremely insane destructive behavior (my ex).

Now as far as the technique, it’s one thing to ask not to experience those dreams. It’s another to ask to understand and be able to process our own emotions regarding it. I would suggest trying the second approach, then looking at what you dream about, contemplating how you feel about things.

12

The other side of this kind of thing, which would be abused for mentally unstable reasons, is the ability to relive relationships and experiences we have lost.

While I have not as yet deliberately tried to dream about him, every time I dream about Little Guy, my 20 year old cat who died two years ago, it is a gift. He was my pride and joy, and I prize those few dream moments with him. The very first time, it freaked me out, knowing in the dream that he was dead. Since then, it is a wonderous thing.
By way of an example of how dreams can be used to get past the loss of previous relationships;

A couple of weeks ago I dreamt about a couple that I broke contact with seven years ago due to their self-righteous, accusative and abusive behavior. I did not ask for this specifically, I had asked to deal with unresolved pain.

I dreamt of being in a field with them, the wife obviously intent on re-establishing their friendship with me. We were setting up a large tent (symbolic of the relationship), but it was on rocky, uneven ground (you should get that), over which an uneven layer of dark wet mud had been spread (symbolism of bad experiences and negative emotions). Unsure of what we should do about the ground (the past), I turned to the wife, who handed me an open sleeping bag, about 1.5 inches thick cloth, to lay over the mud (symbolism of just covering it up, also somewhat symbolic of more intimate friendship). I looked at it and thought “the mud will just seep right though that, and in very short order, we’ll all be uncomfortable”.

Then I woke up. And understood that No, we (they and I) cannot renew any kind of relationship (they once called me “family”) by just covering up that history of a rocky, uneven relationship and all the negative experiences and emotions. Because in short order, it would seep into our new relationship and make us all uncomfortable. I knew that full well before the dreaming, but this helped me to get through some of the residual pain of losing people once so close to me.

That doesn’t mean there is no more pain there, it just means that the desire to regain that relationship is much less now.

13

Not to be an alarmist or anything, but is your friend the type who’s likely to join a cult?

The whole “don’t talk to me about it – it wouldn’t be productive” angle has me thinking this, plus not giving a reason for the breakup.

And, of course, the non-reply to your e-mail. Cults are adament that contact with “others” is taboo.

14

I’m not sure how to control dreams, but I just wanted to offer some support for the painful experience you are going through. My situation was different because I was younger, but when I was 17 my best guy friend, who was like a brother and swore to always be there for me, completely abandoned me without any explanation. I was going through so many traumatic events at the time, that his abandonment is something I’ve never completely gotten over. The most painful thing is, he still is in contact with my closest family member, so I have to hear about him all the time, and sometimes I still run into him at her social events. I have done a lot of grieving over that loss and I still get angry about it sometimes, 8 years later, because he threw away a lifetime of friendship because he didn’t have the nerve to confront me for whatever it is I did wrong. However, as time passes, I’ve come to terms with the realization that he is not the sort of person I would want for a friend, because I would never do that to someone I loved. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be after 30 years to have someone do that to you. I hope eventually you are able to come to terms with everything and not blame yourself for your friend’s weirdness. If she would stop talking to you after 30 years of love and support, then perhaps she is right – she’s changed too much and isn’t the good friend she used to be. Good luck with everything. I’ll be thinking of you.

15

The way that I learned to control my dreams was gradual but it worked. When you first wake up from a dream and realize that you were dreaming, immediately start thinking about how you would like to have changed it to be more pleasurable to you. Follow this new storyline until you arrive and an ending of your choosing. Eventually, I was able to recognize a bad dream while I was dreaming it and realized that I could make it whatever I wanted. It’s a great way to fend off nightmares too – which I have a lot of because my wife keeps our thermostat turned up so high.

Re: your friend. Could you call her? Just getting the ball rolling on the phone might bring out your differences. ISTM that often situations like this are based on a misunderstanding.

::hugs::

16

Chimera - When I lost my afghan hound, who’d been my best friend for 13 years, I used to have awful dreams where he’d walk into the house, right past me and not look at me. Siddhartha was a one-person dog, and he’d never, never not come straight to me. For three months I had those dreams. Then I got Kate, my pointer-doberman cross. I had one more dream and Sid came to me and put his head in my lap. He said goodbye and I never had that bad dream again. But even now, 20 years later, I miss him.

StG

17

Spiff, in hindsight I can see how one might think a cult might be involved but definitely not. Unless it’s one that involves marathon swimming, gourmet coffee and cats as those are the only things she’s obsessive about.

KRM, she’s specifically told me not to call her and I’m not going to force it. I really just have to move on with my life now. At this point, I’m not sure I would even want to be friends with someone who could behave like this. I don’t think I could ever rely on her again and you have to be able to rely on your friends. And Olives, it must totally suck to be forced to still see and hear about someone who has treated you like that. I don’t think I could deal with that. I’m surprised you’re not having dreams!

The good news is no dreams last night. Either Chimera’s techniques are working or talking about it with all of you is. Either way, thanks!

18

I’ve found that very often, there is no going back. No matter how much it hurts. Like Surly Chick says, the bond of trust is broken. Even if you got back together with the person, you’d always remember the wig out abandonment, and at some level, always be waiting for it to happen again. Just as my dream of the couple showed, those negative past issues are always going to bubble back up and make everyone uncomfortable unless some major major work is done to repair the relationship and keep it on track, and unless there is a strong need for that kind of thing (marriage, family, employment), it just doesn’t tend to happen.

Strangely, that realization that you no longer desire the relationship due to the other party’s behavior can be a healing thought. The self realization that you couldn’t trust them anymore and you’d always be looking over your shoulder taken as internal “this is how it makes ME feel” understanding as opposed to external “that asshole!” blame.
SC, I’d say it’s a combination of the two. Never underestimate the healing power of just being able to talk about something that is hurting. Glad you’re feeling better.