Dream Safety

One of the troubles with trauma is that one often becomes developmentally stuck, at least for a while, at the age the trauma happened. For a teen, that means getting enmeshed in those emotions and hormones for a few extra years. Then compound that by adding in the first stirrings of mental illness. The brain is a jumble. Throughout my 20s, I was simultaneously 17 and 40.

What happens when one is stuck in the “who am I?” years? I couldn’t even pursue the question, because my identity was clear: caretaker, student, bag of anxiety. I had to stay strong, lest my mother call me too dramatic. In bed, after desperately studying trig while listening to Fumbling Towards Ecstasy on repeat, I’d picture a figure to comfort me: a woman, with shining dark hair pulled back in a sleek low bun, with long trailing skirts. A Beth March that lived. An aspect of my own personality, some form of softness I needed but could not ask for.

Ah. I was disassociating.

When I am in a witchy mood, I believe that time is happening all at once. (Like a movie? Yes, like a movie. Arrival.) If I feel well and good and strong, I send some of that back in time to myself, and I suppose that Beth March aspect is who collects it.

After my father died, and a major identity (caretaker) went with him, I was left adrift. My mother never recovered from his death, so in many ways I was orphaned that day. And in turn, I saw myself as dead, that my own wants and desires didn’t quite matter. Not that I didn’t have wants or desires; I went to college, I had hopes, I made plans. But there was always a part of me that felt nonexistent.

Mental illness brought new questions. Who am I? The voice of anxiety telling me I’m unloveable? Depression telling me to kill myself? Mania telling me to movemovemovemove? Am I actually me when I am medicated? When I am at my normal 5/10? Insomnia worsens all of this. All of my selves are out of alignment.

My brain says, “No one loves you. How could they?” It’s my own inner voice saying that. If it’s not me, who is it? I have lived for over twenty years not quite trusting anything I think.

So while my CBT-I doctor’s suggestion made sense, the exercise was difficult to complete: rewrite the dreams and nightmares. Gather the resources to keep yourself safe. We went through dream plots together, and gave them happy endings. Once in bed, I’d picture a backpack and fill it with all the things I might need: phone charger, map, life jacket, phone book.

This sense of safety is similar to an exercise in the book PTSDreams. Linda Yael Schiller suggests asking yourself what you need to feel safe. “[P]erhaps starting with the various categories of people you know. . .real or imaginary. . .”

Companions to help me carry my dreamtime backpack! I loved it. I envisioned Katniss, fiercely protective and loving. Xena, strong and quick. My dreams are violent sometimes, but responding with violence/characters known for violence didn’t feel right. I thought of Beth March, my long time companion, one I have turned to during many sad, sleepless nights.

My dreams are slightly less violent now. I still don’t know who I really am.