Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 123: Deliver Us From Evil

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

“Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.” https://alyssasullinger.com/

Greetings friends. Welcome to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Alyssa Sullenger from Sullyer. I just did that, didn't I? I just put that in my head. Selling her, right? There we go. Jesus.

Screwed up my own introduction. We're doing it live. This is not, there is no take to. Our friend Alyssa Salinger from Pittsburgh PA. She is a transformational life coach. I would say specializing in anxiety, but more broadly helping business professionals break out of cycles of burnout and anxiety so that they can focus on new goals and improve their lives as we do. You can find her at alissa sellinger.com.

That'll be a link in the description below for my part. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for video games and such. I should have my copy of the new book. I screwed it up. I didn't have it ready. Forget it. We're doing it live. Book 16 of ABC series is, oh, words.

dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson. I'm going to pop it up on the screen, probably right over here somewhere. You can get that at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, all that and more. I don't think I'm awake yet today. That's just the way it is. It's enough about me. Let's come back to her friend. Alyssa,

thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm nervous. I know, me too. I think that's part of what I got going on is every time I start these, there's a spike of anxiety. Speaking of which man, it's what you do and what I do. I've actually, I've got some pretty bad social anxiety in that regard.

And I just don't, you know, being on the autistic, I just don't like being around people at all. It's so complicated balancing, so much energy and attention. A lot of people intuit their way through relationships. They just feel it and they go with it. And it all works naturally. Me, I'm like, I have no, I can't rely on my emotional content as a compass. So I have to rationalize everything, which means it's so. much computational processing power to engage with people that I'm just like, I'd rather not.

Nothing personal. I'm just going to stay home. And no, and then I get that. I get, well, I even went through a period of talking about me. And then you can, I'll try to let you speak more. Sorry. I went through a period of my life where I intentionally leaned into curing my social anxiety in a sense or by performance anxiety, being in front of a crowd, public speaking, by being a musician, by singing and playing guitar in public. And one phrase I heavily relied on is you never get over a performance anxiety. You just learn to like it, that stage fright thing. And a lot of it's interpreting your emotions in terms of like, am I excited or scared?

Well, you can lean into the excited side. Yeah. So that's my, that's my story. I'm sure you have something to say. No, that's awesome, though. I love the way that you phrased that. I think that's an amazing mindset shift to have that you just start to enjoy it, to enjoy the performance anxiety.

Because right, exactly. It's the same physiological sensations pretty much that are happening. It's the label that we're putting to it. And if we're labeling it a positive or a negative circumstance. So, yeah, I love that you mentioned that. That's great. I could be nervous or I could be excited. So I'm going to lean into the excited because I can make that choice.

For sure. Yeah. A lot of it is how we understand our emotional and biological experiences that are ultimately kind of neutral. You're having a feeling. That leans into the Buddhist side of things too. It's like you are not your emotion. You're a person experiencing an emotion.

So you can kind of hold it out from you a little bit. It's not as easy as it sounds. and people spend decades learning to properly meditate, you know, in that way. But the concept, it broadly is there. Well, then, and then in relation to how I do these shows, I mean, this will be episode 123. I've done this before. This is not like my first time, but you hit that record button and you're on.

Cameras are rolling. And it's like, oh, no. And then you start fumbling your words. And then it all depends on, I mean, your biological state for the day sometimes. It's like, I don't feel like I'm fully awake yet. I just don't. It's like, well, I mean, I got up two hours ago like I always do. Before an interview, I get up at least two hours ahead. I get my coffee. I do my routine. And sometimes I'm just not there. You know, I'm just not in that moment.

But there's that zone I was talking about with some other people. You're like, you're in the zone. You find the flow. I can very much tell when I'm not in a flow. And I'm just faking it to make it. You know, it's like, well, this has got to get done. I got to say something. So I don't know if that leans. Not leans in. I'm going to stop trying to repeat phrasing like. that I get stuck in a loop. I don't know if that speaks to your approach to the business consulting side of things and, you know, helping people find their flow or transform those, you know, anxiety things into areas of mastery that lets you contextualize it properly.

No, definitely. So a lot of what we do in my program is we are tuning into the physiological. sensations that are going on and we're learning how to how to analyze doesn't feel like the right word I should probably have the word that I'm kind of in the same boat as you today one of those days with the flow just isn't there so yeah for lack of a better word I guess we learn how to appropriately observe yeah yeah that's yeah that's good I think maybe that's half of it I mean I'm not trying to put words in your mouth but since you mentioned that analyze wasn't quite the right shade there's analysis is kind of two parts. It would be observation and understanding in a way.

It's kind of what we're leaning towards. I don't know if those work better, but observe and understand or observe and process, something like that. Yeah. Ooh, I like that. Thank you. That's what I do. Maybe I'm finding a flow today.

The flow kicks off. Sometimes. Yeah. But yeah, no, exactly. And then also understanding while we're, oh, yeah, I love that. Yeah, observing and understanding, because a lot of times we have, like, when we're experiencing anxiety, it's a faulty alarm system that we have going on inside of us, you know? So, like, if you need to slam your brakes to not get into a car accident, that's appropriate anxiety.

You are supposed to have that anxiety because that's going to save your life. But whenever we're walking around with this, like, silent alarm going off in us, that's because the alarm system is faulty. And yet, we are still basing our emotions, and therefore, our behaviors and kind of just our overall, like, vibe and energy of the day based on a faulty alarm system. So that's not a very good foundation to be trying to, you know, run our lives on. So we get a better understanding of why our nervous system is, you know, kind of a faulty alarm system. And we try to reverse engineer. We unlearn, we relearn, we re-reform

that way that we know how to how to appropriately understand what is going on within us. And whenever we can truly understand and bring that awareness, then we can make an intentional decision on how to respond to that. Yeah, definitely. I think that maps on to, say, my dream work in a lot of ways because there's the, there's a vast subconscious, as people say. And it's full of everything we've ever experienced and thought. All of our imaginings are in there as well.

And we get a lot of that jumbled up and it pushes nudges and informs us in so many ways that if it remains unconscious or in the sub, you say subconscious because it's below consciousness there. There's that liminal zone where things cross over into. I can see that. I can hear it. We think of it in sensory perception terms. But if we can bring those ideas and constructs or schemas or whatever you want to call them into our awareness, we can go, oh, look at that's the pattern. I'm repeating that pattern. Now that I see it, I can say, that works for me.

No wonder, I like that. Or that's not working at all. That's producing anxiety. And just something I thought of because I think it's funny. I was a big fan of Garfield. I used to get all the little flip books from the, yeah, from the library and whatnot and check them out and read them. A very famous in my mind, Garfield strip, was there's only one thing to do with a free floating guilt complex. And then the next panel, he kicks Odie off the table.

And he looks at the camera and says, do something to deserve it. Sure. Well, and that's one, actually, I'd say a dysfunctional way to resolve a free-floating guilt complex is become a lean into being a bad person because, oh, of course I'm guilty. I do bad things. The opposite side is to say, this doesn't make sense. Let me look at where this came from. What have I experienced in my life that brought me to the place where I feel like I should,

should feel guilty all the time for nothing or should feel anxiety all the time for nothing. And like, is this the state of being I impose on myself because I'm repeating dysfunctional cycles from my childhood from my past relationships? I don't know how much you get into that. Are business people like a little more reluctant to get into that kind of stuff of like, let's talk about your mother? I mean, they're like, this is business. It's not family. It's like, well, it's all related. I don't know if you run under that roadblock sometimes.

Sometimes there are definitely things that people don't want to touch, especially people who are high achieving business professionals. they're, you know, kind of in the overfunctioning anxiety stage of just like trying to do as much as possible in as little of time as possible. And that's really hard to do when we're opening up some deep-seated wounds. Yeah. So there is that little bit of push back there. Like, oh, I can't think about that right now. I have too much going. Which is kind of part of what the whole program is about is how do we work through these things while still trying to maintain our lifestyle while actually trying to transform into living a best.

better lifestyle, living a lifestyle that actually supports us rather than trying to live up to the lifestyle we've created. And I completely lost where I was going with that. So yeah, me too. I was listening and then I, and then I had a moment of panic. Here's let me rationalize my process. I've had recordings stop or I just forgot to start it. I mean, what and now I was no, it's like when you leave the house, you get in the car and you're like, did I lock the front door? I can't remember. My only cure for that is this, um, And I don't even know if this is tangent or related at all, this is where my brain went with this whole conversation.

My only cure for that sitting in the car, I can't remember if I locked the front door. I left it wide open. My cats are going to escape and get run over in the street. My head goes horrible places with catastrophes. The only cure I found for that is pay attention to what I'm doing. I have closed the door. I have tested that it is locked.

It is closed and secure. Hold that idea in my head all the way. way to the car, all the way to sitting down, all the way to putting my seatbelt on, all the way to starting it up, and then I can let it go. I mean, that, that idea of hold it long enough that it's really there and you're no longer, you've, you've lost it to in attention. I don't know if that relates to anything, but that's kind of my one, one strategy I use for dealing with this sudden resurgence of anxiety. I forgot to do something important. You probably teach attentiveness type stuff or mindfulness, so to speak. Yes. Love some mindfulness. Um,

But yeah, so, right, we're trying to help them get past that roadblock of, I can't take a step back or else my life is going to fall apart and try to re-ac what their lives look like. And so you had asked, I was able to bring it all the way back. So you had asked if it's kind of difficult getting business professionals to get there. In some ways, yes. But then in the other hand of it, the reason why I like working with high achieving individuals is because they understand why it is important to do that work. There's going to be a little bit more buy-in and a little bit less of them digging their heels in the ground because they understand the benefit of it.

And actually, mindfulness is one really good example of where a lot of people are like, okay, yeah, I hear that something that'll be helpful. But like, okay, what else? It's like, no, I mean, there are other things. but you can't what else? You can't next all of the options of the things that are going to be helpful because and that's that's a huge thing. So mindfulness I feel is transformative in origin anxiety and being able to manage and handle

feelings of discomfort. But people feel like they're not doing anything productive if they're just practicing mindfulness or meditation. So kind of having to, you know, try to create a reframe of mindset around there. Like, no, you might not physically be doing anything, but actually you're building a really strong muscle that's going to change your life. And there's nothing more productive than that. For sure. Yeah. And a lot of these, I would say a lot of the resistance people with a specialty in behavior, psychology broadly, faces. People don't kind of understand the usefulness of the concept. And when you try to describe it, sometimes it's like you say things like, well, we would practice this by sitting still and pay.

attention to your breathing and they're like, what is this nonsense? And they don't get the connection. So showing someone like I did with my example, how does this benefit me practically? Well, I don't have to get out of my car and go jiggle the handle every time I leave the house. If I can do this properly, and there are still times when I forget and I, fuck, I'm back in that old routine. I didn't practice the mindfulness at the moment when it was most useful. And it does take that repetition and what is it called?

when you, you do something in another area because it translates to the thing you really wanted, want it to be. So we practice the mindfulness of watching your breathing and in and out and slow counting and your feet grounded and like, like even Tai Chi type of stuff. Because in that moment in the meeting,

when you've got to be focused and pay attention to what someone's doing, you're not going to, oh, my brain was somewhere else. What did he say? How do I respond? anxiety through the roof. Now you're off your game. It's those moments where.

or kind of like having it, developing that muscle memory, so to speak, as you were saying, is like, it's critical. Like, just make this an automatic thing you do as much as possible. And that, yeah, and the idea of business people in general being high achievement. And there's a resistance or reluctance to vulnerability as well. It's like, well, I need to be, I mean, I put on my suit and tie is my suit of armor. I'm going into combat here against the forces of the world, you know, and against my business competitors and against the bottom line.

and so much of these pressures where it's like, yeah, the life or death of a company and all the people that depend on it might be writing on a decision. It's not improper to have some anxiety around big decisions that could go horribly wrong. How much is a problem there? And then people were like, because I'm in this combat mindset, I got to set that aside to be vulnerable in another way and let someone I can trust, see that, you know, let someone else. see it, but also see it for myself. There's a, there's a side of us, which is like if I admit any faults or weakness, it's going to undermine me and my effectiveness. And that's a hurdle where it's like, it can. I mean, that's not an impossible outcome. If it's done poorly for the wrong reasons or in the wrong ways, but actually, you know, getting people at a point where they can say being temporarily

vulnerable in one setting can actually make my armor stronger in another setting. And I've rambled a lot. I'm sure you have something to say. I just, I just say things and throw it. back. No, absolutely. Transferable skills. A thousand percent. And right, vulnerability. And I'm not sure if you or any of your listeners are familiar with Brne Brown. She's a psychologist, researcher, motivational speaker, but she talks a lot on courage and vulnerability going hand in hand and how it's nearly impossible to think of an example of a time that you were courageous without being vulnerable and going through a healing journey or facing your anxiety or bringing it to someone else is very, it's very courageous and it's very, it makes you feel very vulnerable, but

we can't really do anything profound without courage and vulnerability. That's true. Yeah. And the difference between, oh, you got a kitty too. I love it. You'll see mine in the background here. I got what I got there sleeping on the bed. Hi. Oh, cutie. That reminds me of the book the Tay of Piglet goes with the Tao of Pooh. Those books kind of explaining those broad concepts. And there is famous aphorisms that go something like, you know, doing something dangerous without fear is foolhardy. You know, doing something dangerous.

Acknowledging your fear is courage. It's that idea. I said it poorly. And the Tay of Piglet is, it's all about how Piglet is, his character is the most fearful, small, you know, anxiety-ridden, hesitant, uh, creature, you know, like inherently. That's what he is. And he had a moment of the book where he braves the dark forest to go be of benefit to a friend. He's terrified the whole time. And it's like it's more meaningful that he overcame his fear to do

something necessary, something important and beneficial than if he was incapable of fear and just taking a stroll in the park on a Sunday, you know, it's a very different type of thing. And that requires acknowledging, I'm not invulnerable. I can fail if I do it poorly. And it's okay to be afraid of failure in the right degree. And as you're saying, too, I mean, that that leads into some people's conception or misconception or lack of, complete lack of understanding of like what paranoia is into a schizophrenic sense. It's like we kind of literally define it as a fear that is out of proportion to the danger in the environment. So that's when you're, you know, having that, as you were saying, the anxiety, the fear response system, overactive

in a way that's, it's not, it's dysfunctional because it's out of alignment. And if you bring it into alignment, that's what a lot of the medications are intended to do is reduce the instance of, you know, voices and extreme fear in that sense. And, but these are also things, you know, on the, say, specifically schizophrenic side, you can't talk people out of that. Like, talk therapy doesn't actually work. It's good and necessary. You can't leave that out. You've got to talk someone through the process of here's the meds.

Here's what they do. Here's how your experience is going to change. But, you know, other stuff where folks are not dealing with the psychosis, specifically, we can rationalize it and understand it. And that's that self-reflection that really enables it. And then having a, you know, a gentle guide to to kind of facilitate the, the self-understanding is, I mean, it's, I'd say it's almost impossible to do without a little bit of help. It's almost impossible to see ourselves fully without someone else to kind of help us reflect it back a little bit and point out blind spots. I mean, definitely.

Yeah, absolutely. There wasn't, there wasn't a question there. I got to get better throwing things back with a question. I'm not an interviewer, just to win. I'm just a wizard. Right? I mean, yeah, that's not actually my specialty in that sense. But now, I mean, you're a thousand percent, right?

Yeah. Yeah, those are good things. Well, that's why I love doing these interviews. I'm just talking to people, but people who are practicing real, very real principles, putting real ideas, concepts, functional concepts into practice. I don't have my words either today. But that's, so I do want to ask you more about,

so if anyone goes to your website and they book, book a call with you, then what they're going to be doing is saying, you know, I am experiencing so much stress or anxiety that I wish it was less. And I wonder if there's a way to do that. And this person seems like maybe I could get those tools from them. So I'm not asking,

like, you know, pull back the curtain and reveal all your secrets, but is there a general kind of process you have? Like I do my process, which is, you know, write down the dream and then talk about it and then come, you know, work together to build a, build a story. Do you have kind of a process you've dialed in that you would characterize in a specific way? I don't even know what I'm asking. You get the idea. So they book their free discovery call. It's about like a 15 minute to 30 minute call. just kind of depending on the need. And it's really just kind of a conversation.

Like, okay, so where are you at? What's going on? How is this different from where you want to be? And kind of just having a conversation around what those things are that need to change or what they feel needs to change. Well, also for me to getting an idea of what their lifestyle does look like. and what sort of things are feeding this anxiety and burnout cycle. And through having this conversation, I then let them know. I let them know where I think in my professional opinion.

So I'm a licensed professional counselor. And now I do this, but I do still have that background. So I can give that professional recommendation of, you know, if it's not me, that is a good fit. Here maybe what is or here is what would be helpful until, you know, you're ready for me. Like, here's what you might maybe needs to be done first, you know. And we don't just have a conversation about where they're at and what the next steps look like. And if that's me, then heck yeah, let's get you signed up and join and going.

And but if not, that's totally okay. And we're going to figure out what would be the best next step for you. You know, speaking of business models, so yours and mine, so to speak, I mean, we're in business to do good and to make a living. But I need to do something like that with a, and I wrote this down 15 minute, you know, like consultation, free, free. We just talk. Even though this is all free, you can talk to me about anything, but people need to establish number one in comfort zone and find out if you click with someone, like maybe I'm not for everybody. They'd rather talk to a different dream expert. That's fine.

You can, there's a lot of, I don't assert that I'm the best or the only or that my way is, is the way. And a lot of it does come down to that kind of personality clicking thing. And also that allows, there's a dual purpose for the, for the consultation thing. The client, say, needs to know, this person knows what they're talking about. I have a comfort level with them. I think they could actually help me. And you also need to assess, is their situation something I think I can help with?

Because I'm not in this to, say, charge money to someone to run them through a bunch of things that are useless, that I know. they're not going to benefit from. I just won't do that. That's my estimation, unethical. I'm sure you agree. But that's, it has to work both ways. Is this a therapist I can work with? And the therapist says, is this a client I can work with? Is there something to work with? And can I successfully do it? So I should just say to people out there, you know, from my end, reach out to me anytime. I'll talk to anybody. Oh, you can talk for 10 minutes, half an hour and you can say, you know, whether or not you'd like to talk to me about your dreams. We don't

have to jump right into it. Like when I record these things, we talked, I don't know, 10, 15, minutes before we started. I do that every time. Didn't always do that. Now I do it every time because it seems to work better. It seems to be a better, a better method. So we get the kind of, get away the kind of consult ahead of time. And then we start the recording and do the thing. So I did want to ask just broad strokes about your, have you been collecting any data on your clients in terms of demographics? Who reaches out their unique situations? You know, as male and females, people are different types of businesses or levels of business. Have you noticed any patterns, trends, just out of curiosity.

I've noticed it would be majority women, but not all women. I think maybe just being a woman, there's just kind of that natural trust that comes in. I'm not entirely later, but mostly women, I would say maybe 35 to late 40s seems to kind of be the age range, which there's no age. right you know 18 and up is is my role but that's you know yeah just what i've posted i wouldn't say i've noticed and maybe i'm not looking right then appropriately but so far i haven't really noticed any pattern in terms of like their field or business or anything but more often than not things come down to bad boundaries toxic relationships and low self-worth and a lot of self-worth coming from external circumstances.

Yeah, definitely. Well, it kind of makes sense that that would impact women more. There's temperamental type of stuff and Big Five personality stuff on the neuroticism side, where it makes sense to me, at least, that women would be a little more likely to experience at least some higher levels of anxiety naturally and kind of processing that, integrating that would be more necessary for them. And definitely not to say that men don't, but they definitely repress it a bit more and maybe less likely to reach out.

But also combined with, they're kind of less susceptible to it in a way as well. It's a bit in the way that would kind of skew the results. And then have, you know, it might also be that, yeah, some men might be a little more comfortable being vulnerable in front of another man versus a woman. It's a, we have our cultural expectations and are kind of pride of like, I need women specifically to see me as strong and capable. I can go be weak in front of another man, but not in front of a woman. That's embarrassing or shameful.

So that might skew your personal demographics a little bit as well. But it's good that, you know, I think that's why it's good to have a variety of people that offer a similar service so people can say, I don't even know why. It's subconscious reasons. I don't click with this person and we can refer you to a colleague. And that's why a lot of us are happy to do that. I'm not going to work for you. That's fine.

No, nothing personal. It's okay. You know, you can just not like my face. It's fine. And if you don't work for someone else, there's a good chance that they're not going to work for you either. And it's not going to be a very spontaneous relationship. And right, exactly like you said. I mean, of course, it would be fantastic to be able to create some sort of program that did help everyone all the time, 100%.

That would be awesome. But that's just not realistic. I don't think so. It's not about, you know, yeah, you know, get on my website, type in your credit card information and get in there. Like, yeah, it's, I want you to be able to trust me and I want you to be able to trust yourself. And I want to be able to trust me that like, that I'm confident that I can help you. Because, you know, how good is it to make a sale if someone's like, you didn't do shit to help me, send me my money back, you know? Like, that doesn't, nobody wants that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's. Only the people that you're confident that you can help. Yeah. And there's definitely a unique kind of satisfaction that comes with a job well done because you provided something the person found useful.

And you can observe, you know, it's not just a subjective, oh, I feel better. Thanks. That's good. That's fantastic. But also a positive change occurred that you can actually measure and say, you know, when I go into these meetings that used to terrify me, I am much calmer. I can think more clearly.

I can get my point across better. I can deal with, you know, I'm not someone who, it's a weird, I'm a weird combination of like talking about the big five thing. I'm very open and very disagreeable in that sense of like, and that's funny because people think disagreeable equals asshole. Not exactly. I can be, but a lovable asshole, you know. But, but more the idea of like, I don't seek confrontation, although I love debate.

I love, I love the rationalizing of ideas and distilling. So I'll get into, you know, I'm on some other Discord servers. And if anyone from there watches this, you know who you are. We, it's not a vicious battle of conflict of wills, you know, in like, I'm going to destroy my opponent. But I'm damn sure I have this idea and I'm going to defend it strongly because if I'm wrong, you got to show me. I'm not going to just yield.

There's a difference. So I'm very disagreeable on that side of things, an argumentative. But in person like this, I don't do, so long story, sure, what's the point? I don't do conflict well. I don't like having to go. to someone to their face and say, I don't like what you did. I want you to change or that you're not respecting a boundary. And to have, it becomes so, it's a collaboration. It's a friendship. If you go to a person and say, hey, there's a boundary, you crossed it. It made me feel uncomfortable. And they go,

oh my God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. It's another thing saying in a professional setting where it's like, this is my boundary and the other person goes, I don't give a good goddamn. And you're wrong and I'm going to cross it again and you got to work with me. Oh, what do you do? And, you know, I've had had those issues in the past where I'm like, I throw my hands up. I worry over it. I mean, those thoughts would obsess me in the past. I don't know if you get folks coming to you with that one. I mean, you did mention boundaries and healthy relationships in general. Definitely. And I feel like a lot of the people that I do work with, it does so happen to be it's, it's the personal relationships where the boundaries are struggling.

Work relationships too, definitely. You know, some people have some very toxic work environments. Yeah. But the ones that people seem to have a harder time, you know, dealing with are the personal ones, just from my experience. Sure. Yeah. Recruited.

And if your personal life, your family, your friends, your relaxation time, You're out of work time is out of balance, is its own variety of toxic or disturbing. That bleeds over. You're the same person. You're the same lightning rod carrying all this energy that walks into work the next day. And you've got to be like all these things on your mind where like my, you know, my relationship with my husband or my kids or my neighbor is, you know, my best friend is not functioning beneficially to me.

Yeah, that's definitely going to impact your ability to perform at work. It caused a lot of self-doubt in that regard of like, if I can't manage my personal life where there's no money on the line, no one's going to lose their job, no one's livelihood is at stake. Can I manage relationships with higher stakes? And it's very undermining, huh? Yeah. Yes. I didn't really ask a question there, I guess. Yeah, yeah, me too. Sometimes I just sit with an idea too. It's okay to have a moment of silence. That's tough with putting on a show. You think you got to keep saying something all the time, but I try to remind myself, maybe not.

I don't want to be boring, but I also don't want to just blab to fill up time. I want to say something interesting. If I don't have anything to say, maybe I just think about it for a minute. Or you can just add that cinematic value of just like the cliffhanger, just the mic drop moment. Dun, dun, dun, done, done. I did have a kind of, I threw my pen down moment in a recent episode people will have seen by this time where I'm like, oh, I just impressed myself. Wow. That sounds so egotomaniacal.

but I do love those moments where I'm like, I didn't think I was capable of that. What just happened? Sometimes things coming in the air. Yeah, yeah, I just enjoy. Just enjoy the moment. I had that too. It's random stuff.

I do video game streams as well. And I just ended a 94-hour, month-long run of the entire Mass Effect series. I got to the, whoa, dog's going to fall out of my lap. Go back to sleep, buddy. Got my peanut butter here. I see that you had a dog on you.

I know right next. He's so quiet. He just wants to sleep on daddy's lap. Right. I got to love our pets. Well, I had this, it was so, such an emotional experience to come to the end of something that you put consistent effort over time into and was such a part of your life for weeks. And then it, and then it's over. And you're having feels, all the feels, all at once.

Like I'm proud of the accomplishment in a way. I, you know, my determination, I enjoyed the process. It was a, you know, a worthy struggle in a sense. And now it's over. And you just feel like cut adrift. And you don't know what to say. You don't know what to do. I decided to take the rest of the week off and not stream a new game.

Like I'm just going to sit with this feeling and not, not throw myself into a new thing that allows me to repress it or avoid it. I'm just going to feel. I've conceived of this long time ago, this idea of there's, I could call it post-vacation depression. You're driving home from Disneyland. The fun is over. It's back to real life. You know, there's that down, that trough that comes after that. And that's kind of, kind of what it is.

I don't know if you have a different way of expressing it or understanding it. Maybe there's lingo I haven't caught up on in the last 20 years that explains it better. But, okay, now what? sort of empty feeling. There's a void now. Definitely. I think that probably happens with people in business too when they've completed a massive project.

I mean, there's always something else on the horizon, but it's like this thing I poured my heart and soul into is complete and I did well, but it's, but it's over. There's that finality to the experience that leaves us, yeah, empty. It is an emptiness. Kind of a sucking vacuum. I see a, in my mind, a representation of a, what are those whirlpools at a dam where it's right near the edge and it's because it's going out of the out the spout and it's this and I'm like that's me that's me that big emptiness.

So maybe that's part of what I'm dealing with this week too like out of my flow. I'm like if I was in another game already, I would be in a flow out of a structure. It's part of my autistic thing too. Have you, that's another question for you, I guess. The idea of have you run across different people with different mental health concerns that they're actively managing like say, I got autism so we need to put your framework through my capabilities. If you run into those things,

not as much, you know, people dealing with chronic depression or other issues, beyond anxiety disorders. Yeah, not as much. Okay. Not yet.

And it might also be, like I got the diagnosis late in life, just a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, been asperger's. And then I look back at my life and I'm like,

oh, that makes sense. So I've always been this way. Oh, that's what it was. You know, I went through a, wondering a bunch of different things about, what diagnosis might fit. And I didn't want to be the med student who's like, I have this rare

disorder because I read it in a book. And that's the funny thing too, is psychology is like, in medical school, they say you're going to read all these texts, you're going to see these disorders and the symptoms, you're going to think you have them, you don't have them. 99.9%. The other side, psychology is actually the reverse. Like, you're going to see all these symptoms and you have all of them. It's a matter of degree. It's the human condition. It's when it's out of whack. Like they say the difference between, you know, have, uh, uh, have, uh, uh, having a beer once in a while and alcoholism is is it a problem like by definition are you out of control is this consumed your life to the way you're no longer able to change your behavior voluntarily

uh you know big becomes a problem on some sliding scale um so yeah and that well that's probably a good point too like we don't need um you don't have to have say a diagnosed anxiety disorder to see a therapist and and especially in the context of you know my anxiety is just a little bit out of control in these circumstances. So what can I do to rein that in? Get some mastery that helps me. And I found that too. Like you probably know this principle as well, that it is basically mastery that kind of tames anxiety. Am I saying that in a way that you understand or conceive it? Can you elaborate on that? Sure. Sure. I was trying to throw a question back to you, but I should elaborate. The idea that is our anxiety is often like a fear of catastrophe.

fear of failure. It's a signifier of danger in a way like fear, but what we, what we obsess on worry over is the idea that we're not going to rise to a challenge that we're, do we have some level of incompetence that's going to cause failure? So the idea of being, so what do you do if you are bad at public speaking? You join toastmasters and you practice and you get competence. You master the, the art of public speaking. And by that mastery, you, conquer that you eliminate the need for the anxiety

because there's no longer a cause. The cause is fear of failure. You have now reduced the likelihood of failure. I don't know if this is kind of making... I'm probably using too many words for something very simple. I'm totally following you. Good deal. And that's...

Is that part of your... Part of what you do with folks, too, in terms of trying to identify areas they feel they're lacking in competence, where they can increase... their confidence and then, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

I mean, self-worth and self-confidence, it bleeds out into absolutely every aspect of our lives and, you know, how we make decisions and therefore we create a reality based on where our self-worth and self-value are. So, yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of anxiety that comes from. just this core belief of I'm not connected to something, to anyone, even myself. There's no safety here. But whenever we have a stronger sense of self-worth and confidence and resiliency because of that,

that worth, and right, that kind of does negate the need for that alarm because safety and connection aren't at risk anymore. Yeah, definitely. That's what I was going for. And that's a great thing, too, is like helping people kind of connect those dots in their self-understanding and making these subconscious in that way processes that are there anyway, just making them visible. Like, here's what's happening.

And you can watch it. Look at that dominoes. And learning how to, well, if we just pull that domino out, it's not going to connect anymore. Hey, we did it, you know. I love it. I love analogies. But, you know, one thing I never did, and I usually do in the beginning, is ask what people's time frame is.

I don't know if people come into these expecting we're going to be at it for two and a half. I've done as long as four and a half hours. I'm not going to ask you to do that. It either happens or it doesn't. But do you have a heart out in terms of time today? So I'm good until the end of the hour that we're on right now. Gotcha. Well, then we should probably roll into the dream thing because it could take that long

to kind of pin down something. Let me do a little note here. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms,

and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube, and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. All right. Well, there we go.

Yeah, let's do the dream thing, and then... So, as I was mentioning before, and I can't remember if I said it on air off here, but basically three-step process. Number one, I shut up and listen. You always got to just hear what's being said to you. We're going to go through it again and kind of help me see it through your eyes. And then somewhere along the line,

we'll get into kind of a phase three, putting together a story that makes sense for your personal experience. So I am ready when you are. All right. So it's a little fragmented, not, you know, full story. mode. Maybe I should have painted a beautiful picture, made a comic strip or something to keep all the details. It's okay. So for a little bit of context, my best friend is someone who has been my best friend for the last math, 18 years.

So pretty much whole life. We've been together in life. I mean, she's lived in different time zones, pretty much ever since we graduated, high school, but we've, she's still my best friend, we still talk every day, and it's, it's great. So, um, so in my dream, she and I, now she lives in Texas. I live in Pennsylvania. So again, different times zones. But in this dream, we are together and we are going to an apartment that I was pretty much moved out of at this point. It wasn't a real apartment from my life, but I remember thinking of an apartment I used to have on the south side of Pittsburgh. So I'm not sure if that's what it was supposed to be

or, you know, how dreams work where it's just things that are supposed to have this air of familiarity about them, but they're not actually objectively familiar. But yeah, we're going to this old apartment of mine to finish cleaning it out, turn the key over, all that good stuff. And we're only, we're not even there.

for in dream world what was supposed to be like maybe 10 minutes or so because we could feel like just this this presence, this very overwhelming and unwelcoming presence. So we're like, okay, this is sketchy, you know, we're getting out of here. But before we were really even able to make it out, things kind of started happening to her. And I don't remember exactly what the details were, but I remember it was something that alluded to the idea. of like possession pretty much. And so that's kind of where there's like a hard stop on that part of the dream. Yeah.

And next thing we know, we are on a bus. And I don't remember, you know, any details of where that was or what time of day or really anything like that. But I know that I was looking around for her and I couldn't find her. And so I'm looking, it's like a super crowded bus. I'm running up and down the aisle. looking everywhere, trying to find her. I'm screaming her name, and I can't find her. And I'm asking other people around if they've seen her. I don't remember if it was by name or trying to describe her, but no one had seen her at any point. And I just remember panicking. And I'm trying

to text my boyfriend to be like, I lost Carrie. I don't know where she went, you know, freaking out. But my phone keeps, and I always have issues with phones in dreams. Technology is always really hard. Half the time I can't see straight. I'm trying to type and I can't actually type things.

It's always a mess. But, so while I'm trying to type this message to him, trying to explain what's going on, which that, those sort of things can be an entire dream itself. It can be such a lengthy that it was. But I'm trying to, I'm trying to send him this message, but my phone keeps

morphing back and forth between it being my phone and it being his phone. And he wasn't with me in this dream. And I'm okay, I don't know how to text him if I technically have his phone. So that, you know, it was a whole thing trying to type a message, phones changing, all that. It was great. So then I, again, that's kind of where that part of the dream ends. I'm not sure at what point, I guess I said, well, screw Carrie. I'm going somewhere else. I don't know. I don't know what happened, but I made it back to my house, like the plate, like where I currently live.

My boyfriend was sleeping in my bed very peacefully, very happily. But I could still feel that same presence that I had talked about at the beginning of the dream. There was still this like unwelcoming scary presence around. And at the end of the dream, I had just kind of. like came up next to him, kind of cradled, hit like his head, like in my like lap chest area. And I just started reciting the Lord's prayer on repeat, on repeat, on repeat until I woke up. So that was the dream. Just writing down the last bit of details here.

Fascinating. Always, I have never, never bored or uninterested in these experiences. And one thing you described. So just to let folks know we're listening, the idea of the fragmentary nature of dreams, this is, it's very common to have sudden scene changes as one idea maybe connects to another, that kind of a thing. I think I just, my whole thing got like darker. Oh, yeah, a little bit. Yeah, because I brought out all my white paper and I was trying to color balance. What, that's fine.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it's not a failure of yours that there are no connecting links. Very often there are no connecting links because one idea triggers another vignette milieu type of thing. Once one idea is complete, now we're in another setting exploring the connected link into that, and it resolves maybe. You've got a bit of a three-act play going on there, which is also very common. People tend, I won't say this, they tend to, but I've found it that a lot of these things do have kind of,

three segments that kind of fit together for some reason. It's not a hard and fast rule. Very often it's one long thing and that's fine too. Okay, getting down to the analysis type of thing. So that was this page first. So you've got a friend from real life. So you've got a representation of someone you know. So it's something about them that is relevant to this first portion of the dream.

And it can be as simple as who else would come to help me clean an apartment but my best friend. But this scenario also seems to bring her in because she's the one that needed to be possessed in a way or subject to this force. So that's also the reason she's there. And any, broad, broad strokes on that type of thing. So you've got, you're going to an apartment to move out. you're doing the final say cleaning and you're going to turn in the key so there's something about um uh what i'm saying here to there's final actually if we were literally returning the key but yeah we're going that idea yeah you're there to do the final well there's something

about the finality of of a of um it's ending something it's the last act of closure in a way there's something you're you're you know this is the last thing you do that symbolizes when it's done this thing is over we were talking about things being over earlier um so but it's also um you know you you found yourself enacting a responsibility you didn't in your dream show yourself blowing off the cleaning it's something you felt needed to be done that speaks to something about your personality um you know the you were enacting the final responsibility which puts closure on the the end of a period of time. And you're bringing your best friend into this as someone who is a support,

a companion, but also someone vulnerable that you can observe being affected by whatever this. So there's something in there that is an unwelcoming presence. But you didn't get the sense that it was the reason you were leaving. So it's something connected to, I don't know, I want to stop there. Do you have any thoughts so far? You do or you don't. It's okay.

But if anything comes to mind. I wouldn't really have any thoughts so far. Not yet. This only thing that would come to mind is in terms of, like, her being someone that would be possibly vulnerable to the situation. I feel like she is often the voice of reason to me more so than like an emotional. I mean, yeah, there's emotional support to there too. But I guess vulnerability is not the connection that I'm. I'm making with this person, but.

Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, I don't think she's an icon of vulnerability in that sense, but there's something, there's a reason you visualized or experienced this presence attacking her instead of you. So there's something, something about an idea she represents. And maybe it is, maybe, maybe the idea that voice of reason came to mind that maybe the logical approach to something is vulnerable to some kind of possession. There's the idea of, I don't know if you see where I'm going with that.

I don't even know if I see where I'm going with that. That's what I'm feeling there. Like there's some reason she's, you brought her in as the person to see this happen to. And there's a reason it continues in the next thing. where you've lost her. The, the act of being targeted by this, or vulnerable to this force, being acted upon by this force caused a disconnection where you're, now you're in a public transport situation where you're surrounded by other people, the, the faceless crowd in a way.

I might be getting ahead of myself. I wanted to mention that connection just because, you know, there's something about being being vulnerable or attacked by this force that then causes you to be to be lost from them. But I wanted to say, do you remember any specific behaviors in the house? Like, what were you there to clean, so to speak? Or what behaviors did you perform in the house? It was only about 10 minutes you were there. That's the feeling you had at the time you were present.

But what did you do? You walk in the front door and you went straight to the kitchen and you start cleaning the floor. Do you have any memory of that kind of what you were there to do specifically, physically? I don't really have the memory of what we did, but for some reason my brain wants to say we were, like I was sweeping or getting ready to sweep. Like the floor was dirty. I don't know. Sure. I am.

I'm not sure if that was what was really there or if that's just what my brain's trying to fill in now. Yeah, we always got to at least beware the possibility of, you know, what I think Freud called secondary elaboration. Am I just filling in the gaps? I'm trying to be, you know, trying to make, trying to make sense of this. Sometimes it is, but there's, I mean, that's a very iconic cleaning behavior. When you think of cleaning something, I went straight to wiping the floor, you know, like mopping the floor. We used to sweeping. Yes, we sweep, we dust, we mop, that kind of thing that's cleaning.

But it, but it can also be, go ahead. To be removed, too. Say, say, yeah. There might have been like some loose items that I wasn't bringing with me that were sitting around and needed to be removed as well. but those are really the two things that yeah there's something about this that says to me like the thoroughness of an of an analysis in a way that's the analysis the wrong word i think we're talking about that before the observation the um there's something about due diligence there's a there's a process that needs to be completed properly and there's there's final stages to it that it is

not complete until it is those those things are taken care of and you've put it in this framework of, well, it's like moving out of an apartment. Of course, my friend's there to help me, and we're going to sweep because that's what you do. But going through this process, doing what needs to be done, there's something in this environment that then starts being expressed as a possession thing on my friend. So it's related to what you're there to do in that way. I don't if this is bringing anything to mind in terms of understanding process and completion and results, something, something in there about the way you're conceptualizing. If anything comes to mind, like, cut me off any time, of course. Would you say in your relationship, if she's the voice

of reason, you're more the voice of emotion, in a sense? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There may be an analysis there too. Your own observing of logic itself, the logical approach, the idea of logical analysis being vulnerable to being possessed by something. It's subverted. I don't know if that's making sense. Like it isn't, it isn't as foolproof as some of us might wish it to be. You know, logic alone isn't going to get us some places we need to be. I don't know. I feel like that's, if any of this is resonating with you, let me know if none of it is. I could be completely on the wrong track. Is that a discussion you've ever had with her? The idea of how to make sure you're seeing things, seeing something clearly from, you know, rational or emotional

standpoints. I refer to her as my, my accountability in a sense. So I've had my own, which I think that social supports is one of the most, you know, impactful things that we can have and and I have had my own fair share of unhealthy toxic relationships that I've had to heal from and so she kind of became my the person that I would be like hey this is what's going on am I seeing this correctly am I handling this correctly like yeah it's kind of like helping making sure that I'm holding my ground and then I'm like having those those boundaries in place and kind of getting her her second opinion sometimes when I feel maybe a little emotionally flooded and not sure if I'm thinking clearly or sure

yeah that's that's good to know too because I started kind of reconceptualizing this a bit understanding how you see her a little bit better um this may be more the idea of you know losing that as a reliable resource or making good decisions like it isn't you're really worried about her and the relationship falling apart. I may, could be, but I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't assume that. And, and, and I don't think that's, I don't think I see that. It's more the idea of what she represents in this context.

The idea of what if my, what if ending some process and, and what I'm relying on is this, well, the reliability of a certain accurate feedback of the mirroring the, the, the, tell me if I'm crazy type of type type of conversation. There's something about ending a specific process where you've got to be responsible to do, finish all the details diligently. And this environment itself and the completion of this process puts your,

the reliability of feedback at risk in a way that like, I don't know if this is making sense. Like sometimes things come to people and they go, wait a minute, I feel it. Here's what that makes me think. So it isn't about her. losing her. It's more about the concept of your reliance on accurate feedback being subverted.

Like there's a, there's a nature to possession, which is it's not the person anymore. Now it's a demonic force. Now it's something else that is that is corrupting something otherwise good. I'm not sure. I'm a little vague on this too. There's, it's very interesting. I might be trying to rush myself as well to make sure we don't run out of time. So I'm probably not walking through the deep dive portion like I normally would. I'm trying to connect some dots, maybe too much ahead of time. We got a little bit of details there. And there was no, what was the last thing you remember in the house, in the apartment?

What were the, what would, what would you see as signs that this feeling of an unwelcome, unwelcoming, the feeling that you were unwelcome and that overwhelming, like a presence was affecting her. What were the, was, were there any visual signs or behavioral signs that she displayed that you go, oh, something's happening to her? There were, but I can't remember what they were. Fair enough. Fair enough.

And there might actually not have been any, so there's a, what is it, The difference between seeing something and knowing something in a dream is immaterial. So if you just know it was affecting her, that's the same as, oh, I saw her eyes suddenly got weird and her head tilted and she started doing weird things with her arms. Those are very visual things. None of that needs to be there for you to just go, it's affecting her. I know it because you do. And so it is.

Because it's a dream. Yeah. That puts you on a bus. So there's something about her being affected. says, okay, this concept has been completed. You've seen it fully for what it is. Now, here's the next step. Here's the logical connection with, in a sense, to that one. And it's, it's a, you know, public transport bus. And you said you're running back and forth. So is it just like the standard bus size or we're talking about like the double buses or like a,

but you nodded. So I don't have to keep going, I guess. Just standard bus. And you had the impression that you couldn't see here from like, because you can see from one end to the other just standing still, but you're running up and down the aisle trying to engage individuals. Have you seen her? Where is she? Do you remember any details about who you spoke with who, the type of person you talked to?

First, it was an old man, then it was a child, then it was, et cetera. Any details like that? Say that it was people roughly my own age. And it was not children, not elderly.

It was mostly your, looking so you're looking to compare yourself perhaps to people most similar to you in your demographic maybe there's something about comparison to others at a similar place in life or ability does that feel feel like something demographic exemplars in a way that's not the right idea but i think it's a very logical thing to do too for us is we don't often compare ourselves now to people that are very different in a lot of ways. Because it's not a good. We understand intuitively it's not a good comparison.

We might compare ourselves to someone very different in terms of where we're going. Like when I get old, so I, if you had, if you had said, well, I stopped and asked an old woman who looked like she was a business professional at one point in her life, but now she's retired. That would be maybe more aspirational type of thing. of like let me look to other, but you're looking at, and the idea that, so you're running and you're screaming and you're panicked

and it's, this disconnect to the fact that you've lost your friend, you've lost this voice of reason, uh, you're actually looking amongst your own demographic. And you're not finding, you're not finding help. You don't find her there.

They can't tell you where she is. Comparing yourself to others just like you is, is not going to tell you anything. useful. I see you nodding a little bit. Are you feeling that? Yeah. Yeah. So there's something there of like, I'm looking in the wrong place. I'm looking for help from the wrong source, or at least processing that idea. And it seems like you put it in a, it's interesting that you made it, you know, it wasn't a train. It wasn't an airplane. It wasn't a busy bus station. It was on a bus. There's something about your traveling. It's a mode of transportation.

It's public transportation, too. This wasn't you running a limousine. I don't know if you have any connections to public transit? Is there something you use generally or you don't use generally? You don't use generally? Interesting. I wouldn't put it as a status thing in terms of you're looking down on anyone in a bus, but it's like you're definitely looking in a place you wouldn't normally be. You would normally be on a bus and asking a bunch of strangers who look similar to you.

for advice. So there's something about, that's why I kind of lean into that idea of the nameless, faceless public mass. There's, it can be useful to look at broad trends. It can be useful to use that as, what do most people do. But maybe that idea,

if that's what it is, is like this is the broad public in general, you're not going to find what you're looking for there. They can't help you. There's something to that idea. So you actually reach out to, and you're on, you're still on the bus when you're trying to text your boyfriend? Yeah.

What was the last thing you can remember before you thought about whipping out your phone and reaching out to him? Did anything happen on the bus? You ran from one end to the other and then you called him or you never made it all the way to the back row and you stopped. I think it was at the point where I didn't really know what else to do that I had looked around. I looked in every seat, every face and couldn't find her.

Okay. There's another, like, uh, example going here of you've done everything you can. You've been duly diligent. You've exhausted your options first and then you reach out. Um, it says something very similar to the, you're not going to let the final stage of apartment cleaning go unfinished. There's a very, very completionist look, look at that type thing. I'm going to do everything I can before.

And that's, that's also too. It's, uh, it seems like reflecting on you, um, you put the burden on yourself in a way to make sure you've done everything you can before you reach out because otherwise it's not fair to the other person to dump your burden on them. When you haven't done everything, you could. There's a bit of a self-concept in there as well. So I just did want to write that down like exhausted options and then reach out. And that would be the next, you know, you've got your best friend and you'd probably look to her for those, for a different kind of feedback than you get from. boyfriend. Boyfriend is not a best friend. They are two separate things and they have two separate purposes. And then that's good to know the difference. Even if your boyfriend's your best friend,

we just, we kind of say that. But you can talk about some things with your best friend. Guys can be gross with each other and girls can have their own emotional conversations and whatnot. And we keep that separate from maybe our core intimate relationship, even though we're solidly committed in partners and love that person and really do enjoy spending time with them. You get the idea. I ramble too much. Sometimes I try to explain these things to myself to say, why does this fit? I'm trying to think my way through it as well. So you exhaust your options and then you reach out to him.

And this is when you had the experience that, how did that process play a little bit? You got to tell me the story of reaching my pocket, I pulled up my phone and then. Yeah, so pull out my phone. And like I said, it kind of kept going back and forth. Like, it would one moment it would be my phone. The next moment it would be his phone.

but while trying to and this is a reoccurring thing in so many of my dreams but it's like I can't just type I can't just like type and send a message almost any time that I'm trying to send a text in a dream I never end up actually sending the text

because I can't see clearly or like my like dexterity is off or I just keep making typos and typos and typos and typos. And so I probably, I don't, I probably never actually sent the message, especially since half the time it was his phone. And I was like, okay, if I send a message, where is it going to go? So yeah, it was a lot of chaos and trying to just send a simple time.

And the, the thing that popped into my head was, you know, like, complications or failure in successful communication. This is literally what you're trying to do. You're trying to send a message. And that might be, and again, whether this is real or not, and that's the thing about dreams, too, is like, okay, number one, they're all imaginary. They're in her head. But whether it is real, realistic appraisal of real life behavior or not, a real life situation or not, sometimes it can just be an expression of our fear. Oh, no, I'm going to be in a moment of panic and I'm not going to be able to communicate effectively. So there's something in there about the, and it comes to me about this idea of the, you're visualizing. or experiencing specific technical failures of I can't, you know, I can't see clearly enough to hit the right buttons. I don't know what I'm trying to say in a sense, a typos. And lacking the dexterity is more of a, also kind of a finding the right way to say things,

but more the physical completion of speech rather than the composition side of formulating a message. And it's your phone and it's his phone. And there's, There's part of like you said, how am I going to get a message to him if I'm messaging his phone from his phone? That's not going to work. So there's maybe the going back and forth is, and we often do that, we waffle in our own mind. Well, this seems likely, this seems equally likely. So there's probably something in there about expressing that idea of doubt that the process is going to be effective at all. Am I wasting my time trying to do this thing?

I see you nod in a little bit. So some of that seems to, are these, do these align with some of the questions you have been struggling with lately in terms of, I don't know, what am I trying to say? Not just like, we all do. But is it a little more intense than that with you or some specific examples of struggling to communicate something that isn't coming through and wondering if you can get it to come across at all? I could see, yeah. Yeah, I could see that. I feel like, and specifically with him too, yeah, I feel like there's been, and I'm not sure how much of it is my inability to appropriately communicate or if it's about it being received appropriately or if it's even just a mixture of both. Yeah, definitely.

And that's something we all go through. And then it peaks and troughs throughout our life as well. We have, you know, periods of, it almost seems like you can just look at someone and they know what you're thinking. And then other periods of time where like my experience is so different and my ability to conceptualize it for myself and put it into words you can understand and speak them properly so that you can understand. We're just having a communication breakdown in that sense. And there might be, my thought was, you know, it's, I don't think this is, uh, I, I wasn't. looking at a communication breakdown with your BFF situation. She was a representation more. I was looking towards you trying to communicate with your boyfriend and the fact that the dream

ended with you physically and emotionally connecting with him in a protective manner. I'm going to keep the bad thing away from him by chanting the Lord's Prayer. It's like I have a process, I believe, will be functional. I'm going to implement it. But he isn't conscious. He isn't actually participating. That was when we're going to get there too, if I didn't have a cat land on the, notes, I love you, baby, girl. I love you. You can't be here.

Not right now. I like to get these. I like to get these for screen caps later for like, these the babies, but then they got to go. Okay. So we were getting there. I'm rambling again. That's what I do.

So the end of this experience on the bus is kind of coming to the conclusion. This method has been exhausted in terms of I've tried it and it is not working. And that ends that vignette. It's like the last thing you kind of think of before,

boom, you're home. This is interesting too. We've got a representation of a place you no longer live. You've moved out of. You've moved on from. You've walked away. You've put a pin in it.

You cleaned it out. That chapter's done. Whatever that is. You've got a representation of transportation of transportation, of movement, of going from one place to another. And maybe the idea that you're not alone. own in that, that you're experiencing what a lot of other people do too. You're on the same bus

as they are probably. And, but that said, just looking at their example or looking to them for advice is not getting you what you need. You're looking at cohort exemplars is not yielding that you are going to go away. You're going to go. Compressed air. Harmless, but you go away. You get off my notes. I love you. And so then this brings you closer to home. I mean, that expression idea of where is the problem really? It's maybe in the home. And you find that this presence is there with you.

It's followed you or maybe it was there all along. You only became aware of it when you started looking in another place. And it threatened your relationship with your best friend in a way. You looked for an answer and now you're at home. it's there and you're finally kind of seeing that idea. He is asleep and perfectly happy, you say. He's got that contented little dopy smile that we get in our sleep. So he's kind of, I would say the word that comes to mind is blissfully unaware.

Is that kind of, and this, again, sometimes these things get personal. And if you don't give me permission to release this, no one will ever hear it. So, or I can always cut things out as I say. But we're getting really, you probably didn't expect to go there with this dream that this is where it was going to take you to. analyzing your relationship with your significant other, you know. Nope, I'm here for it. Yeah, that's good. I appreciate that.

Fearless, fearless, morally inventory as the, as the AA folks say. And if we need more time, I can, I can make a little bit more time if we run over a little bit. I think we're getting there. Like, I always start these things confused with horrible performance anxiety. And I'm giving you nothing and nothing's making sense to me. And you're not going, oh my God, yes. And I start panicking.

Like, am I going to get anything? think what no we're dialing something in i feel this i hope you do too um yeah and so you you're wonderful that's you know that's that's what we're looking for so there is very much something about you you're showing him and i say blissfully unaware so this is a problem where it's like he's not bothered by because he doesn't see it he's actually asleep to it um and you're trying you want to communicate something um and you feel the presence is in the home you feel there's a threat to him to you to the relationship. And what you do is, you know, since he's asleep, and it's interesting, you don't wake him up. You're not trying to, what you're doing is showing yourself enacting,

a caretaking, comforting, protective situation of like, well, just let him stay asleep and I will enact the protection independently. I'll take, I'll take this on myself to make everything okay. So I don't know if I want to stop there and have you say something about that framing. I don't know. I do need to drink water. I mean, it's, yeah, I feel like, I feel like that is resonating. That's hitting home. So maybe sometimes dreams are, here's what I want.

Sometimes dreams are, here's what I think is an effective remedy. They give advice. Sometimes dreams are just, let me see this for what it is clearly. And I can figure out what to do about it another time. So this seems like a thought process where you're trying to say, how am I conceptualizing this communication disconnect with my boyfriend? And how do I see myself responding to it? So there may be an element of, what am I trying to say?

For the sake of the relationship, for his ability to remain happy and blissfully unaware, you're doing a bit of self-sacrifice. We'll take on the demons myself and not let it wake him up. Not let it disturb his sleep, disturb him. Now, whether that is true or not, whether you think, oh, I'm worried, that's what I'm doing. That might be the conceptualization as well. It's kind of your personal understanding of the situation. I could just ask bluntly.

I mean, do you think that's actually what's happening or you're just worried you're going to let that happen if you don't handle things better? I don't know how you feel about it. Yeah, I feel like that part has happened. And now it's kind of on the other, the other end of that. So, right, like a lot of self-sacrifice because it's what felt necessary for a mutually beneficial, you know, relationship. There's sacrifice that comes in. But sometimes sacrifice then becomes the expectation.

Yeah. And it has to be reciprocal. It has to be mutually beneficial. Now, does it have to be? There are situations where someone just likes being the slave that gets their face stepped on by the high heel. And that's what makes them happy. And that's a unique relationship.

That's not most of us. Those people aside, most of us want that give and take where it's like, you know, at least 60, 40, 50, 50 is good. But, you know, I'll take it. But if one person is, you know, if it's 80, 20 and you just sacrifice all the time and the other person is making no effort, it's like, what am I getting out of I'm allowed to want to get something out of this. So it sounds like this dream might have happened a little while back when you were still

uncertain about how to resolve a communication difficulty and you have now resolved it in a way that your relationship is better. So timelines move very quick in this household, I guess. But yeah, I mean, there was a lot of growth and progress and we were in a really good place. And then a nose dive came not very long ago. Okay. And is that when this dream came to you? Or this dream was actually before some of that progress and there's been a regression type of thing? Yeah, I would say probably right before progress.

Gotcha. Okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So you were very much thinking through how do I make this relationship successful? Can I? Are there forces beyond my control?

You're conceptualizing it's something external. And I think we do this a lot too. It isn't, we don't want to blame the person for just being a jerk. We'd rather think, well, they're being influenced in ways that if I could just show them, they would change. And that's very often true, but it's also like, well, you need to kind of confront being a jerk sometimes and fix that yourself. You know, this isn't entirely possession. But there's a great, I love this too, because the idea of possession is actually. actually metaphysically true in a way we get we can get ideologically possessed we can get

possessed by our drives and emotions that are out of control and and it feels like something that takes us over people that snap into episodes of uh you know rage that is a kind of thing where the rational mind is gone and they're just enacting they're embodying this this thing that feels like a demons inside them you're ah you know dude and we talk about you know confronting our demons with alcoholism and different stuff, these things that were, uh, it's a, the actually ancient Greek conception. I love that of like these external forces that do feel like they come in and puppet us, that it's not us as much. Like, whatever we are is being negatively impacted by something external, even if it's just metaphorical and it really, it is us and we got to, we got to fight our demons in

that way. Um, so it'd be very natural to, to kind of conceptualize this force that is throwing a monkey wrench into effective communication and the reciprocity of a healthy relationship as a very unwelcoming, overwhelming, demonic presence a la possession. That makes a lot of sense, you know, from a conceptual standpoint and from like a behavioral observation standpoint, it's kind of what we see in some ways, like, man, you're not you. What is going on? So, I don't know if there's, well, and then at the very end, I mean, this could be a thing of like, if I had a dream like this, what I would assume was since I'm not typically religious, I'd say, spiritual, like the deist, agnostic, whatever.

I might not chant the Lord's prayer thinking it was going to do any good. Maybe you lean more on a Christian foundation. And there you go. Yeah. So this is going to come and you say, well, here's what I know how to do. Here's the framework for fighting demons. It makes sense to me. I'm going to lean on my biblical teachings and let, you know, let Jesus be my, be my she's.

field type of thing. And it was that, did that end up being a bit of, something that actually did help you establish better communication, like you were able to reflect on that or use some methodology connected to your faith that, you know, did you go see a priest and have a chat,

like a relationship style or anything? No. Fair enough. It might have just been a representation of, well, this is, like I said, for me, from the movies, the exorcist, what do you do? You call a priest. So I might have that in my dream as well, even if I don't believe it's going to work. But for you, it seemed like it did. And that's, I mean, that's a great way to end the dream in terms of reassuring yourself. Look, if I just live my faith, that will get me through this. If I really embody

that. I think we got a bit of a story arc here. And, What do you think? What do you think about how this, you know, what I've described relates, doesn't relate, makes sense, doesn't make sense. It definitely makes a lot of sense, yeah. Okay. Well, good deal. I mean, I didn't really know what to expect from that dream. I mean, it's kind of all over the place.

But yeah, definitely not the direction I was expecting, but relevant for sure. Yeah, well, I appreciate you, you know, with the fearless thing of like saying, not everyone wants to go on the internet and say, yeah, my boyfriend and I were not getting along so well. recently and now it's better. That's brave. That's the the teapiglet right there to say, but to go there to get a good answer to say, yeah, that's what I was processing in my sleep. And that's how I understood the situation. And probably, you needed to remember this dream, even if you didn't understand it because the answer was in there, in a way. Or at least the conceptualization was true as far as you could understand. And you needed to hang on to that truth in order to have it be useful down the road.

So even not, and it's one of those things where it's like we, subliminal messaging in a way. It's like the things that gently nudge us in the right direction, even if we're not entirely aware of it. And not understanding a dream is that lack of awareness in a way. It's like it's going to have that effect on you anyway. It's the resolution. The understanding you got from the dream in your subconscious, whether you were aware of it or not did help you. I think probably approach it in a way that got you to that result that you

wanted, which was let's, let's fix our communication. Let's figure out what's going on here and restore the reciprocity, the healthy, healthy nature of the relationship. So, you know, broad strokes, I'd say that is. So we were talking earlier and I don't know if it was on stream or off, but the idea of I like to get people to a point where, okay, now you can maybe do something with this. It seems like you already did. So we don't have to go, okay, now what? But there may be a now what to it in terms of how do you reapply this understanding to current or future difficulties. So hopefully there's something in there for you. I don't know if it's going to benefit us too much to try and dwell on it or if that's

just the question I should leave you with. So you're like, okay, now that I get an idea of what that was saying and how I think about it and why maybe it worked in this prior instance, how do I do that again? What was it that worked? Something like that. good deal well i hope yeah i like i like getting people an answer that they're like you know that make sense that really does and also they can yeah get some practical benefit from it and it's not just a mystery it's it's also kind of a little bit of advice um and you might even have another dream

tonight that's like picks up where this one left off or you're going to revisit the same concept you're like okay i need to look at this again because i need to reapply it um kind of like reviewing the if you're an engineer you're going to review the calculer I do that right. Y X, Q, squared over Z. Yeah. Something like that. Okay, well, if you think we've gone as far as we can, you don't have enough or any

additional questions. We'll wrap it up. I think I have additional questions. But no, it's interesting because I feel like, now, there are a couple different themes that my dreams go through, but I feel like paranormal occurs a lot in my dreams. and sometimes it's like, you know, a haunted house. Sometimes it's a little bit more like that, more than that, like the possession situation. And yeah, like sometimes it's like I can't like my legs don't physically work.

Like my body just doesn't work properly. It's so strange. And so I was interesting that both of those patterns showed up in the same dream because those are both things that happen a lot in my dreams. Absolutely. Yeah. And there's that's, I love discussing the recurring dreams and themes and themes. too because there's there's usually

it's representative of consistent patterns that we keep seeing in our daily life so that it keeps being necessary to analyze it because we haven't really come to a satisfactory understanding for our purposes, whatever it is. So you've got, yeah, you've got the supernatural and being, there's an interesting connection with the supernatural too because it's like I'm not afraid of, well, okay, it's two ways to look at that.

I'm not afraid of ghosts and vampires and werewolves and aliens even because I've never seen one. I'm a little bit more afraid of, say, serial killer, Michael Myers' style, just like an unstoppable killing machine because there's people I can't beat up in a physical fight. There's just people stronger than me. Fair enough, that's real.

Vice versa, though, if we think about it in terms of, on the movie or thematic, on the terms of the story itself, physical dangers can be conquered. You just need superior physical force. Ghosts, they are immaterial. They just kill you. You have no defense.

And that's why we love shows like supernatural or, but then you get into the Japanese horror genre in like The Ring and, uh, and Ju-Juan, um, where there's just a malevolent force and it's going to get you and you are helpless. And all you can do is suffer and the end. So a lot of us conceptualize those supernatural forces as the most threatening thing possible because we are defenseless because we, we have it, and it becomes an icon of that, a force we cannot defend ourselves against that will affect us, whether we like it or not. Um, that would be my broad strokes, specifically as it relates to you as well,

maybe why it keeps coming back. And then the, uh, communication breakdown thing is like, I keep trying to make people understand what I'm trying to say. And I can see it as something I'm not doing right, some failure of mine, which may or may not be true, but, you know, we, we'd see it that way sometimes. Me too. No. Good deal. Well, all right. And we're going to get you out of here, uh, roughly on time. And I, uh, I should have asked that beforehand. I mean, there's a whole laundry list of things I usually talk to people about beforehand time frame. I knew I was forgetting something.

I forgot to jiggle the handle on the door before I got in the car. Just drove off. Well, okay. We'll wrap it up here. Never know how to end these things. So we'll just end it. And we've got a cat. Welcome.

We'll end it with a cat and saying very much a big thanks to our friend, Alyssa Sondinger from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a transformational life coach, specializing in, you know, anxiety, helping business professionals break out of their cycles of births of birth. burnout and anxiety. I got cat hair now. Come back, baby girl. You walk on the keyboard. I'm going to kill you. So that they can refocus on new goals. You can find her at Alyssa Soutlinger.com. Link in the description below to book a free consultation. And for my part, I'm going to say, would you kindly like, share, subscribe? Please tell your friends about the show. 16 works of historical dream literature, the most recent.

Dreams in their meetings by Horace G. Hutchinson. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard. And just once again, Alyssa, thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Benjamin. This was awesome. And I'll probably be either back or in your DMs or something because I will have questions in the future. Please let me know. I love getting feedback from people. You're not bothering me.

Let me know, hey, after this dream, I had this experience and I was able to put something you told me to use. I feel good about that. I want to hear it. So good deal. Yeah. Stay in touch. And to everybody out there.

Thanks for listening.