Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 155: Cooking Up A Calamity

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Helen Sernett ~ https://www.sleeplists.com/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Helen Sernet from Seattle, Washington. She is a sleep evangelist and host of SleepList reading relaxing lists to help you fall asleep. You can find her at sleeplists.com and of course across many podcasting platforms. Also at Sleep Lists for you on YouTube. Both of those links will be in the description below. for my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the game streams. 17, currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent fabric of dreams by Catherine Taylor Craig, all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable MP3 versions of this very podcast, and of course on other podcasting websites.

and if you would head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.locals.com attached to my Rumble account, trying to build a community there. And hopefully that'll be the primary source of folks who are, you know, fans of the show. And let's get the Dreamers there first. Let's feature the audience. And that way we can all have fun together. So that's enough shilling out of me. Back to Helen, thank you for being here.

I appreciate your time. For having me. I'm so excited to be here. I know it's bright and early. Little early for me. I'm getting up to speed. You know, I'm in that, like a semi in low gear here. I'm trying to catch up.

The first thing I said when you popped on screen to myself was, that's an awesome recording closet. A little studio there with the soundproofing on the walls. I love that. It is classically a la Harry Potter underneath the stairs. And, yeah, it's, I've got my little acoustic tiles. It's just wide enough to fit. like my chair, my little tiny IKEA desk,

and got the curtains in the back to help keep sound out. And it's small enough in here that if I talk enough, I stay warm. So what I was going to say, too, is I bet it's toasty warm in there. It's probably not so easy to record things in the summer. It's not too bad because it's in my garage, actually. So it's under my stairs, but in my garage. So it's cool in the summer, and I can keep it warm enough in the winter. I mean, I wear cozy socks in the wintertime.

the summer, you know, shorts, but yeah. Me too. Well, we're both broadcasting from our garages. The, you know, the Wizard Cave is just my garage out back. Nice. I love it. Yeah, yeah, it's the perfect. Well, I'm so glad I have this space for it too.

I've been, I don't know, tinkering with the idea of moving back, moving the studio back into the house. But I don't know. I don't know. It's a project for another day. I do like having mine a little bit separated out. And I have a, I actually have a. I actually have a light upstairs that says, like, you know, I'm on air or I'm recording.

Yep, yep. So that people know, like, that's where you find me. If the lights on, I'm down here. Yep, for sure. I've just got windows in here. And my wife just pokes her head and going, oh, he's talking to somebody. Okay. Try and keep her posted, but you never know.

So what are sleep lists and, you know, is it related ASMR or completely separate? What would you say about all that? It's interesting. I don't record to do ASMR, but I think it is related. I don't whisper. It is just me speaking. And I use a kind of lulling, melodic voice. It's the same voice that I would use to help my kiddo go to sleep when I'd tell her stories at night.

And I record a list. I usually do a little introduction, just tiny. And then get to the list and I record the list. It's usually anywhere between 50 and 1,000 entries, depending upon what the topic is. So they're all different lengths, and you can pick the length that works for you. You can pick the topic that works for you. Some of them are more historical. Some of them are, like, one is just a whole bunch of colors of beige paint, like the names for beige paint.

So that's pretty boring. A lot of people fall asleep pretty fast. Other people are really interested in factual stuff. So we've got presidents and their vice presidents of the United States. We've got countries all over the world, states and their capitals. I've also, the most recent one, is a list of cookbooks. Very cool. So how many episodes or lists have you recorded so far?

Gosh, I think we've got about 20 some right now. Okay. So it's kind of just getting off the ground. How long does it take you to, say, record a short list of it, not a thousand things, but 50, 100. Yeah, the 1,000 one took me a long time. That was a thousand baby names. I won't do one that long for, again, for a while. And how do you organize that?

Okay, let's start with that one just because it's fascinating to me. Like, my brain goes, okay, how would I even present to that? You just go alphabetical? Yeah. So for that one, the source had ranked them. It was predictions for the top 500 baby names. both male and female for 2024. Okay.

And so I, they had already ranked them and I just combined the list so that I didn't have to note gender because I felt like a lot of the names worked well for either gender. Plus, you know, not everyone fits on the binary. So I, I just put them in essentially the order that they had put them in in terms of what they thought the probability was of that being a popular name. Very cool. And there's almost no shortage of lists out there of so many kinds. You could probably get to a thousand podcasts or episodes, so to speak. Actually, how do you define your, again, my autistic brain going, going like, how would I

categorize this type of thing? It's not exactly a podcast. It is, but it isn't in a way. It's like a recording. It's almost like an audio book in a way. But it's not either. Yeah, if you're thinking of a podcast as a dialogue, it's not that. Yeah, yeah.

It's also not a podcast in the sense of like there's no narrative to per se really. I mean, I guess one could say that like when I did the presidents of the United States and their vice presidents in chronological order, that there is a bit of a narrative to that. But it certainly wasn't anything that was going to keep anybody awake. There were no plot points. Yeah, yeah. It's not, as you say, it's not that discussion. It's not even a monologue.

I mean, it is just reading a list. It's almost, it almost. It's a recitation. Yeah, recitation is great. That's great. It almost defies description of what it, what exactly it is. It is its own category, list reading, period. And there are sleep podcasts.

I developed it because. Oh, we had just a momentary freeze. I don't know if I'm frozen. And if you can hear me, we'll just give it a moment to come back. I didn't find anything that really worked out of deep. And so I tried sleep meditations. I tried white noise, green noise, brown noise, purple noise, literally all the colors of noise.

I tried just sort of meditation music tracks, like soundtracks. Those weren't distracting enough. So I really needed something that would get me outside of my own. head, but also calm me down. And I, my first list was just me counting to 500 because that's kind of what I wanted was somebody to just count to me in a relaxing way. And then from there, it's fun out into other episodes. One sheep, two sheep, you visualize it.

Yeah, yeah. I've actually tried that in the past. I've had my own issues with sleep up. I did want to say just briefly, you had a moment where you froze and then. but but but I think we caught most of what you were saying when you came back and then just so you know if you listen back to this and you're like oh oh what happened there why didn't he tell me so I don't think we um I don't think we lost anything but one thing you said was um the idea of getting out of your head I've got that too I have to listen

to not music and not watching TV or anything of course but conversation dialogue verbal content that's my specific thing so i put on like a just a 24-7 comedy radio channel i listen to stand-up and that works for me i put on real low and then i can kind of because because if my mind's busy it's not shutting down and that's yeah you're not in the law like that's exactly and i think that's a very common experience for a lot of people busy mind when you're trying to lay trying to lay down and you know people have done a lot of things of like you know working on meditation or you know, going to a doctor to get sleep medication,

which should be, in my opinion, reserved for pretty extreme cases. There's probably a lot of things you can do. I don't know if you froze again. I think you did. Oh, no, I lost the connection.

Yeah. It's being spruy today. You're back on my screen. Yeah, and I'm good now. I just missed what you said. I'm so sorry. Right. Yeah,

we're going to have some technical difficulties today. That's just fine. We're going to roll with it. it. I'm not even cutting any of it out. I was just saying, yeah, that idea of, there's a lot of different ways to, maybe not a lot, but a handful of different ways to approach the problem of sleep. And, you know, I, the last thing I was saying was I would probably reserve medication for like way down the list. Some people need it. And if you need it, so be it. But it's one of those things like, you wouldn't jump to that first. You go, have you tried

X, Y, and Z? And one of the things you should definitely try is this kind of, um, getting out of your head by listening to something. And some people try one thing. They try, oh, I tried those, you know, hurts things where it just plays like, you know, synth music or something. And it's very slow and flowy. Well, that didn't work so they give up. There's a bunch of other stuff you can try in that same genre, you know,

and maybe music works best for you and maybe verbal content works better, you know, but that's all listen to podcasts. and, well, I'll just stop right there. I could ramble for a long time, too. I don't know if you have more things to say. Oh, now you're muted. Now I can't hear you. What is happening?

Your mic. Let me see if I can move to my friend. Now I can hear you. Yeah, I can't hear your mic. So let me. Oh, shit. I'm so sorry. This is terrible.

I feel so unprofessional. It's okay. It does happen. all the time. That's why I tell folks. There we go. Oh, now you can hear me. Wonderful. Yes. Now I am hearing myself a little bit in the background. It's coming back to me.

Okay. So you're getting a feedback loop. All right. We're going to put the headphones on again and see if they pick up now. I hope so. Can you hear me? Testing. One, two, three. Testing. Testing one, two, three, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. 10, little and 12. Yeah.

I'm hearing you. Okay. Now. Yeah. Now. And now I just got a dot on whatever web, some page showed up and ended up making me,

there we go. Oh, are you? I suddenly was hearing YouTube. Oh, boy. Are you using you, Discord on a browser? No.

I've got the app. Okay. Good, good, good deal. I forgot to mention that before, too. You seemed familiar with it. And most people come in and announce, I've never used this before. And then I walk them through. And so, okay, make sure you get the app.

And, yeah, well, because the audio, video stuff is like, significantly more common when using the, the web-based version of it. It's just not dialed in for that. So, no, and don't worry about the technical difficulty stuff. I've had much more significant problems. And it just is what it is. And I think it's actually got its own kind of charm of, like, I don't even think I'm going to edit any of this stuff out.

If you, if you disappeared for like a half an hour, I'm not going to have a half an hour dead air. I'll cut that out. But like little tiny glitches, I think it's got its own charm to them. People were like, oh, these are just real people having a real conversation. Look, it's not, it's not, you know. It is very real. It's very real.

For sure. I'm not. I'm not trying. But it's funny because we were doing fine. Everything was good when we were doing a little pre-show and making sure all the sound checks were good. We were great. And now all of a sudden, yep, that is the way. But I think what you were saying is there are a lot of things available and you have to find the

that works for you. For sure. Yeah. And that was just my, like, that's my whole thing is you got to, I want, I don't want anyone to have to use a sleep tool, but if they do have to use a sleep tool, I want mine to be available in the mix of options that are available. Yeah. And I would highly recommend that too.

Because so what is it, like, how does it work for me? Um, music keeps me awake because I anticipate the repetition. Uh, so specifically putting on. music with with melody and a bridge and a chorus and lyrics that actually stimulates my mind and keeps me awake you you just smiling chord progression yeah yeah so you did you do you found the same thing of like music doesn't work for you music alone doesn't work for me and even if it's not western music so even if i tune in to eastern music which of course uses different systems of structure um it's it's it's not it's not just

interacting enough. I'm not like it doesn't it doesn't hold my attention enough to like keep me outside of my head. So for me it's really just like is what's going on outside enough to hold my attention and keep my thoughts from spiraling. But also not interesting enough for me to want to know what's happening. So if it's a story or a conversation, I want to know what's going on. if it's just a list, it's not as critical for me to know what's going on. It's like I kind of understand what the next thing might be. It's going to be, you know, another name of a country or another name of a cookbook

or another state of beige. I mean, they all sound the same after a while. So that's, but it's enough interruption of my own thoughts that it helps me shut down my brain. It's like an off switch. Yeah, definitely. And I have found, in dialing in my. own like how do I facilitate my own my own sleep hygiene as they say um I I have enjoyed those

delta hurts channels but some of them and it's it's interesting too because I've experimented with a variety of different kinds for me I had to rule out anything that was percussive and I don't mean you know heavy drums like driving beat but a piano or flute things that have a shrieky tone or things that have that percussive guitar, plucking strings, even though it's, it's, it's very soft music and it's very gentle and very slow. It, uh, for something about that, you know, striking the, the, the, the, the, the strings or plucking the strings or the shriekiness of the flute not, doesn't work for me. So I had to go with, you know, that's like, why kind of like the synthi hurt stuff, because it

just kind of flows through different stuff. There's no hard, progressive changes and whatnot. So even if you pick a certain, well, I tried one Delta Hertz channel and I didn't like it. Well, there's like 7,000 of them out there. You could try another one. I mean, you know, not to be recommending people away from you. They should definitely go and try your lists. But I'd say try that first just for the sheer novelty of it. I don't think anyone's doing anything else like what you're doing.

Did you do that kind of market research a little bit and look around? Like, is anyone just reading lists for sleep? Well, I mean, that's what I wanted. I wanted someone listening to me. And I was like, someone's half to have done this. at least the numbers, right? Like even if you're just trying to teach people how to speak English, someone has to have counted to 500.

And like it could not find it. So I was, so I did a lot of market research, which was just really me trying to find the podcast, so I didn't have to make it. And then I couldn't find what I wanted. And so I had to make it. Yeah, for sure.

Well, that was kind of similar to what I'm doing with the dream thing. I'm like, you know, surely there's got to be someone out there who was, who had the same idea I did before me. Like I'm very reluctant to believe I'm the first one to ever think of anything. You know, because there's so many people have always lived and there's so many people who are, you know, smarter,

more creative, etc. It's more driven to create something new. And I'm just like stumbled into this thing and I like, I went looking and there was a lot of people, well, there's a lot of videos about what does it mean if you dream about trees? Like, well, okay, I, first of all, I don't think that has a lot of validity because

what does it mean when you dream about? trees what tree where was the tree how was your interaction with the tree it's all of that modifies the the connection you have with the tree and after a while it's like it's not even about the tree the tree is meaningless in some ways and so the tree can't have one meaning for every for every person um there were a lot of videos uh or channels out there that are more on the um you know what i lovingly lovingly call the spooky woo side of things where they're looking more into out of body experiences or you know astral travel um psychic connections you know really uh you know the voice of the spirits or astrology connected to your dreams and so i'm like well i'm not really on that

side of things more on the scientific so i started looking at you know and there's videos about you know brain brain research and how it might connect to to different stuff but not a lot about dreams and literally nobody doing just like straight up psychological dream interpretation like like this i couldn't find a single channel where they did exactly what i do just you just interview people. So I may actually be kind of one of the first. I wonder if I'll inspire some copycats in a way. You know, other people will go, hey, I can do this.

And I can go for it. It's, you know. Yeah. And I would hope people do what I do for themselves in their own life as well, you know, and not, not rely on me. So anyway, all this was supposed to be about you and in your creative process and coming up. So you, I think both of us had, had a similar experience, though, of like looking for,

for this kind of content going, no, really? Nobody's doing this. Like, I guess I will. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's such a low barrier to entry. I figure if no one else is doing it, then really it must be novel enough that I should be doing it. And for me, it became a bit of a mission.

Like I found that the more I paid attention to my sleep hygiene, the better I felt mentally first, like just my mental and emotional well-being. and then the more capable I was to integrate better diet and exercise to support that. So the whole system of my wellness and my health is really anchored in trying to be very, very much honoring, trying to honor very much my sleep hygiene. And that's something that I didn't do for a long time. I was very, I was, I was of the mindset that sleep wasn't as important that you have. to sleep, but it kind of got in the way of everything else. Yeah.

And now I'm in the mindset of my sleep actually supports all of the other things that I want to do in my life. And it's how I get the ability and the energy and the collectiveness and the fortitude to do everything else that I want to do in my life. For sure. Yeah. I don't think many people, I'll rephrase that. I think too many people have exactly the perspective you said earlier is that, well, sleep is

something we just grudgingly have to do that it's not and that it gets in the way like oh if there were only more hours in the day if only if i could get by on less sleep i would have more time to do the things i want to do or need need to get done um and there's there's what i want to validate that in some ways because yeah it's like a lot of us would rather not have to stop what we're doing because we're having fun or because it's important but really it's not optional is is what i've come around, you know, you can't just, you short yourself on sleep or go without completely. Like they did some famous studies of, what was it? It was one guy, he was a radio host, and he was just running a contest of like, I'm going to,

I'm going to do a stunt. I'm going to stay awake for a week. And after about three or four days, he started sounding like he had dementia and then eventually actively hallucinating and saying some pretty crazy stuff. And they realized, oh, sleep is necessary for brain health, too. You just cannot function without shutting down for a little bit and letting things process in the background. And that's, I mean, basically that's what we're doing when we're dreaming. And I, the theories that I've come up with, and people hear me talk about this part too much.

But the way I regard dreams is a more raw look at what our actual thought process is, what it actually looks like to have thoughts in our head that are not then filtered through consciousness. tension and I was shoehorned into specific words of a descriptive style. We've, you know, translate a lot of our images and emotions and, and what we're experiencing internally into these words that are insufficient to actually describe what it is, but close enough to get the idea across to somebody else. So my, my saying is that, you know, the lungs breathe, the heart beats and the brain thinks and it never stops. Doesn't start.

Dreaming is not different than. come on get comfy you know dreaming is not a different thing than thinking it is the the raw act of thinking itself and without without the ability to to kind of pause and reflect to stop and think in in a way uh to to turn off the it's like a i'm trying to think of an analogy too like the idea of a damn came came to mind of like but that's not probably not right it's more like it's like filling a bucket that's got a little little little hole in the bottom you can fill it up with all the day's experiences just about up to the top. And then it's going to take a little while to drain before we can pour more on top of it. It's a horrible analogy. But that's that idea of

anything else you pour on top of it after it's full just spills over. You're not holding on to things. You're not understanding things. You're not processing your experiences at all. So that's all got to take place when we power down for a period of time. Then another thing came to mind, too, just while I'm rambling anyway, the idea of a wheel with spokes and like sleep, hygiene, you know, nutrition and sheltered and love and all these different things that holistically make this wagon wheel in a way. Take out one of those spokes and the wheel is is no longer stable, sturdy. It's going to break or, you know, it's going to wobble as it rolls.

So that idea came to mind, but I'll shut up for a second. Go throw it back to you. It's absolutely true. I should have realized it more, but when I think back on, I was an international studies major in college. And one of the things that we did is we watched a model diplomatic

encounter, right? So it was an intense situation, like a global, like there was essentially a global warm up and it was more or less trying to negotiate diplomatically out of a World War 3. That was the sort of set up for the simulation. And they ran

the simulation with the actors, actors isn't the right word, because that makes it sound like there was a script. It was improvised. It was people had their roles.

They were experts. Some of them were diplomats in different, you know, settings. So it was a really interesting setup. But they ran it once where they forced the participants to stay awake. And then they, because, you know, with the idea being that like,

oh, well, time is of the essence and we have to get this done or else, you know, war is going to break out. and then they ran the simulation again where the participants got their rest and it was just like it wasn't even full rest but it wasn't like six hours it was like we're gonna take a four hour break and sleep

like we're gonna like it was even shorter than it should have been before what we now know is good sleep hygiene but ultimately the point is is that those who slept were able to prevent war and those who didn't war broke out Wow. Yeah. No, that's such a big deal. And then, well, I also tell people too, is that like when you take that time to pause and reflect and process, that is usually where solutions occur. It's in that space. You have to make the space where a solution can appear. Otherwise, if there's no space, you've got it completely closed off. It's nothing but receiving new information constantly. there's just, yeah, there's just no space for, for solutions to appear. So I mean, I very literally tell people to sleep on it in terms of like if you don't know what to do, literally go to bed and let your brain process. And I can't, I can no longer count the number of times I've woken up in the morning with an answer to a problem that I don't remember a dream even happening. But now I know exactly what to do. I know what it is. I know how to fix it. And just giving myself that time. And no amount of concentration. and effort and dedication and forcing myself to really pay attention was getting the job done.

I did just stop, just stop, step away. That's why sometimes they'll say, like if you're stuck with a problem, say, on a work, work. And really, actually, you can't just, well, I'm going to go home and sleep and I'll come back tomorrow and figure it out. Sometimes you've got to stick around and try and figure it out. Take a break. Go for a walk. Get out of that environment where you're stuck and just physically remove yourself.

And that can also have a really big thing. I think all these concepts are related. Yeah. Yeah, the ability to take things in and then actually have the time and the space to process them. And we do, you know, we know that our brains can't put things into long-term memory until we sleep. Hmm. You know, so we're, if you're, I mean, pretty much everything that you do in a day lives in short-term memory. And this is kind of neat.

It's like within the last five, ten years, there's been studies that have confirmed this now. It's super, I guess, on the cusp area of science. But anyway, I think it's really cool that now we know, like, everything lives in short-term memory. It's not even just like your 15-minute short-term memory. Even like, you know, you can remember what you had for breakfast maybe or like, you know, something, you know, when you first woke up at the end of the day. But essentially, until you go to sleep, your brain doesn't have the capacity to file that all away. in a system that it can access later. Yeah, for sure.

And this is a fantastic analogy that to the function of a computer. It's like, you know, short-term memory is kind of like RAM. And then long-term memory is your hard drive. And if your RAM is maxed out, it is all tied up doing so you can't start another program or you can't transfer files. Like try and run your video editor, like this is for me, you know, but video editor at the same time, you're trying to transfer large files over to another. other disc and both of them run super slow because it's trying to multitask and do that all at the

same time. And it's just out of bandwidth. It just can't do it. We're down, try and download two movies at the same time versus one. You're going to see it's significantly slower. It's like very much, you know, simplifying and focusing on one task at a time and allowing that space for things to to become encoded. Yeah, that's, that's interesting too, the idea that we can very often remember what we had for breakfast today, but maybe not yesterday and certainly not a week ago. There's interesting things like that where it's like some things are not important enough to remember. But it's a fun fact, too, is like everything we've ever done, seen, felt, experienced. It's all in our subconscious.

So what you're what you're describing and I'm glad that this, you know, I need to catch up on current research too. But I mean, it fits with the thing of like, it's not that that data isn't there. It's that we don't index it properly. We don't connect it to things we can. And then so we know where to find it. But that's what seems to happen in dreams is we stumble upon these trees, not trees, but like a, I'm thinking of like, you know, the branching logic tree type of tree or flow flowchow type of tree, whatever. Through connected ideas, we accidentally find our way back to things that didn't get indexed in a way that makes it easy to bring,

bring back to mind at will. So that's, that seems to be what's, what's happening in, in, in the dream state is that we're, we're following, we're letting go of attention and following these chains of association that get to pretty, things that are actually significant to us, like two current problems we're having. And then, you know, we relate it to those past experiences that we, you know, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't have found intentionally if we wanted to. do you want to hear the dream that I brought for you to share? That is actually perfect. I think it's a good transition.

I think it is. I wrote two down. I have kind of like a short one. So let's start there because I think that one's kind of fun. And the other ones, I don't know, the other one seems to make even less sense. Neither of them make a ton of sense. Dreams have their own logic.

It's absolutely true. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to to help you hearse 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 dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring 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, documenting 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 Dreamwizard.com.

So I have a husband, and I dreamt that he put a toaster oven. And I feel it's important that you know that we don't actually own a toaster oven. I've never owned a toaster oven. But he put the toaster oven into the microwave oven. And before it completely exploded, I have very vivid memory in the dream of watching the blue digital temperature display on the toaster oven. inside of the microwave, you know, the door is closed on the microwave. You can see through the microwave window. I have an image of that just heating up and blinking, like that blue image and watching

the temperature rise. And I recall looking at it through the door and through flames that were happening inside of the microwave. Then there was an explosion, of course. I don't really remember anything else that happened, but I do remember feeling like, gosh, that was a really odd choice for my husband to make in terms of putting the toaster oven in the microwave. And I don't really know why I didn't stop him

or wasn't really able to do anything about it. But I also wasn't upset about it. I just was like, huh, that was odd. Okay. So this is my first dream, a little bit strange. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm the type of person who would be very angry about the microwave having exploded.

Like in real life, I would like, My daughter not long ago in real life, bless her heart, she's a tween. She's learning how to fend for herself. She was making herself some ramen and she forgot to put the water into the ramen container and she burned the ramen in the microwave. And I was upset about that. The microwave still works, but it stinks. So, like, we had to go through a whole cleaning process and stuff.

And I was pretty annoyed. Like, I mean, I tried to hide it, but I was not very good at it. I wear my emotions on my sleeves. So my daughter was just like, why are you? so bad at me. I'm sorry. I know he's not fair. But anyway. Just having strong feels. Yeah, the microwave definitely has been, I mean, this was, the dream came after the microwave incident in real life. So maybe that's part of why it was all kind of in my head. But I just, I woke up and I was just like, that was such a strange choice that you made, Matt. Like,

why did you do that husband of mine? I don't understand. For sure. And that that is, it's great you mentioned this. So one of my failings is, you know, being on the autistic side of things. I'm more focused on what did you see? What did you think? What was the dynamics going on in a situation? I don't often ask about emotions. So it's, I always appreciate it when people volunteer. And you would think this would make me upset, but it didn't. It was, it was more of a dispassionate analysis of the oddity of the situation. So yeah. And I think those, and I think emotional content is as significant as thoughts, logical thoughts and visuals and

auditory experiences and dreams. So it's good. It's always good when people volunteer that. I don't remember any auditory experiences from it. Yeah. Right? Most, that's just on a tangent. Why not?

Most people do have visual, strong visuals and dreams. Unless they're blind, then they tend to have more auditory and tactile sensations. But cited, persons. It's almost always visual. Next is auditory and like smelling, tasting or touching things almost never gets mentioned. It's very rare. Very interesting circumstance that we're so so much. To do that primary sense. Visual creatures.

Yeah. And then in that way. Okay. So it is a very short one and I've made more with less. So we can go to the longer one too. But I thought I just start you out with that one because that one was very like, yeah, we might be. What a strange thing. Why not? And there might be more there than we think. So you were definitely in your kitchen of your current house.

Okay. Yeah. And it was visibly your specific microwave? Specifically my microwave, but it wasn't very different from my microwave. I don't think. It was, I mean, I don't own a toaster oven. And I can't imagine, I mean, I have a very, I have a fairly. I have a fairly large microwave.

It fits over the stove. And it was definitely above the stove. Like, that's what I was looking at. It maybe was like, I don't know, I'm not a tall person. I could see really well into the microwave. So, like, maybe it was somehow a little bit lower. Like, I just had a better perspective on it that I do in my actual house. But the toaster oven piece was interesting to me.

I've kind of always wanted a toaster oven. We don't have one. And we've never had one. And it's one of those things where it's like, I mean, the only time I ever had one is when I rented a place with friends and they had a toaster oven. It was great to use. But I've never found it to be like a necessary piece of equipment in my kitchen. I have a room or the space or whatever.

But it was weird to me that the toaster oven, which was kind of a normal toaster oven, fit. So like there was definitely a bit of a Tartist thing going on where the microwave somehow could handle the toaster oven being completely put into it and the door closing. Yeah. Okay. I'm glad you volunteered that too. I mean, it's always great when people like let their own associations flow around the iconography and the dream. So we're looking at the toaster oven specifically. You said two things. And I think you're both relevant is that you know, you've always wanted one. But it was a so it's a, wouldn't it be nice to have that? Am I really going to

use it. I don't know. I go through that all the time. It's a very common common human experience. I'm like, wouldn't it be neat? We're, um, I think the, my wife and I are going to get a rice cooker, uh, because we've always wanted one. And how have we made rice in the past in the microwave? And it works just fine. Do we really need one? No. Do we want one? Yeah. Are we going to get one? Probably. You know, and it doesn't have to be some $200, you know, fancy schmancy thing. Like, I think I honestly, I ordered one on. Amazon and it was like 25 bucks like a black and decker. It's cheap bottom of the bottom.

Just to test it out. Would we actually use this thing? Well, that actually got, uh, it never arrived during the Portland ice storm. Nope, no surprise. And then it got sent back and refunded. And I'm like, okay, I guess I'm mine a different one. So, and actually after I ordered it, I talked to my wife and she said, I had some ideas about a brand I would like to get with certain functionality.

I'm like, I already ordered one. Well, it got sent back. So like small miracles in turn of synchronicity or whatever. Now we're going to get the one that she was looking at. So long story short. Okay. So that was one element of it, this idea of, and I like to reduce, not reduce, expand. And some ways it's expanding, some ways it's focusing.

But teasing out these conceptual themes that go with this stuff. So very often it's not about a quote unquote toaster oven. It's going to be about what that item represents. thoughts you've had about, so the category of thoughts that apply to that kind of thing in a lot of ways. So that's what we got going on with that is like, okay, so this could be a stand in for something that's like a project or a tool or an experience that perhaps I want, but haven't been able to fit into my life or I'm unsure whether it's necessary. So it could be along those lines of things that are daydreams in a way, like in the same.

sense of fensiful whims of, oh, wouldn't it be nice? Yeah, who has time, you know? But it's nice to think about, wouldn't it be nice? Okay, so we got, we got that element of it. The other one is just, you're like, oh, and I haven't had contact or experience with a toaster since the house I rented with some friends. And they, they had one. So that, so, so there's also that layer of, okay, now we have items connected to this

group of friends, to the concept of renting a house. to the concept of other people sharing things that they have with you that you have a benefit from. So all of these things are like connected to toaster oven. So we start kind of teasing out those little threads. And we don't have to go anywhere with any of that stuff. We can just kind of sit on it and say, okay, let's see if that inspires some thoughts. Again, later down, here he goes. Don't walk on the keyboard, buddy.

Bye, Peanut. it's going to go run around. Let's hope he doesn't start barking. Okay. So you, the first thing you experience as the beginning of the dream, so to speak, is the toaster is already in the microwave. No, my husband put it there. Okay. Yeah, my husband grabbed it and put it in the microwave.

Like, I watched him put it in the microwave. Okay. Interesting. Good, good. No, that's that's significant too. so you're did anything else happen before that did you walk physically walk into the kitchen or you just appear i'm observing the scene okay yeah yeah i was just there i was just there and did he say or do anything as he was doing that or before he did it uh did he give me no it sort of like um i don't know

have you ever have you ever, like maybe you have someone, like I think you mentioned you have a wife, like so somebody that you know really well. And sometimes they're like, they're just sort of doing something almost on autopilot or like, and you're like, but it's not quite right. It's like when you put your purse in the refrigerator

or like. Yeah. Like it was that sort of like, clearly he, it seemed like possibly he intended something else. But also it all, it seemed. like a choice. Like I said, at the end, I was like, well, that was an interesting choice. Like,

didn't that, didn't that create something for us to deal with now? But at the beginning, it was sort of like just watching your partner go through the motions of something, but it'd be wrong, you know, like, putting orange juice in your coffee. It's just like, like, something's not right, but like, but not really being able to stop it. Yeah. And also, it seems like at that moment, you didn't have the emotional content of, you know, anger at something stupid happening in front of you. You didn't have a fear. This is going to start a house fire. What the fuck?

There was just a, at that moment, for you, just like a neutral observation of what was a clear role of the observer. Like if you're talking about like meditation and that idea of the observer when you're meditating, it was very much that. It was like, okay, I'm watching this thing happen. And it's happening. Yeah. So we've got, even in that concept, we could tease out one thread is the possibility that you have had other experiences in your life where you've watched your husband do something that didn't make sense to you and didn't actually turn out to be a good idea. And so the idea of watching him make a mistake could be its own encapsulated concept. I don't think we've all had that experience too of like, you know, honestly, you know, because I love her and because I love her and because I think. think it's not safe. I tell her not to go out after dark.

Just don't go out in the daylight. And she does anyway. And so I worry about her. And I think she's making a mistake. But what are you going to do? You know, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, I can't change how I feel about it. And I'm not going to, what, lock the door so she can't leave the house. That's not happening. Right. This is not the hill to die on. No, no, but I'm like, this is a mistake. I wish you wouldn't. So there's one, okay, but there's also, so that could be specifically tied to your husband. And this is, this is all like sub concepts. It could also, you could also. just be the concept of watching someone close to you make a mistake that you're observing.

So it may not be like directly related to him, but he could be a stand in for, okay, imagine it's someone you care about that you're intimate with, but perhaps that can be friendships and other different things. And it's definitely related as, as I'm glad you volunteered earlier too to this idea of, well, you just kind of watch your daughter make a similar mistake. um so yeah so so it's not surprising you would do that and then maybe sometimes our brain does this too of like we don't want to be okay let's say maybe you were your uh and i think you did say something like is you know a little bit on the side of irrationally upset about it and she's like god mom

you really giving me the business um so in your brain you might feel bad about how much you might have overreacted a little bit so instead of her in the dream you put your husband been in because he's he's not going to you know it's a different there's a different dynamic there where you don't have to feel bad about having feelings towards him as much as you did felt bad about that so we can have these stand-in situations um yeah and with my daughter i didn't watch her do because if i had actually watched her i would have stopped it but um i wasn't she was uh she was making lunch for herself like and alone in the kitchen so it wasn't um i wasn't there was no one there to help stop her for making that mistake.

Yeah. And that's it. That's interesting too. So in this instance, you put yourself present and inactive. Like just witnessing the mistake happen anyway. Like, so there's a, there's an interesting thing like, well, how would I respond? Sometimes they have thought experiment style. Like, would I just watch this thing happen?

Well, let's imagine I did. Let's imagine I just let it be what it is and see what happens. Yeah. That's possible too. Well, and I have a lot of trust for my husband and the decisions that he makes. I mean, he's, you know, there's, he trusts me as well, but I have, there are a lot of times where he, he's the type of person who, uh, thinks through a lot of scenarios really quickly in his head and understands sort of the strategy and the concepts that, the potential outcomes. Um, which means he's not as much of a live in the moment kind of guy. But it also means that, like, when he does something, it's generally for a reason.

That's, that's kind of the dynamic my, my wife and I have, too. Like, she's the spontaneous one. I'm the meticulous planner. If she doesn't give me 24 hours notice that we need to go somewhere, I'm not very happy about it. I need to know. I need a plan. What time? What time are we leaving?

We are not on time. What's happening? I learned long ago that surprises and my husband do not go together. You don't surprise the man. Like, that's just that it's not a recipe for a happy. day. Don't do it. That's it. Not with an errand and not with a birthday party. Don't you dare. No.

No, no, no, no. When we were dirt poor in college, we started dating. And I, he was in an apartment and the, you know, the smoke alarm was beeping. And he has like, like now, 20 some years later, he has like an irrational, not even, it's not irrational, but it is a very strong reaction to smoke to He hates that they beep when the battery's dead.

Like, he just, he just, he's like, wishes that there was a better way to do it. And anyway. Oh, yeah. But I happen to be out and about and I saw, you know, the batteries, those little, like, I saw, like, I saw, like, they happen to have, like, the story I was at happened to have, you know, the little batteries that you put in, whatever those squared rectangle batteries are. I think nine, nine volt, something like that. Yeah. So, but instead of just, like, getting it for him and, like, you know, giving it to him and, like, you know, giving it to him and, like, the CVS van. or whatever, the drugstore bag, I took the battery out, and I made a little paper box for it,

and, like, I put a little heart on it, and, like, I did this, like, really cute thing, because, like, you know, it's like a $2 battery or whatever, but I was like, oh, here's this. And then I, like, handed him this present, and he was like, I hate it. Oh. Like, one, it was a surprise. I wasn't planning and getting you anything. Two, you don't know this, but I have a whole thing with gift trauma, and I don't like getting gifts that I don't know what they are.

three, I can take care of my own batteries if I need to. Like, I don't want you to think that I depend on other people or that, like, I need you to mother me or whatever. Like, you said this whole thing. And I was like, okay, noted. We're not surprising you with fun little gifts. He's like, it was very sweet. I appreciate that you did sweet things.

Don't do that again. Yeah, yeah. That's what I make sure to say that, too, of like, I appreciate the thought. I accept the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, sentiment in the spirit in which it was intended. Yes, please, please never again. That's. Well, that's good too. So we've got another, and it's fantastic volunteering these associations that just pop up exactly like that.

This idea that you've got someone who in real life is very thoughtful, meticulous, makes good decisions because they're not impulsive. And here you're having a representation of them doing something very specifically that's a bad idea that they, in real life, they would absolutely know you don't do this. So you're given this very stark example of someone you might rely on to be the, the good decision maker more consistently, more meticulously, doing something in front of you and watching them fail to fulfill that purpose. So sometimes in our, in our life, let's say we rely on someone to be our emotional rock. And man, anytime we're in trouble, we go to them and they're always there for us and they always make us feel better and they don't spaz out. You know, they're the, they're the rock. And sometimes we imagine, what if I go to that person when I need them and they're spashing? They're having a rare moment of what do I do? And it's not even like you're not judging that person as, oh, I think they're going to fail me someday. You're not looking at that as likely. You're not, you know, theorizing this is, you don't have a reason to believe that's going to happen.

But it's like, okay, what would I do if I can't get my needs met by this person in a way that I've come to rely on? Oh, did you have a thought there? Yeah, no, I just, I think that's interesting because I can see myself having that sort of thought experiments. I am like way more insecure than he is as well. So I just feel like I can see that being a thing where it's like, oh, of course, like what if this happens? But the thing that was really interesting was that like you said, I was the observer, there wasn't a lot of like fear. or concern or anger, it was just like, oh, that was interesting. Like, let's not make those decisions again at the end of the whole process.

So, like, I mean, it very well could have just been my brain doing a thought experiment. And at the end, just kind of being like, yeah, that's probably not going to happen. And, like, you're okay. Like, if this is how extreme things have to get for you to imagine a scenario, then, like, Yeah, you're fine. And that might be, that might be exactly it, too. It's like you run yourself through these thought experiments to get to the end, to find out what you think or feel about the experience as, as imagined.

And it seems like what you showed yourself was I would actually be okay. I mean, literally this is, and you made it such a catastrophic thing of like, you put metal in the microwave, it fries the microwave, it fries whatever's in the microwave. It can start a house fire. This could be actually very, very bad. You had a, you know, this wasn't. gas leak and strike in a match, explode the house bad,

but something, you made it serious enough that's okay, let me consider this as a serious mistake. How would I deal with it? And you got to the end of the thought experiment and said, I think I'd be okay. I think I can handle this. I think I wouldn't freak out either.

And I would, you know, even have that kind of a wry smirk of like, well, that was strange. Why would, what an odd choice. Yeah.

I think that's it, yeah. I mean, if we, if we're satisfied with that understanding of it, it's just you looking at, like, you know, how much do I really need to rely on someone who, you know, it's good to rely on them. And I'm glad they're there.

And I'm very happy that that's who they are in our relationship. But if they weren't, would I still be okay? And you're like, yeah, I think I would. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's like, yeah, definitely would be. I mean, it's interesting with the different iconography that you mentioned because it's like, oh, the microwave and there had been a microwave incident recently. And oh, like the toaster oven.

and like, kind of always wanted to serve it. So there's the thing that, like, I think is precious or that I, you know, might want or desire. And he's, like, putting it in the microwave and, like, exploding it or whatever. And I'm kind of like, that's okay. Like, like, that's okay. Like, that's a, like, I sort of trust that you made that choice. It was weird.

I don't quite get it right now, but that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, if you're satisfied by that answer, I think we got an interesting understanding of that. I am. That's really fun. Very cool.

Well, you wanted to do it. do, you wanted to do another one? Oh, gosh. Well, the other one is sort of a weird time travel dream. Yeah. And there's, there's a lot to pick apart. And I don't know that I, I don't know that I remember. I don't know if we have time, but, um, oh, that's fine. Are you, I do one thing I'd usually ask it. I completely, I knew I was missing something before when we were chatting. It's like, do you have, do you have a heart out? We need to keep it, uh, keep it under an hour for you. I should probably, yeah, just because of, I have another obligation after this. Me too.

I actually had a tree come down and it's laying partly into the neighbor's yard. And he came over yesterday and said, which, you know, we're going to work on this? And I'm like, yes, yes. So we're waiting for it to stop raining, which almost never happens in Portland. So I should, I should probably go and deal with that too. Yeah. Yeah, if you don't have rain. Do you have a chainsaw?

We've got a little electric one. Yes, it's going to work. You know, I just bought it. I was like, I don't know, 40, 50 bucks at the Home Depot, got a little electric chainsaw. That's necessary. That is, though, this tree was not, God, I don't want to cut it by hand. Oh, that'd be awful. I would take weeks.

Yeah, just chopping away at it with an ant. Oh, God, that too. Or a saw, like one of those, like push-pull saws, like a hack-saw. No. I do, I do have one of those. One of little gardening. Anyway, so that's probably a good idea we keep it short. That's, and I'm glad you had a shorter one, and we could actually dial it in pretty

quick. That was fun. Yeah. That was awesome. It was really great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on for listening to my strange dreams. It's definitely something that it was one of the dreams. I very intentionally didn't tell my husband about it because it's like, oh, I'm going to talk to Ben about this and then we'll see what he says. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's fun to get your own understanding of it to, but that's one thing you can do is like, okay, so I'm not available every day all the time for everybody. But you can talk to your husband about this kind of stuff. And you can actually show them my videos and kind of show them with this discussion with you

and say, I want to do this again with you over breakfast the next time we, the next time I have a dream. Let's talk it out. Let's see what we can come up with. But we talk about our dreams all the time. It's actually one of the reasons why I was so excited to come onto your show because, yeah, we talk about dreams all the time. And I love, it's one of the things that I loved about it, I fell in love with him about because he had never was shy about sharing his dreams with me or like literally his dreams not like obviously his like you know ideas and goals and aspirations but in this case like literally what did

you dream about last night um and he's got he's always like he's kind of a lucid dreamer so like he's always he seems to know like when he's in a dream and so like he does stuff in his dreams so that's kind of fun too to be like oh what did you decide to do that is that is pretty cool. We'll tell him to reach out to me too. We'll do, we'll do one with him if he's interested. So, of course. All right. All right. So by way of, by way of wrapping it up, I'm just going to say, this has been our friend Helen Sernet from Seattle, Washington. She's a sleep evangelist and host of Sleep List, reading relaxing lists to help you fall asleep. You can find her at sleeplists.com and across multiple of your favorite podcasting platforms, as well as sleep lists for you on YouTube.

both of those links in the description below. For my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. 17, currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent The Fabric of Dreams by Catherine Taylor Craig, all this and more at Benjamin thedreamwizard.com, and of course at Benjamin thedreamwizard.locals.com, building a community there attached to my Rumble account.

And just once again, Helen, thank you for being. Here's a good talk. Thank you so much. And everybody out there, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.