What might you be resisting?
Over the last month or so I’ve been feeling tired and fed up. Feeling a bit down. Physically sore, stiff and sensitive.
This is not depression. There is no benefit - to me anyway - in pathologising what I am feeling with a medical term. I am merely somewhere on the spectrum of human experience I find uncomfortable. I am not suggesting that depression is not something that can be experienced but rather I don’t think for a moment that how I am feeling now aligns with a medical diagnosis.
I understand that some people may feel the way I have described often or all the time and to a worse degree. Comparison in my view is seldom helpful and perhaps especially so when it serves to minimise or in some way negate personal experience.
That there is a connection between mood and physical symptoms is I think undisputed. Which way that goes is not always apparent. I often feel a bit off in my mood when I am physically run down. I think it can go the other way too. My physical well-being negatively impacted by what’s on my mind regardless if it’s something I am aware or not.
When I put my head down for the night, sleep comes naturally. However, dreams can be very tiring. They wear me out. When I dream it feels like I am awake in so much that it does not seem like a break from conscious experience. My dream world is full on. More often than not a vivid flow of unsolvable conundrums, repetition and awkward circumstances. Of being lost, of having lost things or of items and people being stolen away or simply out of reach. Very frequently I pull myself from the dream and wake to end feelings of confusion and frustration. This happens most nights and for the last few years. Consequently in the morning when I get out of bed I do not feel I have slept at all well. I rarely if ever feel “refreshed” when I get up.
The importance of sleep for our overall well-being and health seems pretty well substantiated by science. The importance of dreams less so. That they serve a function is I think clear. You can take your pick of theories as to what that function is.
There is some conflict in how I think about my dream life. On the one hand I am fascinated and entertained. On the other I am weary of and wish them gone.
It would be easy to blot my dreams out with drugs or alcohol. That would be treating symptoms while leaving the cause unaddressed. It’s not an approach I want to pursue. It may well be a mistaken belief but I think dreams are a vehicle for learning. The challenge to me is understanding the language and metaphors they contain, understanding the connection with my waking life, and acting on what I might learn from this.
Seems a bit fanciful maybe? Perhaps, but I am not alone in thinking along these lines. There are more than a few frameworks to choose from that might help to decode whatever it is that is that may be being communicated from the unconscious through dreams. Some of these I’ve casually dipped into now and then but have never made a deliberate and prolonged study and application of any. Perhaps and like so many things I have not pursued that comes down to resistance to change. Choosing safety over growth.
“We grow forward when the delights of growth and anxieties of safety are greater than the anxieties of growth and the delights of safety.” Toward a Psychology of Being, Abraham Maslow.
The choice being influenced by the biological need to maintain homeostasis. Perhaps it’s something that does not just operate on a biological level but also something less visceral, like personal growth and psychological development. I would not be the first to suggest as much.
What’s the take away from this? I guess by starting with recognising that resistance to change is often a means to protect ourselves from some feared consequence of it. That instead of allowing resistance to direct our actions, to work on noticing and sitting with it for a time. Taking baby steps along a heading and giving ourselves time to get used to how things feel, to get and feel safe. I’m thinking something along the lines what it’s like to overcome the initial fear and discomfort of being in cold water. A deliberate and gradual desensitisation with a clear aim and intention held in mind.
