Several of the girls found ways to cope with their nightmare
demons. One, when she dreamed of being stabbed, saw herself being rushed
to a hospital. In her dream, she reported: "I almost died, but I hung on
for my boyfriend and my sister." Another girl, with recurrent dreams
about being chased by a huge, wild cat, finally dreamed the beast hugged
her, promised to protect her, and then turned into her mother.
Abused children, Garfield points out, need guidance to find the
positive signs of strength in their dreams. She asked one girl how she
could improve a dream of falling, breaking her back, and dying. The girl
replied: "I could just break my back and not die' " This type of answer,
Garfield says, is in stark contrast to those of nonabused children, who
invent rescuing helicopters or Superman saviors.
Bad dreams may go underground as we grow older, but they often
resurface in times of trouble. Changing the self-image in dreams frees
the mind to imagine better ways to be; it gives permission for positive
action and the communication of feelings. Changes made in working with
dreams often increase confidence and empower us to act in new ways in our
waking lives.
"It's hard for women who have been abused to talk about their
experience," social worker Doris Diamond says, "because talking makes it
real. But once they can talk about it, healing can begin."
Diamond, who directs the Family Therapy Institute of Provident
Counseling in St. Louis, works with women in groups lasting just six
sessions. One requirement of participation is that the women must also be
in individual therapy and committed to continuing it during their group
work and afterward. Also, women who enter the group have already
acknowledged that the abuse occurred, even if their memories remain
vague.
In the group, women learn that they are not alone and, most
importantly, that they were not at fault. One important activity is
sharing recollections written out of class. "The writing often helps them
to access the dream material and give form to their experience," Diamond
says. As memories start to return, the women may feel terrible pain, then
retreat to denying their experience, she notes. "They may say, 'I'm just
having these wierd dreams, I must be making this up."
The women sometimes re-experience the abuse in a dream, no longer
as a child, but rather at their present age. That makes the event harder
to deny. One woman dreamed:
"My father was on top of me in bed. His breath stank of
alcohol."
In some dreams, they may be trying to comfort their father. In such
dreams, Diamond suggests, they may be trying to reassure themselves that
the experience is over now and that they can get past it.
The group work aims to enable the women to rewrite the story of
their past so that they can live with it in the present. Once they
confront what happened to them, they can corral their dreams.
Furthermore, sometimes they can use their dreams to help the healing
process. One woman frequently awakened in fright from dreams of a
looming, ominous, shadowy figure at the foot of her bed. She drew on her
religious education and transformed the specter into an angel, stationed
there to protect her.
Another saw in her dreams her father raping a small, tearful child.
She knew she was the child, but she also knew that now she was an adult.
She changed the dream so that she watched the event as a fly on the wall.
She could tell herself, "That was another me, a younger me, from a long
time ago' "
The healing process is often painful and difficult. Often, women
who have suffered abuse have trained themselves not to cry, not to have
feelings, not to acknowledge their pain. These strategies, protective
during childhood, diminish the quality of their lives later on. When the
feelings first return, women fear that once they start sobbing, they may
not stop.
Certain kinds of recurring dreams, particularly those involving
attacks, often serve as a red flag to alert us to the possibility of
early sexual abuse. We can use these dreams to help uncover the awful
secrets that we'd prefer to ignore. However, they need not be a
continuing fixture in our lives. We can change our dreams to help us
master our pain, to permit us to continue our lives, no longer as
victims, but as survivors.
Recovery from crisis takes time. We may replay memories of guilt,
anger, inadequacy, and rejection for years afterward. Those with basic
problems in their underlying self-image must revise the ways they see
themselves. The task is difficult, but we can speed the recovery process
by learning to heed the inner voices of our dreams and then to. direct
them to speak in stronger, more confident tones.
PHOTOS (7): Various photo illustrations (ALLEN WALLACE; DOUGLAS R.
BURROWS)
Excerpted from Crisis Dreaming: Using Your Dreams to Solve Your
Problems, by Rosalind Cartwright, Ph.D. and Lynne Lamberg
(HarperCollins). Copyright 1992 by Rosalind Cartwright and Lynne
Lamberg.
WHEN DREAMS DON'T WORK THE WAY THEY SHOULD
"Oh my God, I think I just killed two people," Kenneth James Parks
told Toronto police officers. He had stumbled into their station, with
blood dripping from multiple deep wounds in his hands, just before 5 a.m.
on May 24, 1987. Police found his mother-in-law stabbed to death, and his
father-in-law bleeding profusely, alive but unconscious, in their home a
block away.
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