I heard the best dream yesterday and just had to tell you about it.  The most productive time of day is when we’re dreaming – it’s when we recharge the sense of self and in Quanta Change, it’s when we permanently remove layers of the negative feeling called Learned Distress.  Well, the client who had this dream got a LOT of work done in it.  She went all the way back to high school, when the feeling “I don’t matter” got intensified in a big way for her, and she unlearned a big chunk of it in this dream.

The Dream:  She’s in a large warehouse where there are many rows of folding chairs set up and a podium at the front. It seems like a church service to her, but everyone is wearing street clothes instead of “church clothes.”  She only recognizes one person.  It’s her boyfriend from high school and college, and he’s sitting in the middle of the front row.  She’s wearing a wedding dress and realizes that she’s here to marry him.  But, no one else is dressed for a wedding, there are no flowers, etc.  There is nowhere for her to sit, so she just wanders around waiting for the part of the service when they’ll get married.  She thinks to herself, “Why did I even bother with this dress?  Obviously, no one else made the effort.  I could have come in regular clothes and we could have done this without any fuss.”

Shift Theme: (Shifting is the daytime work of Quanta Change, where you tell your brain specifically what you want it to work on during sleep.  Unlike some kinds of dream work, you aren’t consciously directing your dreams, so this is the way you direct your change.)  Her shift theme was about speaking openly about what matters to her.

Context: (You bring people, places, animals, things, situations, or time frames into dreams based on the feeling that they trigger within you.  It is these triggered feelings that you unlearn in the dream.)

She described the former boyfriend as the love of her life in high school and college.  During high school, he didn’t openly break up with her, but started dating another girl.  My client was devastated, but stayed silent.  During college, he called her out of the blue, and they started dating again – without her ever mentioning the high school break-up.  Whenever he would call, they would date. He often disappeared for periods of time.  Whenever he showed up again, she completely rearranged her schedule around him and put a lot of effort into making it all work.  So, the feeling that she is unlearning in the dream is “I don’t matter (and the only way to survive is to cater to the whims of someone who doesn’t really care about me).”

Point of Change: (In a Quanta Change dream, each time there is something wrong and you do something about it, you permanently remove a layer of Learned Distress from your sense of self.)

In this dream, the point of change is when she realizes she’s the only one who went to any trouble for this and thinks to herself, “Why did I even bother?  I didn’t need to go to the trouble of wearing this dress.  No one else went to any trouble.”  At that moment, she unlearned a big layer of “I don’t matter.”

Result: This is one in a series of dreams she has had over the past couple of months in this theme of “I don’t matter.”  She is seeing an overall direction toward just doing what feels right to her, instead of denying her own needs in favor of those around her.  She’s seeing what often surprises people like her when it happens – that the people around her don’t feel negatively affected and that they love her as much as they ever have.  And more importantly, she feels better because she’s actually taking care of herself in a way that she never has felt able to do.

What is the last dream you can remember?  Who or what was in the dream and what feeling about yourself do they trigger?  This can give you a big clue to the feelings your sense of self is recharging every night.