This episode explores the relationship between dreams, their significance in processing emotions, and their ability to inform on our experiences. Join Mike, Morgan, and Melissa, as they dive into various theories of dream interpretation, from Freud to Jung, highlighting dreams as reflections of one’s emotional state and unresolved issues. The discussion also highlights the therapeutic potential of analyzing dreams to facilitate emotional healing and self-discovery.

Mention This Episode:

Everybody Dreams : by Michael Stratton

Dreams : by Carl Jung

The Interpretation of Dreams : by Sigmund Freud

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Welcome to A PsychoDelicious Conversation on mental health issues and trends from three local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area. I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw.

And I'm Morgan Bowen, pmhnp.

And I'm Melissa Black, pmhnp. And we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond.

Our aim is to be educational and entertaining. So just kick back and open your ears and your minds foreign.

Hello, I am Michael Stratton on this cold December day.

And I'm Morgan Bowen.

And I'm Melissa Black.

And with us is our producer, I'm Dadalion. Dadalion is our producer. It's great. And today we're going to be. Hey, it's cold out.

We just need to establish that whenever people are listening to this, it's cold outside. But today it is cold. Yes, we're going to keep it warm in here. And today we're going to talk about dreams, which is a big part of consciousness.

I think I forgot subconsciousness, maybe.

Yeah, subconsciousness. And what are they and what do they do?

The human experience. Why are they Human experience, all of.

That kind of stuff. It is part of the human experience.

You used to come in every once in a while on the coffee break back when we were LCC radio and you'd talk about this a little bit. So I was excited when you said you finally were going to do this.

Finally. Finally. Yeah. I'm going to tell a little bit of a story. I got very interested in dreams shortly after I got married.

And so we started buying books on dreams and we did a dream group and it became an interesting thing. And over years we started doing dream groups out in the community.

We did a dream group that met at the Mac that I think the last I checked, some of the members are still meeting. They're still meeting.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it is amazing.

What was the dream group like? How was it structured?

It was structured that people would bring their dreams and we would present something and just an idea about something about dreams.

And then people would start talking about their dreams and we would help them work on it and identify different themes and different things like that. And then I did several of those on my own. I did a presentation on it for the NASW up at Mackinac Island.

Afterwards, they said yours was the best attended and the highest rated talk that was given. So I pitched it to Creativity and Madness, that conference. I ended up giving that presentation five times for them in Maui and in Santa Fe.

And people started to ask me, like, where can I buy your book? So that's when I wrote a book and I wrote a novel called Everybody Dreams. And it contained a lot of the ideas.

Cause I didn't wanna write the book of this is how to work with your dreams. Basically, the material is in the novel, but it's just done differently. So my first question to you guys is, do you dream?

And what kind of things do you dream about?

I definitely dream, have always dreamed, dreamt either one of those. But I also, like, they've definitely have helped me when I've brought them up in therapy.

I remember a therapist telling me, don't look too deeply into them. Your brain's trying to figure out all sorts of weird stuff. So, like, he was actually telling me, don't look for meaning in my dreams.

Which was opposed to what other people had said. Like, yes, we can. You know, we can search our dreams for new information.

Opposed to what?

Like, the entire human race is, I think.

Well, it is a hot topic. I actually say something similar to my patients or clients. Not necessarily not to look for meaning, but that, you know, it may not be a.

Not necessarily a good use of our time. But, you know, I'm definitely not a dream expert, but.

And I know of dream review symbolism, you know, But I'm not steeped in how that actually connects with psyche other than, you know, like, if you dream that your teeth are breaking off, that means you're sexually frustrated. But that's what somebody told me. I don't know. Have you heard that before?

I have heard that before.

I've heard those dreams.

Well, there's one theme, like, I. You know, I can't reach my mom. I'm a little kid. My mom's out of reach. So, like, that's.

I know I'm like, seeking of feeling disconnected, you know, feeling insecure. So, like, I can have those types of dreams and be like, all right, that's like little Melissa, you know, trying to figure those things out.

What if there's recurring dreams? Somebody has this same type of dream or the kind of. The feeling. What was the feeling like in your dream? Stressed out, frightened, happy, euphoric?

Was it sexual in nature? You know, those kind of themes? I certainly can. That's easier to understand in terms of, like, how it connects to the person.

But the symbolism type of thing like this means this. And you know, that part. I'm not opposed to it.

I would say maybe that's a little bit in the New age era, but, you know, I'm not opposed to a little new age in my life.

Well, ding, ding, ding.

Here we go.

The idea that dreams are pictures of feelings, that's the most simplistic way to look at dreams. And it's the most accurate.

That basically, you know, when you go to sleep, your heart continues to beat, your stomach is still digesting, your lungs are breathing, and your brain continues to work. And what it's doing is it's organizing the emotional material. The emotional material which occurred during the day.

And it's trying to place it, it's putting it like, does this belong in long term memory or short term memory? Is this something we need to address right away? But because you're asleep, all of this different imagery gets mixed up in it.

So there'll be a movie star that'll walk into it, or you'll do something that just seems absurd and it seems like, well, this is nonsense, I don't need to pay attention to it.

But if you pay attention to the emotion, that's the part that's being processed and if it's recurring, it's an emotion that's coming up again and again and again.

It's being ignored or you're not looking at it, and the dream will intensify until you do something to address it or whatever the conflict is, resolves. So there's so many different.

And please stop me because I'll launch into my talk about it, but there's so many different theories about it and all of them are pretty interesting and we can talk some more about that.

Well, does it go back to Freud?

I mean, Freud, it goes back way, way before that. Gilgamesh. The very first writings that are seen. There's dream interpretations that are going on there in the Bible. There's dream interpretation that.

Let me see, it was Joseph in the Multicolored Technicolor Dreamcoat. Yeah, the Dreamcoat, Yeah. He was interpreting dreams for the freedom.

That's right, yeah.

He got his freedom from that. Yeah.

Did you throw him in the well or.

Yeah, I was. I was part of that.

Yeah.

The Bad brothers, right?

He interpreted Pharaoh's dream. Right.

They were so mad at him. They were so pissed off because he could have. He had this power to interpret dreams.

It's.

It's a magic power.

It was unfair that we didn't all have that power.

Yeah.

Freud does have a book though. What I'm trying to remember, the Interpretation of Dreams, one of his more famous books, or he wrote a lot, but that was one of them.

It was a big one.

Well, his idea was that we dream things to keep ourselves unaware of what's going on. Jung thought the opposite. He thought that our dreams are there to reveal to us how it is that we're feeling and what it is that we're working on.

I'm a Jung fan.

Me too. Me too.

Yeah, I have a recurring dream that I. And I don't dream a lot anymore. I've dreamed more in my life, especially when I was younger.

And I always have had difficulty remembering my dreams afterwards. Like an hour later. Like I can remember right when I wake up.

And it happens maybe once, I would say every three months or so that I have a dream that is coherent and I remember has, you know, has a narrative behind it.

But oftentimes I'll have a dream that I'm in school and I have forgotten that I had a class that I was signed up for and that it's time for the final or, you know, the test.

But more recently, and I would say within the last six months, I had a dream that I was contacted and told that I did not successfully complete elementary school.

And so none of my subsequent schooling after that was valid because I hadn't completed the foundation of elementary school and I had to go back to elementary school. And part of the dream was me being like, this is crazy. Like this is ridiculous, this is crazy.

But I was, but I was doing it and I was in, I was in the elementary school and it was, it was bizarre. It was crazy. I've had similar types of dreams, but that was like a full blown experience.

So can please. Knowing you as I do, Morgan, you've moved into like one of your childhood homes.

Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah.

So some of that stuff must get stirred up. That's what I would imagine would be happening, at least in some ways.

And it may be connected to something like, oh, there's this thing that feels a little bit unresolved, you know, that occurred in my childhood and now I'm back living in that environment.

Now that you're saying that that makes a lot of sense. Something was not completed. Something big. Something foundational.

Unfinished Business.

Unfinished Business. The title of this episode.

Good title.

Yeah. It's so interesting. I mean, do you have a recurring dream, Melissa, or do you.

We're going to get to Dalian because I know he's got a look on his face.

Yes, there's.

Okay, sorry.

So mine's pretty obvious.

Go on.

I will have recurring themes, for sure, and I think because of, like, some of the medications that I take, my dreams are maybe a little bit blunted at times.

But when I have a high time of stress and there are a few, like, familial or, like, social situations that are frequent triggers, my dreams will just get super chaotic and, like, I don't have a handle on anything. Like, all sorts of bizarre stuff is going on.

You know, things flying through the sky, like bursts of color, and I'm just extremely confused and befuddled. And then I'll wake up, like, just thinking, that was really weird.

Yeah. Busy, busy life.

Yes.

Does that match up to that sense of, like, I just feel like I got so much going on?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's a way of starting to think about that and digest some of that and figure out.

The other fascinating thing about dreams is that often the dream will suggest a solution to you. Maybe I need to go back to school.

Maybe I need to go back to elementary school. I'm not going back to school.

Decreasing. Like, it's definitely, like, the message that I get when I think about that or reflect on it is like, lady, you need to do less. Like, you need to.

You need to calm down.

Yeah.

Because I think the feeling is like, I'm gonna run away.

Or, oh, there's a little, you know, a little portal to, like, an underground little, you know, labyrinth or whatever that's been in several of the dreams, like, you know, go down there.

I've had a dream, like, I have another recurring dream where I grew up in an old house. That's the old house that I'm living in now. And it's kind of a. It's an interesting place. So I have dreams of being back in the house.

This is previous to me literally being back in the house where I have discovered another part of the house where there is all this old stuff that has not been, you know, just touched or it's been, you know, just sitting there for however long. And it's so exciting. And I'm, you know, really intrigued. And it's a very. It's a good. Those are really good dreams.

Absolutely.

I had heard the house has do.

With your body, basically, or the self. You know, it's. It's where you live and where we live is inside of our, you know.

Oh, I'm discovering things about myself.

You are discovering things about yourself because you went back to school. I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell a dream about my. My dad in a little bit, but first I want to hear the D or not.

I'll tell you.

I'll tell you.

Well, you know, the funny thing is, is I didn't actually think about it until Morgan started talking about his house dream. And I actually have a dream. It's never the same, so I don't know whether to call it reoccurring. But I. Very often.

And this is why I know about the whole body thing. I have dreams about a house that I'm in. Usually it's my childhood house, and it's raining inside the house.

And I've had that dream at various points in my life. But the one that I would call a reoccurring dream is me in a car driving into a ditch, and the brakes don't work, and I will try to stop it.

Now that having been said, I mean, it's pretty obvious what that dream is, I think.

What is it?

It's pretty much feeling like your life's out of control.

You're sailing into the unknown. It's out of safety.

And I haven't had that dream in quite a time. Long, long time. But it does surface every once in a great while.

And then recently, I just had a twist on that dream and that I'd never done this before, but I had a dream where somebody else was driving the car, and we were on the highway, and we went to go around, and I'm trying to tell them that there's a truck you're going to hit. And they weren't listening. And so we were heading for the truck.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Male or female driving? Female. Female. Okay.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna say anything. We'll talk.

Do you use dream analysis, or do you encourage your clients to talk about.

Their dreams if they're open to it? I don't present that as, like, let's talk about your dreams. If they talk about dreams, then I will.

But I've run several dream groups where that is the whole purpose of it. Not the whole purpose, but that's a way to. Often people are very curious about it.

They are. People do bring it up.

And I think the public has a perception that when you're meeting with a mental health person, you should talk about your dreams. And I don't discourage it, but I do try to say I can Interpret your.

Is that pretty common?

Well, one thing that's interesting is that in the past it was all theoretical, but they're doing so much work with studying people's brains while they're asleep and they see the different chemistry that's going on that we have psychedelics basically in our brains that get kind of burned off during dream states. I mean, you have to dream. A way to torture someone is to keep them awake or break them from having REM cycle. That's torture.

And a person, if they go, you know, if you go two or three days without sleeping, you're going to start hallucinating. It'll be like you're on acid. So I don't recommend that.

Melissa's dream sounded like you were on acid.

Yeah, well, check the first one.

Yes, it did. Yes, it did.

What Freud would do often to get people, you know, he'd have a watch, you know, and he'd swing the watch back and forth. Your eyes would follow it, which sounds like emdr, but it also looks like REM cycle.

So there's something about bilateral movement of the eyes which helps processing emotional material. And who knew that? Something that seems to be true and during REM sleep specifically is when a lot of that material is being processed.

But there's also something called nrem, like non rem, Non rapid eye movement. Non rapid eye movement. So they're breaking it down to that. There's a kind of dream that's identifying the emotional states.

But then there's another one. There's another type of dream which tends to be creating associations or processing it in a way of like really downloading the information. So that's.

So science is looking at this stuff. So it's not just all the connection.

Between dreams and trauma and is bit.

I mean that's something that, you know, we do, I mean we all, I think, work with and you know that we use certain medications because sometimes the dreams for our clients are. They don't want them. It's really distressing. It's. That stays with them through the.

I mean it just can be an incredibly in and of itself traumatic causing.

Harm for sure, like inability to function the next day. Well, and then that chronic lack of sleep. I even have some folks who have described like avoiding sleep to avoid the nightmares.

I think that's pretty cool. Especially severe ptsd, you know. But I hear that quite a bit.

Right, right, right, right.

And we have some Medicaid. I mean there is especially one particular medication that's very helpful, can be very helpful.

Which one is that? Trazodone or Prazozosin. Yeah, Jinxinx.

It's always interesting to hear how people say it. Some people say Prazosin and some people say Prazosin. I actually don't know which is totally correct.

You guys said that Prazosin sounds very Lansing.

That's why it's true. That's the Midwest version.

Some people say Prazosin. Like there's no O, it's just Prazosin.

So P R A Z, O, S I N. I lost it in the middle. Yeah, Prazosin.

And there's also medications that can trigger dreams that make them more.

A lot of the SSRIs, the serotonin based medications.

Yeah.

Lexapro in particular. I've had a lot of folks that get really vivid dreams on Lexpro and some do not like it at all.

Mirtazapine and Seroquel actually have come up. But for some folks the Seroquel helps them sleep but like doesn't trigger the dreams. But it could make them 10 times worse.

But it's still, you know, one thought that I have is like, well, would I be having these dreams without it? It's like you're still working in the same kitchen. I mean you've still got. This is the material you have to work with.

So even though something might have stirred it up, I don't think you can discount it because this medication triggered it. You're still working with the same materials, the same emotional materials.

People will frequently say that. Yeah, that. But they're more vivid. It's much more vivid. Real life, it stays with them. It's much more impactful.

Melatonin was for me in Covid I started using during that era. I started using some melatonin to sleep and my dreams got really vivid.

Melatonin makes me have bananas dreams for sure. Yeah, they're like that psychedelic dream I described but like times 10.

I don't think I've ever taken melatonin.

Oh well, you've got something to look forward to.

Let's do it. How much does, how much does it take?

But the good, you know the idea that dreams and subconscious or poorly integrated memories so things that happen in trauma do not make it into the stored memory banks of long term experiential type of memory. So they're kind of right at the surface.

And so those when triggered or depending on where somebody is at in the course of PTSD or another trauma disorder are very, very at the surface of frequently, you know, the dreams that's one of the symptom criteria for the diagnosis of ptsd and frequently one of, like, a target of treatment for us, at least.

Yeah.

One of the people I trained with in my NP training described the cleanup that happens in REM sleep as little vacuum cleaner cells running around the br, just cleaning everything up. And I always liked that visual.

I love it. I love it. Well, a couple of the recurring dreams that I had. One was that sense of being kind of found out.

Like, I was being approached either by a school or in jobs. People saying, we found out about you, and you need to leave here because we realize who you are.

You're a fraud.

Yeah. It was a secret that I had, like, a real. Like, it was. It was a real secret, which was pretty public now.

I mean, you know, I talk about not drinking anymore, but I was hiding that from myself. And. And these dreams just kept coming up of, like, oh, no, they found this out about me. And.

And, like, it was something I wasn't talking to people about.

You know, you don't have a body buried in the basement.

I don't. I don't. I don't.

Secret family in Cleveland.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the other recurring dream was vampires and zombies. You know, that was. That was a really scary set.

Another memory. I had a friend. I have a Freddy Krueger dream. I haven't had it in a long time, but I saw A Nightmare on Elm street when I was very young.

Maybe eight, nine, ten, something like that. So I used to, when I was a kid, have dreams that. That I was being chased by Freddy Krueger. And oftentimes it was on a boat, like a cruise ship.

And it was just him and I.

And. Yeah.

No shuffle. No shuffleboard.

No shuffleboard. It was like, more I. And I've never really been. I've never been on a cruise. So it was. Yeah, it was just kind of a freighter type of situation.

But I remember one time I got away in a plane. I managed to fly a plane off of the boat, and then Freddy ended up in the back. It was like a Red Baron.

And I turned around, and Freddy Krueger was in the back backseat. I always remember that dream.

I was like, I had a friend.

You didn't have Snoopy chasing you?

No, no.

You had it.

I did. And I also saw Nightmare on Elm street when I was far too young. I was probably somewhere between 7 and 10 as well. But mine was like.

It was the sewer from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I was down there in their world, but the turtles weren't There it was Freddy Krueger.

Well, Freddy, I mean, Nightmare on Elm Street. Are you guys familiar? I have a feeling to tell.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen. And. And he comes to you in your dream.

I mean, it just completely hijacks your.

And there was a dream group in one of the episodes. One, I think it was the fourth or fifth one maybe where there was a dream group and they found a way to enter each other's dreams.

I saw that one.

And they fought him off. Yeah. Which was pretty cool, I thought. I thought that was amazing.

It was a great series.

I don't think I've ever had a monster dream.

No, no. Yours are more realistic. I mean, get. Getting.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. They're real scary.

Crashes on what is the rating inside me where Mike is the dream goo.

And like I said, usually. Usually it's my. My childhood home that I'm at.

Yeah.

Like one of my childhood homes. You know, it just depends.

Well, water is purifying but also damaging.

What's the feeling?

But there's. It's not good. It's usually like almost like there's a leak in the roof.

Yeah. And this house is not protecting me. Yeah. This is not. I need more protection here. Yeah.

That makes like it's falling apart, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Give Daedalian a raincoat. Umbrella.

Well, kids, I mean, kids especially. I mean, you're so vulnerable during that period of time. And you're very vulnerable to different imagery too.

Because I remember seeing a vampire movie long before I was ready for it, and I think that had a lot to do with the vampires that I had in my dreams early on.

But is it common that adults dream less than children? Or is there a trajectory of I.

Feel like I dream less now I do too.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because the title of the book is Everybody Dreams. I'm going to plug it again. Everybody Dreams.

It'll be in the show notes.

It'll be available on Amazon. And everybody does dream. And a lot of people say, well, I don't remember my dreams. And that's accurate. Or people will dream sometimes about.

They're thinking about work, for instance. So some people, it's just like, I've been thinking about work all night.

May have been asleep and dreaming about work or it just doesn't seem to have that kind of weird imagery that you usually associate with dreams that it just seems very bland and like this is what normally is what happens. But you're working on that that material all the time.

A PsychoDelicious Conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such.

If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consult your local provider, Google therapy or therapists in your area. Check your community mental health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike Morgan and Melissa welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas. Feel free to send your emails to psych.dlishmail.com that's P S Y C H dot D E E L I S H Mail the views expressed on this.

Podcast are solely the opinions of Mike Stratton, Morgan Bowen, and Melissa Black and do not reflect the views or opinions of any site broadcasting this podcast. Replication of this podcast without written permission is strictly prohibited.