Rediscovering Love Through the Unconscious Mind with Dr. Loren Weiner

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks. I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail. Welcome to. And now, love. I am happy to say that we have Dr. Weiner with us again today with more dreams. If we're really paying attention, we can find so much of ourselves in the dream scenarios we share here. For me, every dream shared has sparked feelings in me, and those feelings create this magnificent curiosity. Our unconscious us is vast and cradles the healing we all need. Our dreams are the conduit to this incredible wellspring where our true selves can be known.

Thank you, Loren, for once again sharing your wisdom and your feelings about our dreams with us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, what do you want to talk about? Well, something small. How about love? my gosh. Yeah, I think I have some dreams today that talk about it. The dreams are easy to understand, I think, from everybody. But I think we're all going to be able to see ourselves in it. And that's the important piece. And obviously, love is a huge topic. So we will touch on some of it today, and I think we'll touch on other parts of it as we go along.

And I wonder who of us hasn't somehow questioned what that really is. And, you know, so many times we think, I love this person. I love this feeling. I love you. And then you step back and think, well, how do I know what that really is? Yeah. So that that's an important piece. How do we know that what we are feeling is love? And how good is our compass at determining that. And knowing and feeling? I guess you've got to somehow figure out how to start with feeling to get to the knowing. That helps. That helps. So all of the things you're talking about will be touched upon in the session, which is nice.

This is. Yeah, this actually is a really simple way to start talking about a very complex topic because it is all about who are we, you know, and are we really here to love each other? The end of the day, that's my feeling that we need to be able to love each other. So whatever gets in our way, and that may be about an individual love relationship, as you're saying, love on a bigger scale globally that crosses political divides, that crosses countries, that crosses tribes, whatever it is, families that really what are we all doing here? And if not to love each other, then why what what purpose could be better than to learn to love each other?

And it sifts all the way down. Or I guess it's the very beginning is loving yourself, loving yourself. And really, that Bails idea was that first pair, which is the mother, and the concept is the mother and the baby is where love starts. So his idea was, Look, casual sex may be nice, but if you think there's a chance that a baby will come from this, then you better start being in a loving state and thinking about love from the very beginning, if possible. Because you want to infuse everything about that baby's beginnings in love. The more the baby feels loved, the more that baby knows it's okay to love him or herself.

And that's in an amazing gift to give a human being to go into life with. We've got to figure out what that really is, That love. Yes. So many of us are in that position now. We're carrying a human child and we know we're supposed to love that being. But how do we know we're really doing it right? Good question. So let's take a look at the case, and I think it won't answer that question specifically, but it starts to get into the discussion that will lead us there. Okay. So I will read the introduction to my patient. We're going to call her Daphne.

Daphne is a 35 year old physician who came to me following her divorce. She was married for five years and was devastated when the marriage didn't work out. She was both heartbroken and panicked because she knew she was pushing up against her age and her fertility. She always felt she wanted children and now may have to let that dream go, given it felt unrealistic for her to meet and marry another person quickly enough to make having a child feel like a real possibility for her? Did she think something was going to have to give? She was either going to meet someone and marry them, maybe not having it be completely based on love in order to have this happen quickly or just not even have this happen.

I think for her, the question was, will this even happen? I see. I included it because you have to know that's in there. That's a pressure that's pushing on someone. And as you alluded to, that may make you make decisions about love, security, having a child or things that are not quite love and have you make life choices based on that. So this is a huge anxiety that is always with her. And for a lot of us in this world. And for a lot of people. And it also goes to her self-esteem, you know, how good is she feeling about herself? Does she feel she's really entitled to a full love match?

Does she have to rush? Will anybody want her? She told me that she felt her marriage had broken up after her husband lost his mother to a quick moving illness that surprised everyone. She watched as her husband fell into a deep depression from which she felt he never recovered. This happened in their second year of marriage. Over the next two years, he tried medication and therapy. And while some of the depression lifted, she felt his emotional distance from her remained. By the fourth year of marriage, she found out he had an affair which caused her to end the marriage.

She felt she had lost him long before then and no longer had the fight in her. They split up and she was left hurt, confused and unsure of how in her words, to get her life back. She no longer trusted herself as she had no idea that her husband would ever cheat on her. And it made her question everything. Had she missed the signs, had she failed to understand how much she was grieving? She didn't feel she had real closure or understanding from him about why he did what he did. And she wanted to get clarity around it so that she could move on. And very importantly, she wanted to understand her part in it.

She was still hopeful that she could have a chance at lasting love, but was afraid she might find another bad situation. Over the course of the first few sessions. Daphne gave me her history. She was the oldest child and had two sisters. All three were highly intelligent and very driven. Both parents were also physicians and very successful in their respective specialties. She spoke of her childhood in a realistic way, showing her awareness of her parents tendencies to work long hours and sometimes seem more like friends or colleagues than a romantic couple.

She felt her mother was reserved and that academic and then professional achievement was the only way to get her attention. She also noted that her mother was at least warmer than her grandmother. The mother's mother, who was cold and very punitive. Her grandmother, married young, had several children that she openly stated she did not want and felt that she had to stay in her marriage because it was what was done. The patient felt her mother may have been better suited to a career than being a mother. The patient described her father as warmer than her mother generally, and although he was a workaholic, he was very interested in the children's activities when they were young, attending sporting matches and performances without fail.

She felt he was the parent she would go to if she needed advice, but most of the time she felt she would handle things on her own because she didn't want to interrupt his work. Daphne said she had good relationships with her sisters and they were close the way friends were texting, often meeting for lunches and shopping and able to share the ups and downs of life with each other. She said there were some jealousies and rivalries, but nothing she considered out of the norm. And she was grateful to have them, especially during her divorce, when she leaned on them heavily.

She told me that both siblings had had a tough time finding satisfying, romantic relationships and often found themselves either pining over men who were not really available or settling for men who were but did not really excite them. Daphne said she had those experiences too, and was so relieved when she finally found her husband because she thought it would get her out of the slog of dating. The patient was eager to get some emotional relief and understanding around how her life had taken such an unexpected and painful turn. And I will present some dreams that start to reveal the unconscious peace that was sitting under all of this.

Okay. I think most of us can relate to some bit of that. How do I enter into a relationship? What does it mean? It. Her sisters are pining away for the right partner, not the right partner. And you think you've found someone and you think you've read the situation reasonably correctly. And all of a sudden, I think she felt out of nowhere. She lost this man. Also in part of this that I think we can all relate to are those times in your life where you think you have that the total picture, you know what's going on. The people closest to you, you can you can trust, you know, what they're doing, what they're feeling.

And she never expected this man that she lived with to have this affair. How do you trust anything after that when you've been sort of so compromised in your closest relationship? I think that's how she felt. Just you would question everything. Gutted and and really thrown off her center, you know, of what she thought was her center, at least, you know. These are the things I know. And I can depend on him. And then he fell apart. And Wait a minute. I thought this was love. I thought this was love. And it would last. This would hold me. Big, big, big loss.

So I think as you said, I think there's a lot of different pieces we can all relate to. This is not a woman who, you know, overtly suffered what we would normally call big abuse. This was a reasonably well-functioning life where she was able to meet a lot of her goals. Things were going well until they weren't. And experience many of us can have. Yes. I'll present a session that comes early in the treatment. They're both reasonably early sessions, but you can sort of see that the unconscious very quickly begins to bring her information that is going to shed light on her internal foundation.

And that led her into this relationship in a way where she could be surprised. She starts. So I'm not sure what is the most important thing on my mind today. There are a lot of things swirling around. My best friend dragged me out last weekend to try to get me back in the game. It was unpleasant, but I really appreciated her effort. It's been a little over a year since the divorce was finalized and she felt I really needed to at least dip my toe in the dating world. I don't think I even know how to do it. It's been a long time. We went to a housewarming and then to a birthday dinner, which was at a bar.

I was doing my best to not be sour and to smile and look happy to be there. I did talk to a few people, some nice men, but none of them felt like anyone I would actually want to spend more time with. But I tried to practice my flirting. I'm glad I went. Maybe it won't feel so strange the next time. She says she had a dream the night after going out with her friend. In the dream, she says, I'm someplace crowded, like a school or university. Maybe I'm in the dorms. I'm leaving. And so is a male friend of mine. I like him a little romantically, I think.

So I am packing all this stuff into a little travel bag. I know. I can only take a few things. He's going somewhere like New Mexico or Colorado. I don't think he's sure where he's going. He asks for my email to keep in touch. I keep trying to write it down, and I either can't decide which one to give or I can't remember the correct spelling. I basically have to write it many times over and over, trying to get it right. I think to myself that it doesn't really matter because he won't write to me anyway. So I ask her what comes to her mind about the dream.

She says, I think this brings up some interesting things. It makes me feel a little sad, actually, and I'm not sure why. I had a boyfriend a long time ago that I think moved to New Mexico after we lost touch. And also my ex has a connection as he had some distant family there and has talked about wanting to move there at some point because he loves the wide open spaces. And I asked what the guy in the dream was like, and she said, Maybe he's my ex, like a younger version of him. He's sort of soft spoken, a creative type, like my ex. But there's also something a little different about him.

He was pursuing me, he was following me. He was following me around the dorm as I was packing and gathering my things. That was not exactly like my ex. It felt a little more like he was interested. And that feels so different. After feeling like my ex just dropped me and never really looked back and I said, So is this more of the way you wished he would have been? And she said something more like, that feels right. Like there was an energy to him. He was solid and I could depend on him. And I asked her about, you know, whether she could depend on her ex.

And she said, I could definitely. But I think it was more like he just didn't feel as solid as this guy. It reminds me of this guy I dated, well, loosely dated in med school before I met my husband. He was sweet and definitely solid, like he liked me. And I just knew it. And I think I didn't really let myself relax into that. And I was busy chasing this other guy and went on to date him for a while. He was an asshole, it turns out, And I think just too immature. Ultimately. So I picked the wrong guy there. So why do you think you're back in college?

I ask her. College brings up so many thoughts for me. It's an exciting time. Everything is before you. And I feel like that isn't exactly true anymore. Now, I've been through this, and it colors things. It changed me. I'm not as optimistic and excited about life. I'm still here, but different. This takes me back to a better time, I think. Maybe there are still things I want to learn or needed to learn. Like what? I ask. Like what the rest of my life will be like. What about the fact that he wants your email and you can't get it right? I think this gets at something about me.

I have this default where I just assume the guy won't really want me and I do this even when they are making it really obvious. I might get embarrassed and awkward and I feel like I shouldn't say how I really feel, but then I think I give off not interested vibes and then things just fall apart and either they lose interest or something happens and it doesn't work. But I know it's me. I do it because I just get so nervous and almost can't imagine that someone will actually want me and also be romantic and treat me right. It's like that doesn't compute.

And I said, Is that how you feel in the dream? And she said, I'm not sure. I think it might be a little less because I get the feeling that he is actually interested in me and I want to give him my information, but then I can't do it. It's like a slow jog or dream, but instead I'm writing my email over and over and trying to get it right. It's crazy. So this guy is interested in you and you aren't able to make yourself reachable available to him. And she said, I think so. So why aren't you able to write your email? I guess I'm not comfortable.

I don't think I trust that he will really want me. He was cute and seemed like the kind of guy everyone would want. So maybe I just didn't feel it was real. Like, he wouldn't really want to ask me out. So where do you think you got the idea that you wouldn't be wanted? I'm not exactly sure, but my mind immediately went to my sisters, and I think they sort of feel like I do. So this must be a family thing. So everyone has the idea that they won't be wanted? Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And we're all insecure that way. So it sounds like there's two things happening here.

The first is that you're saying that, well, you worry he won't want you. You're actually not available to the good guy who wants you and will take care of you. You can't give the right email as hard as you try. And she said, That's interesting because I feel like I've always attracted these guys who are either totally not available or I thought they were, but really weren't. I think that's why I married my husband. He seemed to be available and be interested and I really loved him. But then it all fell apart and it was so hard to understand why he just disappeared on me emotionally.

His body was there, but he was gone. I couldn't understand why I wasn't important enough to fight for it to come back to. But it was like he just pulled away and that was it. But if I'm not really available, is that why I chose him? I don't think we have the full story yet. But you seem to be saying that this is an important piece for you to know about. That's why you're dreaming about it. Then we can figure out how and where it played a part in all of this. In the dream, she's ultimately sabotaging the really. Good connection. To protect her feelings.

I suppose. Not being left, not being hurt, not knowing if it's real love. And then that relates to her real relationship in that she found a man whom she could be safe with safety equals love. Not really, but yes. So it is kind of the same thing. At first I was thinking, well, that seems so different than her relationship, because she basically gave him her email, but she put herself in a safe place. This man wants me. Yes, I think she did. And and as we go on, I think she talks a little more about that compromise. Right. What you're talking about is a real compromise where people often don't feel they're entitled to love.

They will pick someone for safety and security. It may look like love to them. It may not. But often they make that choice because there just isn't a feeling that they will ever get off. That's not even. Or they imagine they will. But what their definition of love is may look much more like security. It may not really be love that may be almost so much more than one could ever hope for that you don't even get that as part of the decision making process. So safety is kind of all you can hope for at the moment, right? It's the closest to love you'd ever get.

Which is really not love at all. Right. Which is not love. I mean, that and that's that's part of what this woman is going to be dissecting over time. What's love, what isn't. How do you chase love if you don't know what it is? Right. So you have to start looking at yourself and figuring out, do I know what it is? And if not, how did I get the wrong idea? And isn't that most of us? That's most of us. That's why I wanted everybody to hear this. So as as we go on in the session, I said, I think we have to come back to the question of where you would have gotten the idea that you wouldn't be wanted or love.

And she said, I guess it makes me think of my mother. I always felt a little unsettled with her. I know she loved me, but I really just got praise for achievement. But it wasn't warm most of the time, and I felt like she just must not care that much about me. I mean, that sounds bad. I knew she cared, but maybe I just didn't really feel it. Or she didn't know. She didn't show it much. I felt like she loved her work first and then the rest of us. And I said, So when you're talking to these guys, you're really talking to your mother, whom you worry won't really want you or isn't that interested, or it will be fleeting.

But her mother came from a place where she didn't understand or feel love, didn't. Want her, and didn't love her. So as much as she says. I know she loved me. I know she cared about me. No. Well, you're right on it. Right. We have to then start questioning that. Is that real? Does that hold as we examine it? Does it yield more information that we meaning we can't just take the surface comment as true? She said, I feel like I want to cry. So I think that must be right. So that's good. She actually has an emotional response to that. I'm looking for that.

When you said that, it also made me think of her mother. She would tell stories about not wanting my mom and her siblings as though they didn't have feelings about hearing that She would just say it the way you would. State of fact, you know, I didn't want to be a mother and have all those kids. I think it really hurt my mom, but she doesn't talk about it much. Would be hard to talk about. Might be hard to talk about. So I said, I think your mind went to the right place to explain some of this. If your mother didn't feel wanted, where would she learn to make you feel wanted?

That's what she had to pass down to you. And she said so why would I be unavailable? She was unavailable to me. And I said, yes. So maybe a combination of showing us what you got. She was unavailable or being like her and also protecting yourself. If you worry unconsciously that everyone will treat you like she did. I think you might protect yourself and not be so available. And she said, I get that. And how would she know any different? That's right. And I said, You know, there's a second part of the dream. I think the person who is interested in you and wants your number is me.

The question is whether you feel I will reject you or is it safe enough here for you to give me your email? And that's where we stopped. So I think that piece is important. It's important when you're treating someone that you are also looking at the relationship, right? Because whatever has gone on in her life will happen in the room, in the relationship. But also I think it's important because it shows what we would call the transference. But everybody has transference, meaning you transfer your feelings about one thing on to something else or perhaps everything.

If you had a mother who herself wasn't wanted, we know this overtly, right? This is clearly stated. We're not even guessing. And her mother didn't have an experience of being wanted or loved. She didn't have that to pass on. She tried. She tried to be warmer than she knew. That was not the way she wanted it, but there was not a lot to draw on. So that's what this patient got. And the patient, you know, may deny it. I know she cared It as one goes along again, she'll question that. But that means she is going out into the world. Everybody is potentially her mother who didn't love her, who doesn't want her, who isn't going to care for her to keep her in mind.

So you can imagine. Right. And then, of course, if her mother didn't love her, where would she have learned to love herself? Most importantly, she wouldn't. So she doesn't love herself. So that means how can she then go out and find the right people, the right relationship, maybe the right everything? You may deem something loving or this feels good and it may be very much the wrong place for you, because what you may be finding over and over is a place where you're not loved really, just like mom did it. And we are so satisfied with taking everything at face value.

You said something a few minutes ago about this and that. It's nice not to have to dig deep. You want to believe what you're told. You want to buy the picture, You want to figure out how to make your mom okay with your existence. And you help create an image of love just so you can survive in that relationship, right? Like you begin to understand that if I get good grades, that means that I was going to love me. And. Right. And so those kind of surface things carry you through. And do they then become more and more so your definition of love. If I have all these right qualities that makes me lovable, I'm smart or I always get A's or I'm the best football player or whatever it is that those can they equal love in your mind?

Well, I think in your mind and and what you're getting at is what's the fantasy that everybody's walking around with? We can look at everybody. And I think this case very quickly go, okay, how does this relate to me? You know, she's gotten to be a medical doctor. She's doing all these things right. You know, she did get married. Yes. Had a rough divorce. But I think this is a story about a woman who would say I was loved and then not understand why things don't go the way you would expect if you were loved. Why couldn't I find a last in relationship where my husband wouldn't fall apart and then cheat on me?

Right. Good question. If you were loved, probably you're not going to end up in that type of situation where you're so blindsided by this, you didn't see who he really was. So then we had this. All right, well, then maybe our assumption is wrong. Maybe you weren't really loved. And I think that's the piece that's so critical for the world. Maybe what we are calling love all over the place isn't really love. And we are all running around with a fantasy that it's loved. And we may do all kinds of mental gymnastics to make things that are not loving.

How many times do you hear from friends either growing up as a teenager, even as an adult, you know, my gosh, person that I want to partner with finally said, I love you. Check it off. Done. But what does that really mean? I mean, those are just three words and we just wait for that on all sorts of levels. I mean, we think of any situation in the world almost where we just want somebody to say that to us. Right. And then maybe say it back. But what what's holding that up? You know, what kind of background is there when it's just the words that get you there?

Well, right when it's generation after generation of people saying, I love you and maybe loving you a little, maybe not at all. Maybe it's violent and awful and you're told your hated. So there's not even a people aren't even pretending to love you. Now you may still find people say, but I know they loved me. I know my mother loved me. She just couldn't show it. So I think we have to all sort of reevaluate all of the ways in which we categorize these things. How do we really judge them? Because I think we're judging a lot of things improperly, and that is getting us into terrible trouble.

And are we making those kinds of excuses? Mostly as a matter of self-protection. If I let go of this thing, I have zero. That's it. Fundamentally terrifying, right? I will drop off into the abyss. So I have to depend on you and to depend on you. I have to assume fantasized that you loved me. So let's move on to the second session. This is the second session that you're presenting. But somewhere along the way, we. Are still early in treatment. This is not a consecutive session. We're early on. But she pretty quickly lays out sort of. All right, here's my dilemma.

I wasn't I didn't feel my mother loved me and I didn't know how to then make myself available to love. This is in her unconscious. This is in her unconscious in the first dreams. I think early on, she felt she didn't know how to give the number right. Respond to someone who would be loving. I don't think at that point she would have said, My mother didn't love me. I just added that piece. And that's where we get later in treatment. Yes, but my goal, although that was very apparent, given the history she had said and what was going on, she's going to work her way there.

Well, and she was saying on the surface, I know my mother loved me. That's right. That's right. So in a way, I would say, look good for her to at least get the butt in there. Right. And I really like that. What she was looking at is what was my part in this? A lot of people come in. So I think she could have easily only went with this is what was done to me. And so some of that is a little defensive and protective. Also, what was my part? Let me fix that and then I'll be fine. Right? I don't have to really touch other things. But also that's a very curious way to enter into something to say.

You know, I just imagine there must have been something on my end too, right? Yeah. And how kind of normal for so many of us to think it's my fault, you know, what did I do here? Right? And so there is also that piece often that the women tend to present more with that. must be something I did. Not that men don't ever. But I think that is more you tend to see that more with your female patients. It's a woman's place. That's right. And there is some of that in her. Definitely. And I think she also just had a genuine curiosity to sort of see, you know what?

How do I start to understand this? And he's not giving me any information. It's going to have to come from me. So all of those, as she said, swirling around lots of things swirling around. So in this next session, she starts and says, I've been thinking a lot about what we talked about and seeing that there are so many things I'm starting to see and question that I always just assumed were normal. I don't think my mother was a bad mother, but she was removed. She was always off thinking about something else or work. But I think I always knew I wasn't the main thing on her mind.

It did leave me feeling like I just wanted her to spend more time with me and to light up when I walked in the room. So I think I did get the idea that maybe she wasn't that interested. Should kids feel like they're the main thing in their parents lives. Enough of the time? Yes. A little Kids should have this kind of glorious feeling. I can't wait till my mom comes home from work and I see her face light up and she comes to me with a hug and asks about my day. Yes, enough of the time. I don't think we can do that all the time. We don't have to do that all the time.

But that baby has to feel a little kid. The adult child. Enough of the time when you show up, that parent either, you know. Lights up. Yeah, right. That you really are important and special to that person. The glory of that, that thing that happens often for a lot of people or is only imagined by some to me is a glimpse of or is love in that that moment where someone abandons everything else and just sees you and holds you either literally or figuratively is is like, you know, it takes your breath away. Right? And so I think, yes, we want that to be happening as much as possible.

Now that the the only tricky part to that is that also then we have this unconscious piece. And how much does the unconscious then let you take in of that? Unfortunately, by the time we're adults, sometimes we have gotten so confused that we may still get that response from someone, but it doesn't always mean that the relationship is fully loving. I think we probably get these glimpses and and moments of that. But I and I don't really think that this patient had a mother where she felt consistently maybe never got that kind of response where you just walk in and the person lights up and it just that's it.

And you, as you say, you can melt into the beautiful deliciousness of that moment. Yeah. We want to be having those sorts of moments as much as we can. And what we are fighting is our trauma. We are fighting all of the ways in which we didn't get it. We were hurt, we weren't important, we weren't noticed. This is what this woman is now saying is, right, the dots are starting to connect. She was removed. I wasn't I never really felt like I was number one in her mind. How many people in the world do we see out there trying to be number one at something?

I want to be the best. I've got to be the star. Make me the center of attention, you know, or the opposite, right? I don't want to be seen. But either way, often what that is coming from is what place did you have? Where were you? Did you get enough? And that and that little world, whether it is either of those, you know, just give me all the attention and I'm satisfied or, you know, I want to be unnoticeable, that that's all you think you need to be satisfied is really something. I mean, that just speaks volumes about all of us. I have a question, though.

So this thing that feeling that that moment of glory, let's say, where you get that attention from or you wish you got it from your parents, I feel like we still know that it exists. You've either read a book, you watched a movie, you saw your friends interact, and you feel that essence of that. What does that mean? I mean, it makes me think that somehow we know that there's that feeling. I don't even know how to put it into words. But we we don't feel it, but we want to feel it. We've seen it over there. You weren't in that movie, right? But you you've heard the.

Story and you like it. I mean, why do you like it? I mean, why do you how do you know that feels like love if you don't have love? Well, there is a part, right, that, you know, people respond to that we are wired to respond to that. We long we long for that. You know, And then the question is, can we tolerate it? Will we allow ourselves to have it? In what way might we sabotage it? But I think, yes, we recognize that as human beings, that that is something desirable. We do and and do. We then try to mold our own existences into that or, you know, catch ourselves trying to believe that what we have is that even though it doesn't feel like that thing that you want to feel.

All of it, you know, I mean, then I think you have it and or, you know, it exists, you felt it or, you know, whether it was fleeting or you got some little taste of it, something or you didn't. And then you have to just see it in movies or read about it. And then the mind will set about doing any and all things to justify what you have to deny what you don't. To quiet the pain, to deny the pain, to try to get it, to keep yourself from it. It is anything and everything, but that is what we are all busy doing. That is what we are all doing, obeying an imprint and wrestling with it to see where and what kind of love we are actually allowed to have.

And walking down some crazy paths trying to very. Very, very as as individuals and as the world. Yeah. She says She didn't light up when I walked in the room it feels complicated because I know all of the hard work she did was for the family so we could have a good life. Maybe it was also to fulfill her, which I get. So it isn't like she was just hiding out from us all day. But it also felt like work came first. And then she was always taking care of her mother, who had a lot of health issues. And we were somewhere down the list. And she tells me she had a dream.

In her dream, she says, I'm driving to the valley and get stuck in traffic. So I get off the freeway and end up walking through a Thai village and there are poor people waiting for food to be delivered. It finally starts to arrive. Then I am at Melanie's and there is some talk about something with Eric, like he's doing something and Melanie wants a job decorating the set. Austin Melanie's husband has a job on a film. They tell me I can sleep on their guest bed since I drove so far. But I go to their place and this woman, Brandi, is there as though she lives there.

She's happy to see me, but has a bunch of friends with her and they're in the guest bedroom, so I have nowhere to stay. So I have to leave. I make a funny comment to them and I go, Then she tells me her thoughts. This dream is all over the place. I had it last night after a really long day at work. I just fell into bed and was out pretty quickly. I did go out to the valley to see these friends recently. Melanie is a friend of many years and her husband is Austin. They are an interesting couple, I think. Well matched. She's very smart, a little intense at times and can be controlling, but also can be very generous.

He's a little strange, very funny, but kind of keeps you at a distance. He's a science guy, a PhD in chemistry, so very smart and not the best socially, but I get him enough. He had a rough childhood and kind of raised himself, and I think he just lost himself in books, so he's more comfortable there. She kind of bridges the gap for him too. They aren't in film, so I'm not sure why this is about his job in film and her doing set design. Then she tells me that they just had this awful situation where they adopted a puppy and had it for a while, and then it turns out there were all these health problems and they ended up returning it to the breeder.

I know it was a hard decision for them, but it was kind of like, How could you do that? But they felt like the breeder knew the puppy had problems and didn't let them know. I don't even know all the details. It was heartbreaking and I was just hearing about it for the first time when I was out there and there were too many people around to get the whole story. I felt so sad hearing it. I really felt for the puppy and who would take care of it and make sure it had a good home. I think they also worried they wouldn't be able to take care of the dog in the right way because they both had very demanding jobs and what if it needed too much?

But it sounds like a rough decision and just heartbreaking. And I asked her about Brandy and the guest bedroom and she said, yeah, she doesn't even know Melanie and Austin, but she was my neighbor when I lived in this apartment during Med school. She was beautiful and friendly and just a great person in the dream. She's there and happy to see me, but there is so many people there that isn't room for me. I don't want to make a big deal out of it, but I'm hurt. I did drive a long way and it would have been nice if they had made sure to find space for me.

So I said to her, I think the Thai village is about the ties to your parents and you had to feed them. They were poor, meaning they didn't have enough love given to them by their parents, not enough food. So you would have to do it to take care of them, nourish them with your achievements. Melanie and Austin are also your parents who didn't want the puppy. The puppy Is you there, baby? It looks like you were wanted on the surface. You were invited to stay. But then there's no space for you. No wonder you fell into bed last night. You would be exhausted from taking care of them.

The idea now would be to cut the ties so that you can free yourself from taking care of people who didn't have space for you and move into finding those that do. Of course, that may mean you worry there won't be space here for you either. So that's where we left it. So this is important because she gets to it. There was no space for me. There simply was no space. Space would be the equivalent of love. There was no loving place in the mother's mind or in the father's mind for this baby to come really have that kind of foundation sit in that learn to love herself, know she's valuable, and then go out in the world and pick accordingly.

What did she do with that information, those feelings? She came to them with you. She cried and she cried a lot. And then she denied it. And then she felt it some more. And she dreamed about it some more. And she did what we call working through, which is you sort of, you know, two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back as you metabolize this new idea. And this is not an easy idea. And often this comes up early in treatment. And then if the patient does what the patient does with it, and it may stay as a small thread and then usually someone will get moved aside a little there some amnesia about this, and then it gets opened up again and hopefully can get really taken up in a meaningful way.

But her mind is telling her very quickly, here was the situation. There wasn't a place for you. So you learn to protect yourself. You're not going to get hurt. Why would you keep giving your number out if you already know there's no guest bedroom for you? You're just going to get hurt again. You're just going to get hurt. It doesn't matter how much you feed them, how much you achieve, how much you take care of everything, and it all look nice on the surface. She was invited to these people's home right in the dream. And in reality, her parents got pregnant.

They invited her in, right? They they didn't know they had no bedroom for her. They didn't know that their feelings had not allowed that to happen. And that's a really important piece for us. We all have to understand that all of our hurts, all of our traumas get in the way of love getting through. So either we don't get it or whatever we have. Maybe diminished and or block, we assume, I'm trying to be so loving. I'm working all these hours, I'm trying to do this for my family. And that isn't what's the love part of that isn't coming? Well, we think just having a baby is love.

Right? Of course I love you. And I truly believe, you know, most mothers are not walking around, not thinking, not wanting to love, not thinking. They don't want to love this baby or not thinking that they have in some way, you know, disconnected from love. But they have and they just don't know it. And this is why we want to talk about all of this and get this really clear. And if you look around the world again, as I've said many times, are we doing loving things? But we're not intentionally, for the most part, being, let's say, bad ad. I mean, we're not a woman who's carrying a child and is going to have this baby is excited and knowing that this is coming from a place of love.

There's no harm intended on the surface at all. None at all. And for the vast majority of people, they are, of course, in a state of mind to saying, But I love this baby. I wanted this baby. Maybe I worked hard to get this baby or, you know, I felt so lucky to have this baby. And there are wonderful experiences. And to those people, I would just say, look, generally fine. Just keep loving as much as you can do that. Do that, keep doing that, lean into that. Right. Dads or whomever, partners or whomever you know is involved. Caretakers nurture the person who is caring this baby because the more love that person is feeling, the better off that Dyad is.

And we want these dyads in really good shape. We want that mommy baby couple in a really lovely, juicy, abundant state of love. But even there, we may find places where people think they are consciously being as loving and thoughtful as they can be. And yet, guess what? They too have an imprint. They have ancestors who did not get all the love they need. And so often there still are places where that love gets jammed up, doesn't find its way in, doesn't allow the mother to freely give herself over to this wonderful feeling with the baby. We work with what we've got.

That's right. So if it's going well, I would say, great, Whatever you're doing, keep doing it right, amplify it, and people around you hopefully support you in that. We need all of that. You know, any of these policies we have around the world that are not supportive of mothers. Bad idea. Really, really bad idea. You don't you know, if you don't want to make sure that mothers have all the housing and food and security that they need to carry a baby the whole time without worrying that their life is in some way in jeopardy and insufficient. And if you don't want to make sure that's a really bad idea because you will get an entire populace who has come through whatever that trauma is, you know, And that's just the experience in the immediate right.

You know, whatever her history is obviously plays in. And then however, policies treat that woman. But if you don't want to give her a voice at the table, if you do not want her to feel you're going to have trouble, and it's not just going to be trouble for the woman in the baby. Remember, the woman gives birth to males and females, both parts of the next generation of people who will grow up and turn around and take care of all of us. So I think it behooves everybody to really think about that and recalibrate, take a better look and say, Now what are we all doing here as human beings?

What is our purpose here? And is it to really make money or is it to learn to love each other? I'm not saying I'm anti money, of course, fine, make money. But I think if money is your goal, if power is your goal, it will be a disaster and at some point it will fail and it will fail in a big way. Empires crash. They crash. So if we can get everybody to realize that love, love is the place to be love and going inside, understanding yourself so you can find out where you're not open to love, where you didn't get it. What you are denying about your own history and change that and then start to sell.

You know, Dr. Bail, you say, well, you had to be careful. And a lot of people have spiritual people say this, which is, look, you may be lucky in this lifetime and life is pretty good. And you may look at the person of a nurse. She thank goodness I'm not that person who doesn't have whatever it is, X, Y, and Z, you know, or has to live a certain way. But in the next lifetime, that may be you. You may want to make sure if you've been given something good, you try to give everybody around you as much good as you can, as much love, because we never know where we're going next.

Who are we going to be next? And you better hope the other people have tried to make it better for you. And even if you don't go that far down that path, there's it's like a just in case that would help. You want us spread this love, You know, just just in this one little existence on earth? I think so, you know, And so you have to yourself, am I being loving now, I'm not saying be a martyr. I'm not saying you have to suffer. I want to get that clear because a lot of people mistake being loving with suffering. Right. You just have to take everything.

And that's not the point of this. And that brings me to I said there's two parts to your question. Let me answer the second part. Bail really felt that that original spark of love when you say, but you you see it in a movie, even if you never got to see it in a movie. right. Or maybe you even see it like, that is I'm repelled by it almost, because I've I've so never had this, but I know it is powerful. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. But he would say that feeling originated with God and that in his mind, fundamentally, we all carry a perhaps very small or distant in our minds now experience of being one with.

And this isn't about religion in his mind, this was about spirit, the Divine, and this is about the Divine being the provider of pure, abundant love. And we were intended to have that to exist with that. But our trauma has been so heavily piled on top of that that it's hard to find it. Yes, I think he would say, look, we've all come down to earth to learn lessons. So you don't remember that as much as perhaps we need to remember it or be tuned into it and the traumas and the different things we go through, challenges we go through whatever our earthly curriculum is so that we can learn and evolve, so our souls can mature, learn things, and we may put ourselves.

That's how I say, who knows who you may be? People may disagree with that. But Bail said here in his mind, Here's how this is working. So we are holding this distant memory of pure love. And it was blissful and amazing, as you can read. You know, it's like that that person lighting up it when they see you, but, you know, magnify that. So we've all got this kernel of that. And so I think there is also a part of us when we are in our earthly relationships where none of them are going to be completely fulfilling because they cannot be divine. So there is always a part of us, I think, sort of lament taking the loss when we are down here of that feeling.

I wonder if those little glimpses are just a nudge, a reminder like, yes. Did you do you feel that that felt so good? Don't you want more of that? Let's go get it. Everybody stop fighting with each other. Stop doing horrible things to each other. Stop having war. Stop chasing money and power. It's the wrong thing. Go for love. Go for love. And when you listen to dreams the way Bail did, the way those of us who do this work do what? Come to over and over and over and over is the lack of love that people feel. And so for Daphne, did she get to a place where she could understand and feel that love?

Daphne is working on it. It is an ongoing process. But she knows. It now. She knows it, right? And now she knows when she meets somebody she's going to pay, see what she feels first and then pay. Really careful attention to her dreams. What is this asking me to do? Is this relationship supporting me in my highest good or not? Do I have to cram myself into, you know, bend myself into a pretzel to make this relationship work? Am I willing to do that? Why would I be? Well. Well. Hopefully she wouldn't be willing to do it. Now, I will say, of course, sometimes that takes a long time to work through because you will fool yourself, you know?

But it seems like this. Okay, well, then, see, you know, if you have to experience this and see, go ahead. But eventually, hopefully, you come out the other side and go, I yes. Again, I got confused and I was really choosing to stay with some symbol of my mother and father. Right. And that's why that dream is so important, because it really says break the ties. Scary. Incredibly scary. But those have been making you suffer and you have to get enough of a view of that. You have to see all the ways in which you have suffered. Calling this love, suffered, suffered, suffered, calling this good, protecting your parents, obeying your imprint.

You have to see enough of that to where you go, okay, I get what I do. Like she came in asking what's my part in this. Well, here's your lesson to learn and what a blessing that you get to learn this because then, yeah, you don't have to repeat it over and over and over. And that's what the whole world needs to see, is that we are going the wrong way when we chase all of these external things like money and power. You want to divide up countries, move families, split people up, make this one good, that one bad. Take money from this one. Give it to that one.

That's all the wrong thing to be focused on. Some sort of immediate satisfaction that you think you're going to have, but you don't really get. Yeah, it's all too separated from feeling fundamentally love and it is all too intellectual. And I think that's where we've gotten off track and we got way too lost and we have to find our way home and that is through feeling. And your dreams will take you there. Well, then we're going to have to do more of this. And we've just opened up several different topics that I think really ought to be discussed more about love and spirituality, our connection to divine, how we find out about these things through our dreams.

Okay. Yeah, I'd love to. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, listeners and viewers for joining us today. It was great. Let us know what you thought about it. See you next time. Bye, Loren.