Unlocking your Inner World: Dreams as a Guide to Self-Understanding

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. Today, we welcome back Dr. Loren Weiner. Dr. Weiner is our in-house expert on all things Dr. Bail, his theories and how we can heal by understanding and making use of them. According to Dr. Bail, we have all been given the gift of the dream, and it is a precious tool we can use to discover the very best of ourselves, our true selves. Welcome, Loren. Thank you for having me back. we're so lucky to have you. So today we're talking about dreams.

My favorite topic. So basically, what is a dream? what isn't a dream really? It is so much. But primarily, I would say it is a communication from our deepest selves. For us, each day, night, whenever they come, that gives us information about our lives, about what we feel about certain things, whether we're aware of it or not, where we might want to go, what might be coming in our lives, how the past has influenced us. And often what we need to understand about ourselves, our environment, the people around us to grow our minds and move forward in our lives.

So many of us don't think we dream or can't even imagine that what you're saying is worthy. We all dream, right? We all dream. And how do we know that science has proven that? Science tells us. Yes. Okay, we dream fine, but it's meaningless. It's just like you said, the blah, blah, blah, the day to day. How do we get to a place where we say, Wait a minute, wait a minute, precious messages coming my way? Why would I not at least explore this? Why indeed? A lot of people just haven't heard this. They haven't thought about it that way. Dreams are interesting.

I think. Lots of people have experiences with dreams. A young child runs into the bedroom. I had a nightmare. Your friend had a funny dream about you and tells you when you get to class that morning. Dreams are part of our lives. And so many people talk about them. I think most people just don't realize how incredibly important they are. How did Dr. Bail discover the importance of the dream? Well, Dr. Bail was a psychoanalyst, so he was trained at the time he was training Freud. Was it. And Freud used the dream. Freud loved the dream. He thought it was the royal road to the unconscious.

So part of Dr. Bail's training had to do with using the dream. And then eventually he went on to grow that love of the dream and really see it as a Rosetta Stone, as the way we can touch base with our higher self and get information that helps do everything for us and very importantly, heal helps us heal. So even before he came to the mother's imprint, his theory, he was intrigued and making use of the dream in his practice and probably in his own life. And then he just expanded on it. Once he found out about this mother's imprint, which if you could just briefly share with us again what that is, the mother's imprint.

Yes. Dr. Bail did. I mean, he really had a true love of the dream then as he used it. And worked with his patients, listened to them. One of the things that emerged was the mother's imprint. And that is basically the idea that mothers through their own lives, have accumulated a certain amount of hurt and pain and upset and importantly negative feelings about themselves that then when they become pregnant, are passed to the fetus and the fetus, then splits itself a bit to hold all of this rather toxic material and then it walls it off and continues on as though nothing's happened except something enormous has happened.

So there's here's me and now I have this extra pile of stuff that I have to take with me. Everywhere I go, everywhere you go. And you don't know it. And this is the biggest piece and why the dream was so important to him is that we're really dealing all in the world of what we call the unconscious. Meaning I'm not thinking about it. I don't know it's there, but it is calling all the shots. The unconscious. The unconscious. Now, you don't know that it's doing that, but it keeps putting the wrong information in all the time. And this is what he came to call the mother's imprint towards the end of his life.

He did feel that there were good imprints as well. But we don't tend to to have to focus on those as much because those just help us along. Right. They speak to the parts of our life that are working well for us. Exactly. And he used the dream to look at where is the trouble? And a dream is incredibly good at being able to show us that in a way that we can't get to just by talking. It taps into the unconscious piece we all need to be aware of is the. Dream part of our unconscious or a tributary to our unconscious? If that's the case, what's the difference between what is going on in our brain, this tributary and the unconscious?

The unconscious, I would say, makes the dream, but it makes a lot of things. So it makes our thoughts. Also, when you say what's going on in our brain, right, it sits almost like a well that has all of these tributaries that lead to dreams, thoughts, feelings, all of it. And I do recall Dr. Bail saying that the unconscious was kind of this giant container that holds everything that we've experienced in our lives, everything. That's what he thought, is that everything you've been through, whether you remember it or not, registered it made a mark, it is recorded.

And so that material, all of that is what we actually use to guide our lives. So you can imagine it's filled with everything. Part of what the dream also allows you to do is if you can go in and at any given moment, a specific dream will tell you where that person's mind is occupied right then. So something big happened. A dream might focus on that. I had a car accident, I got a promotion. The guy I liked or the gallery like, said something nice to me as we were passing in the office. Whatever it is, it registers somewhere there. And if it makes a big enough noise, the dream will focus on it.

And then you can zero in on where the person is in that moment. The beauty of it really, and the tough part as a clinician, it could be anything. And I say that because there's so much that goes on in our days and then you get a dream and you get the wonderful chance to sort of go through it. If you've had a dream, you have this story. Often it is nonsensical. Time doesn't really make sense. I was flying, I was underground. I wasn't there at all. But there was so much going on. I mean, a dream could be so many different things. And then you get to talk to the person who had the dream.

And now this comes from Freud. This is how Freud did it. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Why this? Why that? You do what psychoanalysis calls is called associate to the dream and you just as much as you can, you let your mind go and you just see what comes. why was I in a pool underground and and why did an earthquake come? And then why did the little ants all come down, whatever the dream looks like. Right? But you're going to each part and you want to see what comes to your mind because what I'm hoping to do as I'm having a conversation with someone about this is let the unconscious part that knows everything about you and knows what's most important right this minute for you to understand.

I want to let it speak and it's going to it's going to tell me things or not tell me things or leave something out. I just remember this. Well, that's interesting. Let's see why. And are there prompts that come from you? Do you would you say, tell me about those ants? What else do you think of when you think of those ants? Yes, I might give prompts. I would say this the beginning of learning to work this way. I might give more prompts because you have to learn this kind of a skill. And then as you begin to collaborate, your patient understands that they should be looking at these things and saying, I remember those ants.

They used to walk across the picnic table and I was at my grandfather's house and it goes. Yes, you learn how it grows. People can then anticipate that if they don't tell me about the ants, at some point I would ask about the ants. Anyway. So I think people get on to how you work with a dream that you do want to look at the components. And the other piece I'm always curious about is what did the dream feel like? What were your feelings in the dream? So were you happy or scared or worried? Exactly. And often it is. Sometimes the meaning of the dream is contained in how it felt, or the feeling may be completely different than you would expect.

People is, you know, I should have been terrified. I wasn't. Okay, that's interesting. Now we've got something really interesting about this dream, not just the content, not just your associations, but this idea that the feeling. Well, and in that case, that the feeling didn't relate to what you're describing, the dream to be like. There's something you should be super frightened of, but you're not so frightened. So what does that speak to that question? And that's what you want to ask your patient. What comes to mind about that? Why do you think that's how it went?

And then you see what the answer is? And we're putting all of these clues together because really a dream is a riddle or mystery to be solved. And we're putting all of these clues together, taking the whole person as well. What's going on in your life? What's your history? What are you talking to me about today? How did you start the session? Because often people give you a clue at the beginning of the session just by talking. Like, what about a mood that they're in or the way they're feeling that day? That could be something. It could really be anything on the patient's mind.

So somebody will come in and they might say, I just, I was rushing to get here. It was such a crazy day. Okay, so. That's a start. That's a start. But anything's a start, really. I'm running late. Why was I 20 minutes late to the session or. I got here really early because I was worried I wouldn't be able to park, and they all sound like throwaways. You would say? well, people say that all the time, right? But if we think that the unconscious is always working, it's always actually sharing information doesn't just have to be in a dream, then you have to start to take what a person says and just be paying attention to it.

Right. Why did they choose to bring that information to Right. There may be a reason you're telling me this and it may help us unlock what has to be learned today so that you feel you can get some relief or so your mind can grow, that we're really actually so interesting that way. Most things are just not simple. They have a little bit more depth to them, which is, I think, the most interesting part of all of us people. Well, I think for what you do, my gosh, every patient that you see during the day, you're like, okay, what's next? Like a giant puzzle in the best way in that just selfishly, what a wonderful thing to just sort of be able to maneuver through the most important parts of humanity to kind of figure out some conclusion and and have it be so interesting along the way.

It's so incredibly interesting. I will say it is incredibly challenging as well. So there are some days where you just think this is it. Sometimes the dreams are tricky and there's sticky and they're not easy to get through. And and usually what that tells me is that we've got really sensitive material here. This has a big feeling behind it. And it may or may not be known to the person who's telling it to me. They may not realize that their mind is said, All right, we're now going to tackle some tougher stuff, get ready. And so what often happens as those shifts and these are transitions in a treatment and what we're looking for always is does the treatment deepen?

Does the mind get to more and more things that we might all commonly say? Okay, that's difficult stuff, but we have to go there. The difficult piece is that, yes, it is often painful, but if we don't get there, we don't get to it. It doesn't mean it's gone. It just means you hold that pain and chances are it comes out in places you weren't expecting it to and may not know. It is, but it's making life harder. So better we face it and put words to it and make it what psychoanalysis calls conscious. You take it from the unconscious or unknown to the known, and then you know what you're working with.

Then you know what you're fighting. So this thing that you've been living by kind of unconsciously, but has been dictating some portion of who you are, will continue to do that until you finally, let's say, admit to it. I see it now. I see it now. I can't do anything without asking my father's permission. I'm 45. I'm 72. I'm still doing that. You have to acknowledge it and figure out how to kind of put it on a shelf and not let that voice come in. And you can't do that until it's really part of your consciousness. Yes, the dream kind of rats us out a lot of the time.

It really does. And that's helpful. We want it to because in a lot of time it isn't that somebody sitting there trying to not tell you something. It really is out of consciousness. You do not realize, perhaps as your example says, that because you had a very demanding father early on who was very strict and the rules were the rules, and you were expected to do certain things, we know that goes in there. I don't I don't think that that's going to shock anybody. Right. That that's going to set up a certain way of thinking, my God, is this is my father going to approve of this?

Is this okay? Even if you're a person who spends all of childhood trying to break those rules or sneak around, there may be a very conscious effort to say, I don't like this. I don't want to live by this. And then what we have to do is see. But does the dream tell us that even to your best conscious efforts somewhere, that template went in and you do live by it and your unconscious is saying, but we're always checking with Dad and we think we're being so reBailious and we think we're being free, but we're not. We're checking with Dad, and Dad doesn't approve of anything.

But we're going to keep going this route. Well, we are until good news. The dream says, you might want to look over here. Maybe I'm not as reBailious as I thought. And here's a place I get stuck so it rats us out, but for our own progress. So it's great. Do you find to to the ratting out business that even though there may be a dream that a patient has innate they know they in order to help themselves the best they can, they ought to be sharing the whole dream, but that they might hold back certain sections because they don't want you to know about that part of them, which really means they're not ready to risk going that deep.

Does it? Then still somewhere show up in a different way that's kind of unbeknownst to them that they end up sharing it any way? You mean. Can you hide? Yeah, probably not. I mean, sure you can keep stuff away from me as the therapist if you want. Does it do anybody good? Probably not. But of course, and humans do. And we do that consciously and unconsciously. I can't tell you this. All right, I'll tell her everything, but maybe I won't mention this. Yes, that material is that those feelings, that unconscious piece is with you. Anyway, it will show up somewhere.

I always think we might as well get to it. But if you're not ready to get to it this week, maybe next week, and maybe you're never ready to get to it. And in my mind, that's okay. I am really here to help you get at what you are ready to get to. And that's why I like to follow a dream truthfully, rather than just listening to what somebody tells me. Although I like that, I want a whole person. I want to hear everything you're thinking about. Additionally, the dream is nice because it creates its own treatment plan. And when you go to a doctor and it's okay, you fractured your ankle or whatever, here's what we're going to do and this is how we expect it to heal.

It's a little different when you're working with the mind because the timeline is harder to predict. We know your ankle will heal and so many weeks we don't know how ready, how quickly your emotional self will heal, how fast will that happen? I can look at your dreams and over a little bit of time start to say, All right, you're showing me. Here's what we're working on. You're going to give me a treatment plan of what you actually need to do to get better. And does that become really clear to you? It becomes clear to me. My goal is hopefully to communicate it to my patients over time.

All of that is what mental health professionals all know is a process, and the process is a little different for each person, though more or less, people are going to hopefully dream or tell you their thoughts and you're going to be listening for where the unconscious is active and in what way is it getting in their way? And also, how does it relate to you and the relationship with the patient? Because you're going to see a lot of that as well. Not many of us get to have this experience that you're describing with someone like you. There's very few someone's like you, first of all, and a lot of us don't have access to people like you.

I'm hoping that through this podcast series we can help people figure out how to do some of this on their own, so create a curiosity and then have people be motivated from that and take it to their friends, take it to their doctors, to their therapists, or even just as individuals figure out how to maneuver through looking at their dreams and possibly over the course of time and thinking about many dreams individuals could start to see, say, their own personal symbols, or that their dreams tend to send them down a particular path that they could then start to decipher or understand that they have feelings about.

Do you think any of that's possible? I hope it's all possible and a challenge. It's big, but I think if people start with first things first, these dreams have a meaning and they're a communication from part of me to me, right? There is a part of me that I'm not in contact with most of the time that is talking to me. Okay. That's already, I think, a really big shift in the way we're thinking about ourselves. Yes. If you can get there. If you can really by that, I think you've opened a giant door. That's a big door. That's a shift in thinking. Explore something a little bit.

You don't have to get the answer right away, but at least you start to know this exists. And we human beings are so much more than just the conscious mind. I think it just gives people this different view of will, wait a minute, if we're so much more than all of this, that ties up our day with traffic in groceries and getting dinner on the table and going to school or going to work and whatever somebody day consists of, but where these deeper souls connected to Spirit, connected to each other. Well, wait a minute. All of that comes through my dreams.

Hold on a minute. Now, we may have a really beautiful new way of appreciating each other. I mean, who doesn't occasionally put their head on the pillow and think, Wow, what was that day about? Wasn't this just like the day before, the day before, the day before? And you close your eyes and you go to sleep and you do it all over the next day? But who doesn't at least wonder why this is all there? It's And if you just take that chance and think about dreams, perhaps offering you this little window or this gift, even if you're not really buying it, I think it gives you an opportunity to think about humanity in a different way.

And your part in humanity. I mean, to the bigger picture, we're just going to keep going downhill until we kind of get to the base of this and learn how to support each other and how to take the very best care of ourselves and how to make life this happy journey. That just points to the fact that we have to share and take care of each other and that there's some fabulous amount of joy in just being able to do that. Sounds good to me too. More of the technical stuff. If if dreams have symbols, I understand that there are not so many shared symbols.

There might be some that we all relate to, like having a cup of coffee. It makes you feel energized or it wakes you up for the day. So you're dreaming about that or you know, the sun on your face. But in our dreams are our symbols, our own, typically. Yes, I say that because there do seem to be some overlapping symbols that people dream about regularly. I would put the caveat in there that sometimes that is a little culture specific. So you just want to be aware of that and really thoughtful about that. And I think it pushes, hopefully clinicians doing this kind of work or any of us thinking about it.

But I think it's easier if you're thinking about yourself, you know, your own culture, you know, what things sort of mean to you or make you think of. So that cup of coffee for some people, that wouldn't be an important symbol, right? It pushes you to ask questions. A lot more rather than just assume go. Okay. The dream dictionary told me that if I lost my tooth, it means this because I hear that a lot. Yes, Maybe it's so complicated and exciting because no two dreams are the same. Even if you have the same dream on subsequent nights, they're not the same.

Something else happened in that day or didn't happen. Why is the mine still there? Right. Sending the same message. Wait, wait. You didn't get me. Come back. Okay. What is it? But it's not identical. So humans have such varied thoughts and feelings and experiences, and those are all in the dream. And I just think we have to be very careful to not assume, because I see a symbol each time. It means the same thing even to the same person, let alone across people. I know Dr. Bail did find and I see it in my work, but a lot of times water in some way will reference the unconscious.

It could be the ocean, it could be interestingly in the womb. It could be a cup of water, a flowing river, a stagnant little dried up, almost not there. PUDDLE left over from a desert, rain storm. Often it will signify the unconscious. But I never assume it. I never assume it. And I try to help my patients. They said, Well, last time it was, okay, we'll hold that idea. But this is this time. Let's see the. This is this time could be a matter of the internal saboteur saying, I'm going to make this water something different because she was kind of on to something over there with that water.

And I don't want her to get there because it disrupts my status quo. It could be we do some tricky things. We just do even though we go for help, that doesn't always mean we're ready to have what troubles us. Fully understood. And that sounds crazy. What do you mean? Well, it just seems to be the way we work. Because this idea of an imprint, it's so unsettling to the person at the deepest level. So what we're up against is helping that part of you learn that it's okay. You're no longer that little baby that will die if you touch it. Your mom won't die if you reveal that this happened.

And that all sounds crazy. What are you talking about? We're talking about what patients have shown in their dreams, about the way this all works and why dreams have to be disguised. Why can't we just go to sleep and get a message that says, Hey, you're applying for a job. It's not going to be right for you. You're going to be miserable. You should apply to that other one. Wouldn't that just be so nice? But it isn't the way we do it because we're protecting something at the root, and that's made us have to make everything more disguised. And not to mention, on top of all that you probably even feel bad about this trash because you think it is who you are.

And if I start to go there, I'm going to discover that I'm not as nice a person as I thought I was. You might. The beauty is then you can fix it. If you don't know it's there. You just go on being a not nice person. Yeah, you may get hints of it from the outside world. People may tell you are not like you. And then what? What do you do with that? You can try. This will give you the and this is why. And here's what it's attached to. And let's start cutting all these threads so that you can release this for yourself if you want. And how do I know when I'm telling you my dream or I'm writing them down and trying to figure them out for myself when I've.

When I've hit it, when I've gotten to the place where it's like, yeah, that seems right. Like you say to me, Will it visit this? Or do you feel that? Or I see this? And I'm like, No, no. And then, yeah, what is that moment where it's like. It is an emotional moment? That's not a I think that's right. That is I feel that. And when you feel that, is that the first step to releasing it or is that releasing it, that feeling. Probably a little of both. You're not going to release everything with one interpretation, one moment even rats. I know, but we don't human beings just we don't move that fast.

Typically. My thought is, well, if children just knew we grew up with this, that imprint might become much less scary to touch. Then we might let go of things much more quickly. But at the moment where we are in in history, yet we seem to change more slowly. And even if a kid knew that he had a mother, an imprint and it's like, okay, I come with this, I put my shoes on, I have an imprint and it's not a reflection of all the bad things about you. It's a thing that you're learning how to take care of. This is just another process in growing up, maybe where you learn your ABCs, you learn about your imprint and you do all these things to make yourself this good truthful, right?

We're going to separate it from your identity, your self view a bit, right? And say, look, you may do some things that you would like to change or the world may give you some feedback that the world would like you to change some things, but that it isn't the whole of you. I think that's been also a movement in parenting. That behavior isn't really going to help you, but you are still a good kid instead of being you're a bad kid because behavior isn't you. The behavior we then want to look and see, Well, where do you get this? Might this be connected to an imprint?

Right. Might this be connected to something you absorbed, picked up of the way the adults around you actually do it, whether you know it or not or they know it or not? Because a lot of these aren't we all get the simple ones. Kids will mimic whatever you say. So you have to be careful. Don't curse at the table because your little three year old will say it right back. Okay. But now imagine that there's also all of this unconscious messaging going on. Again, the good ones, great. They're helping. We don't need to worry about it so much. The negative one that get in your way, that make you feel insecure, low self-esteem, unattractive, not worthy.

All of those messages are what lead to certain behaviors of I don't feel I can get your love a certain way and I really feel it deep, right? What am I going to do? I've got to get it so I might try all kinds of crazy looking things, bouncing off the walls, throwing stuff. But I get your attention. Which isn't necessarily love. It isn't necessarily love. But hey, I'll take anything right? So you. See me. People have seen that for a long time. He's just sort of explaining, here's part of why that may be happening. So each thing we have to assess it and see what's this really connected to deep down, what is this person really trying to say?

What does the person need? What does the person feel the person can get is entitled to deserves is worthy of having. And most of what we're trying to do, I think the most of the time, the big secret is people want love, like at the end of the day. And that's why the theory was so important for him to discover the workings and the why and why is this happening, but also to say, And then what do you do with it? Yes, you analyze it, but you're trying to help people move to a more loving state and all the trash interferes with love. So we may be trying to be so loving, but we have so much trash that the people aren't don't experience us as loving.

All of this is just to help people become fundamentally more loving and to be able to receive more love and therefore have better lives. And that true feeling of love for oneself, for the people around you and taking and giving is kind of a unique experience that humans have and is the thing that can ultimately keep us connected, protective of each other in, well, a loving way. Again, you could talk about that love and connection to the divine. And it is love that brings us all together. That sounds so airy fairy, but it's really at the base of it.

At the base, if people can become more loving naturally, I think you are thinking about other people. And you can also see clearly when someone in your world is trying to give you love. We missed so many opportunities where the love is coming at us. And I don't just mean romantic love any way in which we are connecting with each other. We miss it. And that's a tragedy. And that's a tragedy because the more we can see it and acknowledge it, the better we all get. Okay, I'm going to share a dream. Okay? With you. Okay. I'm a baby and I'm in a car seat.

When I was a baby, in the real world, there were no car seats. I'm strapped in and I'm sitting on this hill. It's beautiful. I'm under a tree. The breeze is blowing, the sun is shining. But I'm trapped. After a period of time, these arms start to slowly work their way out of the grass and there's soil coming up off the arms. And they reach up to me and I panic and I start to cry. I'm tormented and I realize that this is my mother and I'm I can't speak. I don't have words yet, but in my head I'm saying my mother. And they go back into the earth and everything goes back to the way it was.

No sign of those arms at all. And I'm left there just hysterically crying. I think I woke myself up from that dream because it was so terrible. Yeah. So if you came into my office with that dream, or if somebody is thinking about their dream at home, I might start to go through it. Now, I may have an idea of what you're dreaming about. I hear that I have an idea, but I have to prove it to myself or prove I'm wrong and way off base. So I have to hear some thoughts about it. What about the tree? Where are you? Why are you in a car seat? They didn't have car seats then, so that's interesting.

And you're stuck. And why did the arms come out of the air then? Go back in where is Mom? Why isn't she right with you? You're so young. Why the whole scene? And what do you feel? I'm just going through some of that. I'm sure people out there listening to. and I have this question and that question and you get it. And of course, you said, But what's the feeling even more? What's that feeling? What woke you up? That was super scary. It was scary and lonely. And I think that loneliness is a critical piece of this dream. There's a lot in this dream, actually.

It's a simple little dream. And this is important for people to know, too. It's a simple little dream. You could tell it to me in 30 seconds, but it actually has a lot of layers and it tells us about a place, if you don't mind me saying that she shared it. Where did I get stuck and stuck? Right? So your mind is saying, Look for me to be unstuck. Here's something you have to understand about how I felt as a baby. You take me back in time. So you're locating this in time and space is saying there is no time in space. Really? I'm still filled with the emotion I had back when I was not able to talk.

And there's a part of me that got stuck there. And the feeling at that time was loneliness, maybe even some hopelessness, I might say. But here's the problem. I'm all alone. That is a feeling that has to get looked at. Why wasn't Mom there to help me? Why didn't she just dig herself out from under the ground and find some way to grab me? Hold me, save me from this. Take me out of that car. So take me out of the car. See? See here. I might even suggest this car seat. Maybe telling us a little something about an imprint. Where am I? Stuck. Will imprints get us stuck?

It doesn't always mean that, but here I might be thinking this sounds thematic to me, that there was a feeling of being alone and it didn't matter whether the sun was shining. Not beautiful scene, except the feeling gives us the meaning of the dream. But I was terrified. So the sun, the window dressing in a way doesn't matter here. In a way, it's sort of what we were talking about before. Maybe the internal saboteur is giving me this nice scene. Wait a minute. Wait, Don't. It's not so bad. You're on this beautiful grassy knoll. What could be wrong?

What's wrong? The sun shining you. The tree will be here. Mom, Don't worry. The sun will warm you. You're okay. Don't. Don't think about it. Yeah, it may be that. That if that's what comes, then that's probably where the mind is going with it. Right? So if I speak to that, that means it's likely meaningful. It's likely meaningful. That's right. And so we'd explore it. I'd want someone to tell me about each of these pieces and the thoughts now and the other pieces. There may have been something around the time you had the dream that stimulated it.

What was going on in your life? And sometimes it's more obvious, sometimes less. That's okay. The dream is part of you as a whole person, and So you may be trying to say, if you're going to understand me, then you have to understand the feelings, state the emotional truth of what it felt like to be me very early on in my life, and that I was going to then guide my life according to that. Yes. And did I feel that's what I got in this life? Here it is. It's just going to be me. And that's it. Exactly. When I had that dream, I could think about it and say, That's how I've lived my life.

I've just take care of myself. And it's been a lonely road. That's so important. Right? That gave you some insight. my gosh. Because then the question becomes, well, wait, do I not let people help me? Or in sometimes, you know, when people say, I have walls up, that's a common way of describing things. Maybe. Or you put yourself in relationships where people just naturally don't want to go beyond your wall. Absolutely. That gives us a place to start, right? It gives us an emotional truth that you felt that may lead us to an imprint or not or but at least it's going to be a break on the road to figuring that out.

That's big, right? That kind of dream is a big dream, even though it's short. But how rewarding satisfying it is to kind of recognize those things, to feel those things, it's it's almost as if recognizing that feeling holds you in a way. It lets you know you're in a safe space, if you can admit to that being true, I did have to lead this life all by myself and it is lonely saying that out loud releases so much of it. I guess that's one of the things I want people to come away with is knowing that there is help, even if it comes from within. If we have this curiosity about what else life can be besides the day to day, we can open up so many doors to explore these opportunities that could be filled with love and happiness that we just even don't have access to because we don't know how to get there.

Our dreams can take us to amazing places. And I think if people can start to utilize this gift we are given, then wow, what's possible for us? For all of us, right? Not just one on one that's important, but really bigger picture, what's possible for human beings. And that's really such a critical piece to be looking at right now. If I can get out of a chair that I've been strapped into since I was an infant, an emotional chair. Pretty scary thing to do. Sure. Because I offered all this comfort all this time. That's right. When you're in something snuggly, you're safe.

Yeah. And I and I knew what I could do and I could. Right. Maneuver through life. Right. And then you're brave enough to say, All right, I'll tell you the story. Let me show you my dream. And you and I have had so many precious opportunities to learn from our dreams, to feel more because of our dreams. It's so important and so life changing that we really want to share this with everyone. And we want to continue talking about dreams. And maybe we'll even have some sessions where we just listen to a dream and listen to your interpretation. We'd love to have you back for that.

I would love to be here. Thank you. Well, we'll be seeing a lot of Loren and thank you for joining us today. And we'll look forward to talking again and hope you join us.