Unraveling the Father’s Role: A Journey Through Dreams

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

the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail.(...) Welcome to the"And Now Love" podcast. Hi, Loren. Hi. So nice to have you back again. Thank you for having me. Thrilled to talk about some more dreams belonging to a patient of yours. This time we're speaking about a gentleman's dreams. Yes. And he's talking some, or dreaming some, about his father, or the interpretation leads us to his father. Yes. And you've got three dreams to share with us. Okay, let's go. All right, I thought it was time that the men get their equal time.

That's right, let's pay attention to that. Yeah. Yeah. I think what I'll do is just jump into the intro, we'll do the sessions, and get to the dreams. Okay, and I think maybe we can also say we're so used to the mother's imprint. Right. It's called the mother's imprint, but that doesn't mean that our fathers don't imprint us. Yes, and that was part of the reason I wanted to share this particular patient today, because it starts opening up this entire idea that it really isn't just the mother. The mother is who the person that the baby comes, fetus, comes in contact with first.

So because it happens that way, that imprint gets laid down first.(...) That doesn't mean that our fathers aren't incredibly important. So they're imprinting us just as much, they are influencing how we develop,(...) often just as much. Sometimes it's right next to where the mother's imprint lays down, so it's very much woven into the fabric of who the person is. Sometimes it sits a little further up. But of course that just depends on the nature of the family and the nature of the relationships. But fathers are incredibly important, so I don't want them to feel left out when we're talking about this.

I don't want all of the people who say, oh, but it was okay with my mom, my biggest issues were around my father. And that's often what people will come in talking about.(...) And so I think we want to start exploring that. So the influence a father has can also be in utero. Yes. One of the ways that happens is that the mother's unconscious sweeps in the father.(...) So she knows this person in some capacity. And again, we're gonna talk about both, I know you, I have this relationship with you. And we're also gonna talk about the unconscious relationship.

Because sometimes people will say, well, my mother and father didn't spend a lot of time together. You can imagine all sorts of situations in which babies come into being. That doesn't mean that unconsciously that person wasn't swept in. We may have a little bit of trouble finding out what is what if you don't have a long relationship history or no characteristics about the person, but it doesn't mean it isn't there. And often what'll happen, and I say that having had experiences where somebody maybe didn't know a father until well into treatment meets the person.

And then you'll start to see, oh my goodness, I think I do this just like my father. Or it becomes clear. So that's a small sample, but I think it does speak to this idea that the unconscious is vast. And just because we don't see it working or don't have what we would normally expect to be enough information,(...) that it informs the personality. That's not always true. And could it be that early on in a pregnancy, the mother already has a certain attitude about something that the father does regularly. I mean, she loves this man, maybe she doesn't, but he comes home and he always comes home in a particular mood.

And she now is starting to prepare herself now that she's getting to know him well enough, like, okay, he's coming home, and I'm gonna behave like this to help him through his evening. Does something as simple as that get transferred from her to the baby? Everything gets transferred. So yes, now how much, where you're gonna find that, you have to wait and see. Does that become a small blip? Or does that, as things grow, really become part of something larger? And we may see that more. So anything's possible? Yeah, anything is possible. Anything is possible.

Okay then. Okay, so I am going to give you a little background on this person, and then we'll jump into the sessions. This is Glenn, he's a 67-year-old man who was referred to me by a colleague who treats his son. The son was worried that his father's bad moods might be getting to levels that would have his father break his 20-plus year sobriety from alcohol. So he suggested he go talk to someone. He was really worried about him. Glenn cared a great deal for his son, trusted his opinion, and also noticed he didn't feel like himself. He came to see me and presented as likable, but you could feel just a little bit of anger, a little edge running underneath the friendly exterior.

He had a history of alcoholism. He began drinking heavily in his early 20s while he was finishing school, building his business and starting a family.(...) His alcohol use caused the divorce from his first wife when their child, the son who referred him, was around two years old, very early, and rather than stop the drinking, he continued, threw himself into work and a string of relationships. (...) All of this took him away from his son, whom he would see very infrequently. Glenn's third wife demanded he quit drinking, or she would leave, and he agreed.

He stopped, started AA, and worked hard to repair his relationship with his son. How old is his son at this point? Well into his adulthood. I see. The marriage did not survive, but he was able to start a new chapter with his son. So the son was already an adult, early 20s approximately. I'm a little careful because I wanna protect the identities,(...) but well into being an adult on his own. And he really had had very little contact with his father, and his father went through all of what he went through, was able to stop drinking, which was no small thing, and worked incredibly hard to build the relationship back.

And his son allowed it. The drinking issue didn't affect the son sort of in the forefront, but affected the son was maybe not even knowing what his father was up to, because he didn't spend enough time with him to know this torture that was being felt by his father. Yes, I think he had some sense of things, and Glenn will talk about a little bit more of what it looked like, in terms of his relationship with the son, and really what wasn't there. He was just off in his own world, basically. And he was filling his life with things he thought eased the pain that he didn't fully understand. (...) And what we'll see also is that this leaving the son alone,(...) basically, which is what happened, was really a repeat in a certain way for Glenn, and he didn't know that that was happening.

And over the course of his childhood and being raised, was he being raised by his mom? He wasn't, the father was there. So I think you'll see the twist in why this was actually a repeat. But I won't spoil it. All right, I'm on the edge of my seat. Yes. The good news was that the son allowed him back. And I think, given everything that had happened, that was a pretty big thing for the son to do.(...) Because he was really risking being completely hurt again. He was, I mean, that was an amazing thing to sort of jump off that ledge. That's right, and it wasn't easy at first, but I think, reasonably quickly, the son opened his heart to him.

And I don't know that it had ever closed, truthfully. I think he had just been waiting, waiting. And the father had no idea how much love was waiting for him. So Glenn shared with me, he had previously been in therapy around the time he stopped drinking. And that was actually a very helpful therapy.(...) I don't, it certainly didn't go as deep as he was willing to go now. But it was incredibly helpful. He stopped drinking, he cleaned things up, he made his way back to his son. So in my mind, very successful. So he learned a fair amount about his history and how it connected to his drinking, but much more on the sort of biological level.

What he starts talking about very quickly in this session shows that in addition to that, there was so much more. So the main thing that he felt, and what he starts to tell me about was causing this bad mood, as the son called it, was that he was thinking about retiring. And he was thinking about retiring from running a very successful business that he built, even with all of this going on, really successful in business. And as he thought about retirement, he felt his anxiety and depression skyrocket. And he hadn't felt it with that intensity for years.(...) So he'd been kind of tooling along and rebuilding his life and getting things back together, and it sort of just hit him.

He was worried about his age and how much longer he'd be able to work the kind of hours running his company required, but terrified that slowing down would leave him with too much time on his hands and he didn't know what to do. Additionally, he had recently had some health scares that turned out to be nothing, but they made him think about how his own father had died of a heart attack when he was just a few years older than the patient was now. So it really brought him face to face with his mortality and his father.(...) He recounted several stories about his childhood, which highlighted the fact that both parents were also alcoholics.

His father would come home from work and his parents would begin the cocktails, which often stretched into drinks with dinner. Frequently, the drinking would lead to screaming matches between the parents and Glenn and his siblings, his two siblings would try to get out of the fray and retreat to their bedrooms or out of the house as they got older. They would just-- Can't deal with it. How can we disappear out of this room as quickly as we can and not get caught in anything? He described his father as a very charming man who was well-liked outside of the home, but with the family, he could explode in anger when he felt he was being neglected or things didn't go his way.

It's pretty controlling. And that would be with his wife and his children. Yes. He was also very successful in business, and for that, he was well-respected and liked. He expected the children to make their parents proud by being obedient, earning good grades, and being good members of the community. If the father felt the children weren't living up to what he expected, he would be verbally abusive and often threatened physical violence, though luckily rarely acted on it, but there was always this threat. He described his mother as much warmer than his father overall, and he noted she often seemed anxious and totally under the father's spell.

He felt she feared angering her husband and went along with everything the father said. He expressed wishing she had stood up to him more, but understood that it probably wouldn't have gone well for her if she had, even though they would argue.(...) Somehow, there would be moments where the mother could stand up, but he thought most of the arguments were that they were intoxicated and misunderstood each other, more than the mother really asserting her own opinions. He spent a lot of time in his life being angry with his father and feeling he had to protect his mother as he saw her as fragile and needing it.

Glenn knew that his difficulties with anxiety and depression were present by middle school and felt that he had inherited some bad genes from both his parents. He also knew that he had a maternal uncle who had committed suicide and a paternal grandmother who had spent some time away from the family after her second child was born, and she was overwhelmed and unable to care for the child. All of this, he knew, set him up for how he felt most of his life, and he worried that he had passed it all down to his son. So he recognized all of this before his therapy with you.

Yes. That's quite introspective. That was from his first therapy. I see. Some of these connections, and most of them were made sort of looking at just the biological history, that there were, as he told me, look, there's mental illness running in the family. He didn't realize the depth of it. Luckily, he did get a nice view of these relationships and what happened to the people in his family. He just didn't get to go deep enough to see how not only might there be biological components. There were, no doubt, enormous environmental components. (...) Can't do anything about the biology.

We can argue that.(...) Another day. Another day, we'll argue that, but certainly,(...) you can understand your environment and then try to make changes in the environment for yourself going forward. That's what we're looking at. But even to think that some of this, is impressed upon your genes, let's say, that's pretty monumental to grasp that. Yes. Had Glenn grown up in a different home and been exposed to different treatment and something that nurtured the softer side of him. I think he had all of the inclination to take that and run. I see.

He carried that. I think that came from the mother. She had a warmer nature. She got drawn into all kinds of things that didn't help her, drinking being a huge one, but I think generally, she was more sensitive. Father was very smart, smart guy, but I think the mother really had more of the sensitivity and warmth. So Glenn said he felt like it would be good for him to talk to someone and get himself straightened out again. He knew he had been hard to be around the last few months and welcomed some insight into what he needed to do to change and feel better.

So he knew he had just been hell on wheels. He was so hard to live with and he was sort of pushing everybody away. And as his son, I think was right to worry, was he gonna crash? What was this? Why did it kind of come on the way it did and what was gonna happen? And so lovely that he felt such love for this man that he brought it to the forefront. Yeah, and he really trusted his son. And I think that's probably one of the main reasons he started with me, Glenn, and stuck with it. I mean, it wasn't that he was always on the verge of walking out.

Some people are. I don't think that was Glenn. I think he actually did like to learn about this, but it was all kind of new. And I think he would get it and then not get it and get it and not get it. But that's normal. He really adapted to the ideas pretty quickly. It's not that there's something so hard to adapt to, but I think it's getting and being able to hold the ideas, which sounds so simple. And yet when all of the things you're talking about are so charged, sometimes it makes it hard for the mind to hold it. And people will tell me, "Oh, I know we talked about this.

"I can't quite remember what you said." Oh, it makes sense that you drift from that. I mean, it's a big eye opener. Each step is something big to contend with. And yet you're used to being this other thing all the time. So that's a magnet almost, I would think. Yeah, it is. And I think it's important to say Glenn was willing to do it twice a week. So it wasn't just once, and that's a luxury, but it gave us two times a week to start to dive into things. So as the mind might drift, it gets pulled back. Drift, pulled back.(...) That helps. Frequency's important.

It's sometimes a strange idea because a lot of people think, "Oh, you go to therapy once a week." But if people can imagine actually how much goes on in your life and how much history has already occurred, the idea of 45 minutes, 50 minutes to an hour, addressing all of the things in your life that have gone on. Out of an entire week. And then out of an entire week.(...) So it's kind of a drop in the ocean. And there's less catch-up, I suppose. Yes. You have things you have to sort of review if it's once every seven days. That's right. People come in, "Oh, I gotta tell you everything that happened to me, and then we leave this much time." And I think the more often you can talk, it lets you, "Yeah, I know what, hey, give me what happened between yesterday and today, and now let's get into it." There's so much that you wanna share.

But given that not all of us have the luxury of therapy, and if someone is curious about what their dreams can provide for them, and they kind of attend to it more regularly, I had a dream last night, I'm not just saying, "Oh, that's nothing, I'm gonna write it down. Maybe I don't have time to think about it now, but I'm going to make sure I have some way to remember this," and you keep doing that. You stay in contact with yourself often that way. A lot of people aren't gonna be able to talk to someone. We know that. (...) But I hope people really take away this idea that being in contact with yourself is so important on an emotional level, and knowing that the dreams have meaning.

They just have meaning. People don't have to agree with the way I interpret something, but at least if people come away with this idea that there is meaning, we are built this way to communicate with ourselves, and the more often we're in communication,(...) the better. Yeah, and I think you and I and lots of other people really know that that dream has meaning, but a lot of us think we're nuts,(...) because dreams are nothing. They're just, they can't even tell you, some people can't say what they are, they just know that they're nothing, but I am impressed that you have the courage to keep going with this, because there are a lot of people who are adamant that we're just barking up some kind of silly tree.

Well, that's okay. Not everybody has to agree or believe that this is true. That doesn't mean it isn't. I say it not just to say, well, I know best, and you have to listen to me. I just say it after being immersed in dreams for many, many years, and listening. Every session, I listen to at least one dream. And you started with your own in your own therapy. And I started with my own in my own therapy, and I know that they had meaning, and I saw how they detailed the emotional experiences of my life. I saw it. I don't ask my patients to do anything I haven't done myself, so I have submitted to the process,(...) and gone through and said, okay, I don't know what this means, let me work it out.

So let's, we'll jump into it, because I think you'll see Glenn at the beginning of his treatment. He's a few months in. He's kind of just getting the lay of the land, and he's doing just what we're talking about, sort of figuring out how does this relate to me? He comes in for this session, and he says, I've been worried a lot lately, as you know. I'm worried about whether I should retire or keep working, and then whether I really have enough money to retire.(...) I've been pretty good about setting us up to be able to do this, but I keep going back and forth in my mind.

I'm also not sure it will be good for me. I try to imagine not having the structure of work to keep me going, and I don't know what I would do without it. I don't think I see myself driving around in an RV or golfing all day. I like working. I like being busy and feeling productive. I guess at the root of it, I'm scared I'll start drinking again. It feels crazy to say that after all these years, but I'm scared. It's been making me irritable, and Jeanette, his long-term partner, is probably going to throw me out because I have been all over her.(...) I know it, but I can't stop it.

I'm bothered by everything. I don't even want to be around me. She suggested we go to couples counseling, but I don't know if I'm ready for that. I feel like that might mean we're too far gone. I want to be with her, but I'm also so frustrated by her. I thought I had worked through a lot of this years ago. I was a real asshole for a long time.(...) I was selfish and didn't want to listen to anyone. It really got me into trouble with everyone, and I worked hard to clean it up, to clean up myself, but here it is again. I'm being mean, and I know it.

I make snide comments, I ignore her requests, I withhold affection. I can be a piece of work, and I know it, but I still do it. I can't stop myself. I don't want her to leave, but I act like I don't want her to stay, as though I'm doing her a favor by being with her. So he's pretty honest. Yeah. And he can see himself pretty well, which is nice. That's unique. That's a great quality. So I asked him, "If you see it, why do you think you can't stop it?" And he said, "That's a good question. It just rolls off my tongue." And then I let it sit there.

I don't take it back. And I said, "Well, where do you think you'll learn to speak to people like that?" And he said, "That one's easy, my father. If you think I'm bad, you should have heard him. He would go at my mother and all of us, and it was horrible. He would be perfectly fine at work, and when we were out, but when we got home, if he didn't like something one of us said or did, he would be relentless.(...) He would berate us. He would start drinking and that would really keep it going. It was very unpleasant, and I don't think I was ever that bad, but maybe I was."(...) And I said, "So in this way, you're him.(...) You start speaking and it's your father talking." And he said, "That's interesting, and I guess it is, and it's strong.

It just flows out of me and I feel like I can't stop it, or really it just feels like it's me. But as you say that, I can see how much I sound just like him. I feel like I knew that on some level, but hearing it just makes me stop(...) and really have to look at it." I asked him if he had a dream, and he did.(...) Here's the dream.(...) I'm at work and I walk into a building, and it's an atrium-style building.(...) It's night and very dark inside.(...) I'm not sure how I can really see, but somehow I can. (...) I wonder if it's been abandoned, but I see things that let me know people still work there.

I see some signs on the walls. I don't know what they are pointing to, or if there's something about them that is unusual,(...) maybe the color or the shapes, but I can't make them out anyway. I remember standing against the railing, looking into the atrium from the second level.(...) I just had my hands on the railing. Maybe I was gripping the railing and looking around, and I could feel that I was scared,(...) and then I just woke up. So as I always do, I ask someone to tell me whatever thoughts come to the mind about the dream.(...) Just there's no right or wrong, just see what starts to come.

So he starts telling me about the building. He didn't know it, but he felt like it was a pretty standard design of a certain era, where there are three or four floors and a center atrium that you can look over from each floor. I think I'm on the second floor, but I have no idea how I might have gotten up there. (...) It's dark, it seems like it is late at night, and I'm the only one there. I'm walking around looking for something or someone, but there isn't much to it. The last thing I remember is looking out over what would be the first floor and holding on to the railing.

That's about all I have. I think there was some silence, and I did ask him, was there a feeling in the dream? He said, I'm not sure. I was just looking around, maybe anxious, scared at the end, but nothing that strong stands out. Now, when he told me the dream, he said, I got scared, and then I woke up. So there was a big feeling. I think he caught it, but it's minimized a bit. I think it did waken. So I said, what do you think you're looking for? He said, I'm not sure about that either. I feel like it might be a person, but I'm not sure at first that there are people there, and clearly there's no one there at that hour.

I'm just looking out over the lobby, I guess. It's very dark, and I don't have a flashlight, so there must be some dim lighting coming from somewhere.(...) Maybe the signs, but again, I'm not really sure. What kind of signs?(...) They could be something you would see around an office, maybe an exit sign or a restroom sign, but I remember thinking that there was something off about them or unusual in some way.(...) I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that. I think I just noticed them, but that's about it. We had some more back and forth, but what I said to them was, it sounds like the fear of retiring has a lot to do with retiring from living your father's life.

Your dream's saying that you've had to be in the dark about who you really are, so losing the structure of running the business and being the boss like dad is very scary.(...) In the dream, you wonder if the place is abandoned. Said, I think the place is you, and you were emotionally abandoned early on. You were left alone, and neither parent was fully capable of parenting, of supporting you and developing your true self. Retirement brings up all of your very early fear(...) about both fundamentally being alone and not knowing who you really are.

Early on, you solved it by being dad, and it sounds like you're falling back on that now, being him more than you were before, and his words show, his words now flow out of your mouth, so you won't be alone, you've got him with you. So it was a pretty big interpretation.(...) That's a lot. Yeah, maybe looking back, I might've chunked that up for him a little better, but I wanted to capture and speak to what he was telling me about. If I'm going to retire,(...) I'm gonna have to leave my dad, and I've used my dad to shore myself up. I've been him all these years.

All these years. Got me into a lot of trouble, but it was better than being alone,(...) because if I was alone, I'd have to face not having any idea who I really was. He's managed to occupy himself enough to not ever have to face that, and now what do you do when there's nothing to occupy you? Right, you panic. And so how did he receive this big dose of information from you? He said, "I hear you, and it's a little strange "because I want to argue and say that I am me, "but somewhere I feel like there's something to it. "I think it's part of the reason "I go from relationship to relationship.

"I don't like to be alone. "I'm not sure that it's from my childhood, "but I also wouldn't say that it didn't start there. "There was a lot that was wrong with my childhood." He sits quietly for a few minutes.(...) I wait, and then eventually I ask him, "What is he thinking about?" And he said, "I just had this thought "that maybe both of my parents were drinking all the time, "and I wonder how often I was just left alone. "Left alone in the middle of the night. "I have some fuzzy memories of being very scared at night "and not wanting to sleep alone, "but that seems so common "that I never really made much of it,(...) "but maybe there's more to it.

"More to the ways we had to conform "to what my father wanted, more to everything." But all of that was just his normal. He never thought that other families weren't doing the same thing. Yeah, I think he had some inklings. It wasn't as though he thought we had this idyllic child.(...) But I don't think he realized how all of the pieces, and there were a lot of pieces, fit together and started to form this picture of what life must have really been like in the house if one were allowed to see it. And that's one of the big pieces, is that in the dream he's to be in the dark.

"I don't know how I'm even seeing," he says. Whereas there must be just a little bit of dim light coming through. Right, and it's maybe an exit sign, but you can't really tell. Maybe it's a restroom sign, maybe it's a who knows, right? But if you're in the dark, you can't read the signs. Yeah. And I said, "Well, I'm sure there is more to everything." The dream shows that there was a feeling of being all alone and that you were to be in the dark about it. It would be very scary to know that your parents weren't up to the job of being parents. Maybe those are the signs you can't or weren't supposed to read.

He said again, "I don't know what I thought of it back then,(...) but I feel it when you say it. It almost makes me wanna cry, so it's touching on something. I know you hit on something." And that's where we stop the session. So it starts to give pretty early on a picture(...) of how he had to become his father. And how we desperately protect what we know even if it isn't healthy for us. It's what we know and we just have to survive in that situation. Yeah, he looked at his parents and went, "All right, what are my choices?" This is what I've got to deal with.

He went, "I'll go with Dad." These two people aren't in good enough shape to help me figure out who Glenn is. He wasn't going to get that.(...) But if he looked at Dad, he could say, "All right, this guy runs the family. He's well-liked and respected. Maybe he's not so nice to us, but I don't think that that really,(...) I mean, this isn't a conscious choice anyway." He just went, "This is the way to survive." He's in charge, so that's what he did. And he jumped into being his father. And his life looked very much like his father in a lot of ways, but just as he was abandoned, meaning the parents were there.

So you're abandoned on one level because they're drinking. If they're drinking, how present can they really be? But second, they never attended to Glenn's feelings.(...) Nobody sat down with Glenn to say, "How are you doing? (...) What do you imagine you want to be in your life? How are you putting that together? What can we do to support you in figuring out who you really are? You know, as a lot of you better get good grades, I want you to be successful," which passes as I care about you and your life, but they never really talked to Glenn to see who Glenn was.

Didn't enter their minds. It didn't occur to them because nobody had ever done it for them either. And that's a pretty common scenario, isn't it? Incredibly common, but then you're abandoned. Yeah. Right, so he felt abandoned and then interesting that he goes along and abandons his son. So in that scenario, his son was him, (...) right? He identified with the son and then did what was done to him. He walked away. So in this dream and through this interpretation and what he felt about that, he really discovered how much he was his dad or like his dad.

And then he continues to have some dreams that furthered that point that help him sort of have some success in clearing this up. He's gonna have to dream about this a lot.(...) Because you want to do that, you wanna chase it down. I mean, he's gonna dream about whatever he's gonna dream about. That doesn't mean he didn't dream about his mother. It doesn't mean he didn't dream about all kinds of things. But one of the things that brought him in was, if I retire, I don't know who I am.(...) And if I don't know who I am, I am completely destabilized. (...) And what happens to me?

What am I gonna feel? How am I gonna solve this? What do I do? It was pretty fantastic that he was able to come in and get to this. You wanna get to this, right? Because otherwise, either he gets forced into retirement, something happens like this health scare or something, and he falls apart. So at least here we say, okay, hold on, slow this down. Let's get the lay of the land and figure out why this is worrying you so much. And there's a certain amount of retiring for everybody that may be run of the mill anxiety. It's a major stressor in life.

It's a shift of a life phase and role, and you can reassess whether you were productive enough and what's this next stage. And I think there's a lot to be thought about, and most people are going to go through that. And then this, which felt much deeper. And luckily his son caught it, and then talked to Glenn and he could kinda go, yeah, I am going through something. This does feel bigger than just stress. He had been through life stressors before. He'd had divorces, and it didn't do to him what this was doing. (...) Yeah, he had managed to sort of keep, he learned to behave well.

He wasn't well behaved early on. He was nasty to people. When he wanted to not be that way, he didn't wanna run around making everybody feel bad. And he recognized it when he was. Yes, I think that took some time. There was help. I think he had a lot of community support so he could start to look around and go, oh, this isn't how you talk to people. This isn't that nice. Right, and he was so clear about what he was doing to his wife. Yes, he started to see that, and just know he was impossible to be with. I mean, she stood by him, I think, because she had also seen this other side.

And look, he, I think, always had an edge. He still has an edge. I don't think that this is, I feel it less when it used to be it coming every time, and I think, gosh, is he, hmm, is he angry with me? And then it sort of clicks, oh, this is just how he goes through life. Well, that's so far extremely enlightening, and thank you.(...) So we're gonna talk about two other dreams from Witter-Glens. Yes. Yes, so we're gonna get a look at what Glen looks like,(...) let's say about 15, well, 12 to 15 months later. The other piece I wanna go through is, Glen is obviously male, and it doesn't mean that women don't become their fathers.(...) And I really wanna say that, because that is incredibly common, and vice versa.

Bail would say it's more than an identification. There are lots of ways in which we identify with people in our lives. We're like them, and then there are ways in which we are them. And that's really what an imprint does to you. It makes you that person. That's a really hard concept to grasp, and to grasp the difference between those two things. Yes, and we can talk more about that, maybe at the end of this, but I'll get into the dreams, because what Glen is talking about at that point in the treatment is changing.(...) And so I'll let you hear what the mind does with the idea of changing, because that was one of the things that scared him when he first came in, is he was facing a place where he might have to change.

If he retired from his career, but really from being his father,(...) what does it look like? Right, so that was already, we saw what a change did. Yeah, and he's going to have to change. It seems like he was already coming to terms with that. Here is this moment, (...) something's gotta give. Yeah, he was coming to terms with the idea of retiring. I think he had no idea that retiring had, his upset had little to do with stopping work(...) by comparison to what it had to do with stopping being his father,(...) right? That was the big thing. That's the big place he had to change.

And that change required assessing the personality and saying, I have no idea who I am, right? We're back to that primary question, basic question, which is who am I? And have I gotten a chance to be me in this lifetime? But it's so great. He was fortunate enough to have this red flag(...) and act upon it, and even have his son who loves him so much say, hey, dad, there's a little out of control here.(...) And that he was able to see that, not knowing that it would bring him to this,(...) but desperate to make sure he could make himself okay. Yes, and luckily he had a prior therapy experience, and though it was a very different therapy, it was good for him, right?

So he came with a positive feeling.(...) Sometimes people come and say, oh, God, I had awful therapy or I've had none and this is so foreign to me and I don't know.(...) That little bit, though many, many years prior(...) helped carry him into this as well. So he had a lot of things working for him. His guardian angels were-- It sounds like it. Heavy lifting for him, but they got him there. And then it was his choice to stay,(...) right? He didn't have to stay. He could have come and talked to me a couple of times, thanks, lady, see you. I'm better, I'm not, I'm done.

Whatever it is, but he didn't, right? So in that way, luckily there was a little bit that wasn't so totally father that he couldn't stay. I don't know that his father would have stayed. So we're a little over a year later and he's been coming and he's talking to me and I bring this up because it does, it hearkens back to the early sessions in a certain way, but you'll see. So he says, I'm meeting with my attorney tomorrow and I'm getting some things in order. I think we can put together a plan to sell the business, but I would stay on and run things as I told you about.

I think it's a good balance. If I can slow down a little, not put so much pressure on myself to do everything and learn to delegate more, I should be able to keep working, but in a way that's not so intense. It all felt so black and white to me before. There was no middle ground, so now I'm starting to find that. I'm heading out of town this weekend. Jeanette and I are going to drive up the coast and spend a few nights and try to reconnect. She thinks I'm much more tolerable now, so she's willing to travel with me. She said she'd do it, but if the old me comes back, she'll get her own room and I can find a ride back home myself.

I hear her and hopefully it will be a nice getaway. I wanna do something special for her. She really put up with a lot of shit and I'm not sure why she did it, but I'm very grateful. My son and his girlfriend are going to meet us for a night. He is another person that I really feel lucky to have stand by me. He didn't have to and it has meant everything to me that he loved me enough to forgive me. I really put him through it too. I wouldn't show up when I said I would. I miss birthdays and Christmases. It just breaks my heart when I think about how I hurt him.

I miss so much time with him and so much of his life.(...) I don't think I can really make it up to him, but I try every day.(...) I do think he's happy now. He has this relationship and for the first time in his life, I think he feels loved. I know he has worked for it and that also keeps me going in therapy. I feel like I owe it to him to be a better person. He said, I know you're going to ask, so I'll tell you my dream. In the dream, I'm with Jeanette and my son and possibly his girlfriend and we're walking down a tree-lined street and I have no idea where we're going, but as we get further down the street, I see this house and a garden in front.(...) I'm sort of drawn to it, but I have no idea why.

It's a reasonably large front yard with grass. On one side, there's a path that leads to the front door and the other side is planted with all kinds of trees and plants and flowers. I have no idea what kinds, but there are a lot and I see this grouping of flowers, yellow, maybe some a little orange and there are a lot of them in one area and then I see that they're spread throughout the garden and I just feel like I need to get them out of there.(...) I start cutting them. I just chop out the whole garden. I go after everything. I flatten it all.

All that remains are these little stumps or roots of the flowers. I think I also start just hacking away at everything, the rocks, maybe even into the side of the house and I do it until I'm exhausted and I feel like I've done it. I wake up and then go back to sleep and have another dream. In that dream, I'm at a party. It must be a nice home, a large home and it's half inside and half outside in the back garden. I go out of the house and pass through the crowd of people. I walk by a pool and I seem to be intent on heading to the back gate and I go through it and exit.

I end up in a driveway and I see my car and I get into it and I start changing my clothes but I put on this outfit that might be a little strange and not really something I would wear. It is a suit in a pale color, maybe beige. I put it all on the pants, a shirt and jacket and I think I'm going to go back to the party but I'm not sure whether I do because I wake up. It was not a great feeling.(...) I felt like maybe I had put on something very ugly, something I shouldn't have. Then I ask him for his thoughts about the dream and he's going to go through both, both dreams.

And he says, "In the first dream, I didn't know where I was in the dream but when I woke up, I thought it must be sort of like my childhood home." It was roughly the same design and we didn't have a garden in the front like that but we had one in the back that was similar. The flowers that I have to cut down are definitely ones that I remember.(...) My mother loved the garden and it was one of the things my parents really liked to do together. They would spend hours figuring out what to plant then planting it and it just makes me think of them.

So am I just going crazy and trying to cut it all down, level it? And I said, "Well, are you?" And he said, "After everything we've talked about, the alcoholism, the abuse, the constant fear and anxiety to perform, I would say, "Why wouldn't I want to level it all?" Before we started talking, I just thought I was unlucky genetically.(...) But as we go over everything, I can really see that I didn't have a chance.(...) None of us had a chance. My parents were both just so damaged.(...) I used to make excuses for my father, like he was just stressed and he provided us such a good life that I would excuse the bad behavior but I can't now.

I can see that it really did real damage. Both of them did damage in different ways. I think my mother was softer but her drinking and not being able to stand up for us was incredibly disappointing and the way he treated her was enraging and made us all rush to protect her. I can see now that it changed who we were. I don't even know who we would be if we hadn't grown up. If we had grown up in a different family, a different environment. So I asked, "So can these plants grow back "or does that kill them?" He said, "That's a good question. "I'm not a plant person but I suppose it would be better "to dig them all up too, not just leave the roots intact." And I said, "That's what I was thinking.

"If you're going to do it, let's get the roots out too "so they can't grow back." Then I asked him about the second dream. He said, "I think I'm back at a very different version "of my parents' house. "This is the one that they moved to "after we all grew up and left the house. "It's larger, has a pool. "It was a big move for them and I think they liked it "but I never considered it home." And I said, "So what are you doing there?" And he said, "It's a party and I'm actually dressed fine, "I think, so I'm not sure why I go to change. "I'm walking through the party and I see people I know, "I think and I'm socializing "but definitely making my way through the party "towards the back gate.

"It's a little bit of a different layout "but generally this is the idea.(...) "There was extra parking behind the garage "and that's where this gate lets you out.(...) "I go to my car, well, the car that's mine in the dream. "It's like an SUV that I've never owned "and it has room for me to go inside and change "into this suit. "Again, this is not an outfit I would wear." And I said, "Well, who would wear it?" And he said, "I don't know. "It's nice enough but maybe not something "I've worn before, maybe a little fashion forward for me "or just unusual for me "but I seem intent on putting it on.

"I change and then I believe I plan "to return to the party." (...) And I said, "So how do you feel you've changed?" And he said, "All right, so that's the idea here, "all right, that I've changed?" And I sort of shrugged as he looked at me and he said, "I have changed. "I'm less angry and more able to control myself. "I don't lash out at Jeanette or my son or anyone really.(...) "I still get angry but I feel much less volatile. "I think other people feel it too, I hope they do. "Jeanette says I'm a lot better "but she is also worried that I might go back at any time "so I don't think she's settled into it yet." Then he says, "Why do you think I make it a suit "I don't feel comfortable in?" And I said, "I think you're doing something "you weren't supposed to do, you're changing(...) "and working on becoming more yourself.

"If you say you don't like it, "maybe your internal parents won't be alerted "that you do actually like it "and intend on leveling them inside of you." And that's where we left it. Unconsciously then, there's still this need to protect his parents. Yeah, he's going to protect the whole situation. Even at the beginning, you'll catch that he tells me about retiring, he's sort of making a bargain. All right, I'm gonna sell it but I'm gonna stay on and run it. Now, the man's entitled to make a living, we're not gonna say, "All right, you have to stop everything." But I think there it's really a compromise.

I can take sort of a step but not the full step. Right, so I'm leaving but I'm not really leaving.(...) Okay, I didn't even address that in this session because first what I'm gonna address is that unconsciously he feels the change.(...) Then we'll come back and pick up whatever this negotiation is about staying on the business, how much you're gonna stay, Dad. But first things first. So I'm gonna tend to where the dream went here.(...) We can argue about that technically. Yeah, but you kind of have to follow that path because if you don't, then there's like a little jink in the armor, you can't kind of successfully keep going with it.

Given the time of a session, I've gotta wanna go through the dreams and I wanna get at what he's dreaming about because that's where the unconscious went. Now, it also was telling me because it's the first thing he says in the session is like, "Hey, listen, here's my compromise."(...) Okay, then he tells me, "But I am working on this. "I'm working on changing.(...) "I'm not supposed to like the change yet. "I'm supposed to not fully level it. "I've gotta leave the roots. "They're probably gonna grow back." But there's some safety in not completely destroying that.

That too, so your safety, so he will never fully be alone. If the roots, if everything's left and it could grow back, you don't have to make that complete commitment. What if my change really doesn't do it for me? That's right, he hasn't settled in yet. Of course he hasn't settled in yet. He's been his father for years and years and years and it worked more or less in a way. It didn't work, life was a disaster. But in his mind, it got him a job, a career. The picture looked good. The picture looked good. So that's what he's doing, but he's changing.(...) So you want to both address that because that's no small thing, even to go and let your feelings out and you're gonna cut down this garden and beat in the side of the house and bash the rocks and start doing what you're doing.

And you're bringing, he brings this group with him. That group were parts of himself. So everybody's now going to go. That's good. That's a big deal. That's progress. That's a big deal, that's changing. In my mind, that's not unreasonable time. That's pretty nice timing actually that you go from saying I'm completely my father and he's hell on wheels and okay, I'm, oh, but I can pay attention to what you tell me. Okay, I don't like being him. I'd like to be something else. Then he goes, he's still at his parents' house, at the party, where are you going?

To the party, my parents' house. So how much can you really change if you're still at your parents' house having the party? But we'll take it, it's a good start. I go right through the party, I know where I have to go. I've gotta get in my car. His car, I mean, it's not his car, but it's his car in the dream, right? It's a car he's never had, that's right. He's never had a self. So he's saying there's emergence of a new car. And it's big enough that he can make the change in the car. That's right. It's big enough to now hold things. So the mind is growing, so he can start changing.

He's not gonna like it. The parents in him don't like the change. They would, ugh, hate the suit, in other words, right? And he doesn't want to signal that he's changed all that much either, right? Oh, I'm still here at the party. Don't worry, Mom and Dad, nobody's left, right? Because if he leaves, they might be upset with him. And I'm wearing this unusual thing, but I'm still here. But I'm coming back into the party in it, or at least that he thought was the plan. We don't know what he does, but that's the idea. So Glenn, is he unusual in that he's such a good listener and reporter of what's going on inside him?

I feel like his connection with you for him, he appreciates that this time, this analysis is really benefiting him and bringing him around to who he really is. Is that unusual? Yeah, it just depends. Some people are like that. Some people are going to fight you more. Some people you think, gosh, you keep coming, and I can't tell whether you like this or not. That has to do with how they were treated, who were their models, who are they being like, who acted that way in their life. And sometimes it doesn't mean that some deep part of them, I mean, I assume for the most part, because people have to pay me, they're not coming there because they feel they're getting nothing.

Though of course we probably could all say we see those kinds of patients too, but they're not allowed to sort of lap it up or they can't show all the parents inside of them that they really do like this, so they have to keep putting it down or keep making it, no, I don't think you're quite, no, you don't know what you're talking about. But I'll be back next week. But I'll be back next week. So then we're just working to sort of analyze that, like, all right, well, what keeps you coming if it doesn't feel like I'm getting at your experience? Again, most of the time, if you really feel I'm missing you that much, you may not come, but you might.

And we have to analyze that and see because his mother was warmer and he doesn't want to be alone, those are important pieces for him. I don't know what it would look like if I were a male, because that would be a different dynamic.(...) You'd probably, you know, you just continue to analyze it. It just may, I don't know whether he would have settled in as quickly, but I think because he had that feeling about his mother, that could also carry him into the treatment the way the prior therapy did. So some of those things, there was like he was primed(...) to at least have conditions be there that supported him being able to stay.

And he was motivated. He didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to lose his son or Jeanette. Whom he both love. I think they would say that is starting to grow more. I see. But I think yes, he was really trying to love in the best way somebody who didn't get love could do it. So, you know, sometimes it was very awkward. It wasn't what most of us would say, oh, okay, that feels just so warm and delicious and loving. Right, that's love. That's right. But he was really trying. And I think that's what comes through with him. So that piece is unusual that I think he, boy, he was gonna do his best to fix himself so that he could be better for the people around him.

And that that was somehow motivated by the love he felt for those people. Was that unconscious? I think it was pretty conscious to him. I think he felt a lot of guilt around his son. And I think he really liked his son on top of just loving him. I think he liked him as a person. And I think he felt these two people had stuck by him. And I think he needed whatever those tests were that he sort of put them through. I think he needed to see that this was something that existed. People loved him. They stuck through this horribleness of him. They tolerated him.

They must love me. And luckily he could stop testing them so much. If you find people who are doing that, stop testing. Give them a break. They're sticking with you. Let's not, right? But again, how much do you have to be alone,(...) emotionally or actually, given how you were raised? And what will you recreate in your relationships? He did abandon this son for a long time. And why the son was willing to take him back because the son only will know that reason, that his heart didn't turn to ice and he didn't cut him out. And then he didn't go and repeat the same thing.

Glenn was worried. Did I pass the genes on? But luckily it seems no, not in that way. And so Glenn is still with you and he's been with you for several years.(...) And how is he doing now? He's still working. He's still working hard. He's still working in treatment. And that's where he found the understanding of what the actual work was really all about was he's getting to work on himself. He's starting to bring light in, turn up those dim lights on who he really is. For some of us, this kind of interaction, this precious interaction with you or someone like you, which there are many, it could be a lifelong journey.

Yeah, and look, he started at 67, right? Then people go, oh, why are you starting then? Too late, not too late for him. Why shouldn't he start? For sure. What is this idea that, how could you ever be too old to figure out who you really are and get to know yourself in that way? There's all of these things that he just assumed were him. He didn't feel them as different. And now he's starting to get some space and they're going, oh, but I don't think that was me. So he's finding, coming to life in all these ways, but also he's doing it and he says this for the people around him also.

That's part of what kept him going. There were some times in therapy where, should I keep doing it, especially when you start changing? There's a lot of resistance that can come up. But he knew, wait a minute, I need to do this because the people around me also benefit. It isn't just about me. Well, great, if we all get to look inside and understand something about us, get closer to our true selves and change things, it's not just about us, right? It's about all the people that we then come in contact with, take care of, love, don't love. Beyond our families.

Beyond our families. I mean, that's the ultimate goal, really. Operate from your best true self. And then these things of taking care of others and loving others just become part of who you are. Right, and you can see that as a ripple effect.(...) That goes out from yourself, your immediate family, your friends, he even stopped being as cantankerous at work.(...) Well, that relieved all of the people that work with him who don't have to run around waiting for his father's explosions. All right, well, that might change someone's life. Maybe somebody stayed at the company who might have left.

Right. Right, said, this guy's out of his mind. Right, and they went in a whole other direction given that that environment was safer. Right, so you can start to see that learning about yourself is not really just a selfish thing, that it impacts everything. Well, you could say at any point in time that this is of the utmost importance, but at this point in time, it's of the utmost importance because we have to step out of who we've trained ourselves to be and we're not giving our best to humanity or the people that we love because we don't know how to, because we don't know who we are.

We don't know who we are. And it sounds so simple, but just the process and listening to you share these dreams, it's just so important and such an opener. For Glenn to be able to sort of operate from his true self and see what those results are for himself and those people he loves and knew people that come into his life that he's able to approach in a loving way. I mean, that's a gift to all of us, like you just said. Yeah, it really lets him, and then hopefully this lets everybody, start to get an idea that we are often living in ways that are not us.

We wanna get enough distance to start to feel that, but also if we can all be carrying the idea that all of these things we all just say, oh, life is tough, life is just hard. Sometimes we're so in it, we can't even see that it's hard and tough, but I think a lot of people, and Glenn certainly had that, this was just life. You just make yourself scarce, right? Just get out of here. You can't make yourself scarce enough, you carry it with you, but you have to get the idea that we don't need life to be that way, right? That all of these places where we just say, oh, but this is how it's always been done.

Yeah, it's kind of abusive, but that person really loves me, they're doing it for my best good. We have to start to say, no, actually that's not for your best good. And person doing it, if you've got that idea, you have to change that idea and stop doing it that way. We have to reassess everything and look at it, like how are we really doing this? Did we set this up right? Why does everybody have to suffer just because the generation before did? Stop it, enough, we all have to look and say, wait a minute, how have I set this up and it isn't right?

Why is the status quo the status quo? Does it have to be that? No, it does not. That's right, but we see even with Glenn, you change and it kind of goes, I don't like the suit,(...) right? It doesn't feel great on me. So we see, you know, and that's somebody who's motivated to change, right? Not being dragged, kicking and screaming. And so we just all have to decide that change is needed and let's just see how we can get there by getting in touch with ourselves. Right. Yeah, that's where it has to start. And it'll all ripple out. Loren, thank you.

Thank you. Always a treasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me and letting me share. Always, it's the best. And you'll be back. Yes. And we'll do more of this. Thank you. Thank you all for listening. And I'm sure that you found it as fabulous as I did. And we'll be back again soon with Loren and with others. So stay tuned.