Why We Stop Feeling: Dr. Loren Weiner on Numbing, Dreams, and the Journey Back to Our Emotions

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

Most of us have this assumption. Of course, everybody has feelings. That just isn't the case. Nobody knows this is happening on the surface, but below we are really busy modulating feeling, allowing it, not allowing it, sometimes killing it off, murdering it. To survive, you have to go inside yourself and see how much were feelings allowed. And then am I allowed to use them when I am dealing with other people? So we have to get in touch with ourselves. Then we can connect with each other and also with the divine. And then we get everything flowing, all based on feeling connections.

I am. Cynthia Marks and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation, established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail. Welcome to And Now Love. Well, lucky for us, Doctor Loren Weiner is back with us today. Loren is a psychotherapist here in Los Angeles. Her work is largely based on the theories and methodologies of our Doctor Bail. We want to talk about why people stop using their feelings and what the dreams look like when this happens. Once those dreams have been explored, how do they then begin to experience feelings, and what do the dreams then start to look like?

Lastly, what is it like as the feelings more fully return and then when they are solidly back, we are hopeful that we are all moving towards knowing ourselves more, which requires access to our feelings. Hi. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me back. Always. You are our most treasured resource. Oh thank you. Thank you. So, what do you have today? Feelings. Have some feelings. So just what you were saying. I want to talk about feelings. And we all, most of us have this assumption, but we don't think about it. Or just assume. Of course, everybody has feelings and that just isn't the case.

A lot of times what we see because of pain, all sorts of situations, people may block off some of their feelings to tolerate certain situations, and that can happen to us very early on. In fact, you may or may not know that just talking to someone. So that doesn't always mean somebody doesn't feel anything. They're not going to look like a robot, but it means they don't use them. We're not using them to make decisions, to make connections with other people based on feeling. They may do it based on intellect, but not based on feeling. The other piece is that often feelings are killed off in offspring by yourself, where you block them all out, block them in some way because you've been hurt.

So if you don't want to be hurt again, the easiest way to do that is to stop really allowing feeling to guide. Now the other piece is caregivers will kill off feeling in offspring, which doesn't sound like a great idea for our evolution, but it can happen because the parents themselves either don't have access to their feelings and don't want feelings in the mix, and they feel that if a child really feels how they're being treated, something will have to change. And that feels too scary. So a lot of this sounds very ominous. This is all happening unconsciously.

Nobody knows this is happening on the surface, but below we are really busy modulating feeling, allowing it, not allowing it, sometimes killing it off, murdering it to survive. Just to get through the day. To through the week. Yes, yes. To get through a life that is set up in a certain way, unconsciously. So that's what we're looking at now. When you start talking to people, sometimes it is more obvious patients will come in and tell you, I don't know how to do that with people. I don't know how to interact. I don't know when somebody says something to me.

I have no idea what to say back. Sometimes that's your first clue that they're not really using feeling, because most of the time, if people are more able to use feelings, that flows naturally. Somebody says something to you and just sort of respond, right? There is no thinking involved in that. It's just a natural response. So sometimes that's your first clue. All right. We're not we're working more with intellect than feeling. Why then we start wanting to understand why. Sometimes people look like they are filled with emotion and they are filled with their own.

They're crying all the time. They're screaming all the time. They're upset. They lose their temper, these sorts of things. And you go, oh, well, they are so filled with feeling. And they may be, but what they may not then be able to do is use that feeling to either help themselves navigate which way is the best way. What's the best decision for my life, or may not be able to use it to understand those around them? Also, you may have people who are unaware that they don't know how to do that, that they don't know actually how to use feelings to connect and how to understand another person that way.

So for the person who's the one that says, I don't know how to stop crying. That's a piece of information, right? And then I have to investigate that and understand. Okay, well tell me more about that. Now, we may see that they have feelings and they also have some kind of upset that has them in that part of their feelings all the time. Then we may have somebody, you may discover their crying a lot for themselves, but that never extends to understanding other people around them. I see, so it's all self-focused and it may so, but people then think, oh well, they have lots of feelings, right?

Right. And so you expect they're going to relate to you as though they're really using feelings. And often that disconnect causes problems people don't understand. I'm so upset with you because I assume you have feelings. And could it be too? Mom was always emotional crying and now you, little Mr. or Miss offspring are doing the same thing as you, right? You may just be your mother. So you have her range of in your example. So you have her range of emotional functioning. I would say I don't assume anything. When you first start talking to somebody, you have to start looking and you're going to know that there's an unconscious at work.

So you're thinking about all of these pieces. Gee, who's sitting in front of me? Is this the patient who is more fully in themselves, or are they showing me what they grew up with, and how the people they grew up with responded to everything around them? It's interesting that just crying specifically for the times where we are crying and we don't know why, let's say, or we cry all the time that there is this gift, this physical gift. Here's something perhaps your body is saying to you in just knowing that much, couldn't you start to say to yourself, okay, let me think about this.

You know, my my body is saying to me, there's some turmoil in here and you aren't clear about it. It's in your unconscious, wherever it is. How are we going to start getting to that? Because these tears are telling you something. Yes. Hopefully people become curious that you're not just plagued with something or I'm not just a person who cries all the time. Never cries. Could have both. Yes. We want hopefully to to start to get people really curious about themselves, no matter what's going on. To those people who do cry, obviously getting getting at the root of that and thinking about your lineage and thinking about what might be going on in your life.

Now, some people say, I've always been this way, and it may just be that they're very sensitive and they do have a lot of access to their feelings, but may not have a way to protect themselves from all of the turmoil around them. And that's one of the things they'd be building up, is maybe a stronger side that can contain and protect these feelings. Again, the big idea is you get to have a conversation with yourself or with somebody else, a therapist. And again, coming to see a therapist is a conversation where you start to get curious about all of the things you do and the things that you probably have labeled.

This is just me. There's a lot of, oh, this is just me that has to be actually looked at and understood. And I mean, we only come to a therapist if we're curious about something that's happening. In a lot of pain. Yes. Right. And so we're curious to find out why are we feeling this pain. So and then there, there are those of us who are in a position to deal with someone else's tragic circumstances, let's say, or not so tragic, but moving. And we say, I don't even know what to say. I don't I don't know how to respond. It's like you're welled up with feelings and you have no words for those feelings.

Is that some kind of disconnect between your feeling bits and your intellectual bits? I think it's too hard to say without knowing the person. I. See sometimes. It may be there's a disconnect. Why? You know, it may be there's a history. Why can't those feelings be put into words? Maybe nobody wanted to hear the words. Maybe there wasn't room for it. Or we may have a case. Like I was saying earlier, where, baby, there's some feelings. Or maybe, you know, somebody feeling something and you don't actually feel it enough to be moved to say something.

As feelings have come back to people say, go, oh, I never. I've never experienced something like this. I was moved for a lot of people who go, okay, I moved all the time. But if you have never been moved that way because feelings weren't allowed in your home, that's a big shift. And that will change the nature of how you then connect to everything around you. And that's what we're really looking to do, is change the nature of how we are all relating to each other. The best way to do that is for all of us to have access to our feelings. And so much of us, just many of us, so many of us don't.

And we think we do. We think we're going along. And it's not until you see dreams or hear the kinds of difficulties people get into with their spouses, with their best friends, with their children, where the children might be giving you the message like you're not feeling me. And this isn't just I feel you, I can feel you, and I'm choosing not to. This is really a disconnect, and you get a lot of frustration and upset. And the kids looked, you know, like they're really angry or misbehaving and all this. And what it is, is a real deep anger about having a parent that cannot actually feel the child.

And the main goal is to start to say, listen, you may or may not be feeling things. You you have to go inside yourself and see how much were feelings allowed. And then am I allowed to use them when I am dealing with other people? Is that where I come from? Do I understand how other people feel and then make my decisions about what I'm going to do, either automatically because feeling leads? You're at least with that in the calculus. If all of the people have access to their feelings, they're probably not going to make a government that says, well, we're going to balance this budget by cutting all of these programs that help people, because the heart says, well, maybe there's a different way, okay, now people can get into the politics of that.

It's not to me about politics. It's about really looking, going, well, what do people actually need to have good lives? And are we in the business of trying to create a world that gives people good lives and the potential to have a good life, or are we really going to be in an intellectual world where we say, well, these are the rules, and there's this much money and only these people get money and those don't. So this to me is less about the divide in politics and about really a perspective of saying, what is it we're making a government for?

What are we really all here to do on this planet together? The difference, then, between running the world with intellect and running the world first from feeling, is then giving the ability to all people to thrive and find some joy and happiness. Yes. And if that person says, well, I'm not going to eat because my soul has a journey and this is about that, then that's a choice. But that's not because we as a whole. Didn't provide from the heart. And that's what we're looking for. And if you're going to provide from the heart, you have to feel you have to have an ability to love.

Part of the problem is if we cut off our feelings to get rid of or protect ourselves from pain, it's usually not surgical. We can't go in and go, okay, well, I'm only going to get rid of this piece. Often. We tamp everything down and then we don't have enough love either. We want a world with lots and lots of love in it, and we want a world where everybody is able to connect to themselves via their feelings, which makes us able to connect to each other and also lets us connect to spirit. And if all of that is in flow, I think we get a world that looks very different from the one we've got right now.

Well, let's work on it then. Yeah. So one of the the first ways patients, if they're not already aware, they feel cut off from their feelings. Some people come to you like that, start to get in touch with that is through dreams. And doesn't it seem like most people who are cut off from their feelings don't think they're cut off from their feelings? I think it just depends. There's a bias because if people are coming to you for that, then they're already aware. A lot of times what they do is they come to you because their wife is so frustrated with them, or their husband is getting ready to walk out the door and they go, you got to help me.

Yes. You know, my husband keeps saying me, I don't understand it. I'm, you know, and I'm doing my best, I think I do. And then what you get to get into is, all right, let's see what's happening. Let's figure out who you are and who are the people around you. And let's see what your dreams tell us is actually happening. So one of the dreams that shows being cut off from feeling is the one I'm going to tell you, my patients was kind enough to let us share this dream. Many thanks. This is a young woman who has been in therapy now for several years, but this was a dream early on.

And I know also that when somebody is telling me about certain problems, they're also going to have that problem in the treatment, meaning we're going to see it in the dream and that usually comes fairly quickly, but also it will get acted out in the relationship of the treatment. So there are transference pieces, meaning if somebody isn't connecting to those around them, at some point we will see a disconnect between the patient and myself in the treatment also. And you can get it it that way perfectly fine. But also you want to get that in the dreams because the dreams hold all of this feeling actually for the person, they may be cut off of it from it, but you're going to see glimpses of it.

And and that is a way in. And getting the dream accurately interpreted for that person starts to clean the mind up and starts to let them know they're understood enough to make way for feeling to come back. So the dream that somebody tells me this is a little tricky to follow, but think you get it? The patient says, I'm talking to my friend G, and she tells me that some other friends haven't been able to get through that. There's something wrong with the phone line, but she was able to get through. So I talk with her, and I know from her that it was actually our friend B who couldn't get through.

I planned to call B after and check with her, then G gets disconnected, but also she's there in the room with me and it somehow actually her number that is unreachable. So I know that's a little tricky to follow, but what basically happens in the dream is the patient is talking about how, oh, people can't get through and there's a problem, and it looks like it's all pinned on this one person. But then what we come to see is it's really the patient saying, oh, it's me. My numbers disconnected. I can't get through, but I can have the experience with all these people and find places out there and probably will find it in the therapy where she feels she can't get through.

She's right and assumes the other person is somehow not connecting to her the right way. But it's really hard. These are dreams. You go through them. And who's this person and who's that person? And you start to find all the people and the characteristics and figure out who's who. And then what emerges is, oh, you have been disconnected. So you have several conversations about this dream. Then there's it covers more than a half hour's time to kind of for that patient to start to feel what the dream is. Right saying. And that's the tricky piece.

Feel what the dream is saying. Now, the patient may or may not feel what this dream is saying at the beginning because they're disconnected. So now sometimes people say, oh no, that's not quite me. It didn't capture me. And okay, you know, my my goal is if somebody tells me that doesn't feel right, well, let's figure out why. And sometimes I have to see is it because my interpretation is off? I've missed something or there's a deeper layer, or is it because they're disconnected? And so anything about feeling and the story of losing feeling may or may not feel right because they can't yet feel it.

This was not the first in a series of dreams over time that this idea came in, but here it is. And so the patient has to contend with it again. I mean, I'm the one that's disconnected. Oh, it's my number that isn't working. Okay. So, you know, it doesn't mean that everybody in the family that she felt disconnected from wasn't also disconnected. But she also was. And the only place we can change that, we can't fix our family. Good news. We can change her if she's willing and wants to connect. Because, of course, she didn't disconnect for no good reason.

There was a good reason. Too much pain. So you start getting dreams like this and it's all about who can't get through and it's disconnected and all of that. And you go, okay, well, I know the arena. We're in. Yeah, yeah, right. And it's all about feeling. It's interesting because I think probably for just about anyone who's gone through this process, I definitely relate in that the first many dreams that kind of told the story about my feelings, I was so disconnected that I would automatically say, that doesn't feel right. Because it couldn't.

I didn't have the access to the feeling, right? That's right. So you contend with that. The patient's state is always the treatment. And and so what you're going to do is see, well, where do the dreams lead you. Because the patient may not be able to tell you what feels right or not. And sometimes as you get closer to feelings emerging, the dreams may really not feel right because it's so forbidden. So you have to weigh all of that. You know, I think that's the art of seeing a full person and trying to understand the story, the big picture. So, you know, if somebody keeps telling you, well, that doesn't feel right.

You know, either you have to check yourself and go, well, my compass is really off. And if you know your compass is, chances are not so off. Then you know the receiver is. I remember finally coming to a place where I could say, I think I have to look at this differently. Wow. I've had all these dreams that have led me to this place. Clearly, I'm. Trying to tell myself something. Yeah, and it's me. And then, you know, for a period of time after that, there were sort of no dreams. And I thought, darn, I've gotten somewhere, and now I'm just like, blank.

And I remember the response was, no, this is all great. Maybe, maybe you've entered into something that's you're on the precipice. It's scary. You got to take a step back, a deep breath, and you know everything. You do a bit of work and then sometimes you rest and that's needed. And the psyche is actually still working. Other times that's just resistance. It can be resistance that will yield the next phase. And you really want to go here. It means everything that you based your self on is up for question. Yeah. And it may be that the self is also saying, well if I haven't been using feeling, what will I feel if that starts to come in?

And often that is a very scary place to people. Well, wait a minute, because maybe life may or may not have felt so great even without a lot of feeling. It has had its own pitfalls. And so saying, oh, you mean wait, I'm going to open the floodgates to something I thought was so painful, I cut it out, and now I'm inviting that in. Because whether that is overtly stated or not, I think the mind Intuit's that, yeah, you have to be very brave, and that may require a period of saying, I let me. Let me process. Let me get ready for this. Yeah. Now hopefully as it comes, most of the time we don't throw ourselves into the deep end.

You start with what you can handle, and it's part of the reason I love following people's dreams, because you're going to take me as you're ready to know something now. Occasionally something will pop up in a dream and I go, oh, all right, well, self, I have to have a little. How much of this do I want to interpret? What's the patient ready for? But most of the time. I'm not keeping big secrets. The patient is telling me I'm ready to know this. And I do my best to say, well, here's what it is. Through this disguised story, I've got another dream.

Different patient who was somewhat conscious of needing to blunt feelings in her life and smoked a lot of marijuana and felt it was her medicine and really kept her from being unhappy and also being very reactive in her life. And so this just sort of was considered medicine that kept everything smooth. And did she come to you because there was a particular situation that required attention, or did she come to you because she was curious about her own process? No. She came because her life was falling apart. So there was desperation, really. And and she didn't know what how much more medicine can you take?

It's not fixing it. It's still falling apart. So the dream, one of the dreams she presented is in the dream. She's getting stoned. So she's smoking. And she was part of a group fighting to legalize marijuana. She tells her parents that she thinks the bill will pass, and she's surprised to find out that her parents start to celebrate that. And as she went on with her thoughts about the dream and their response in it, it became clear that the parents liked her stoned. If she was stoned, she was numb to her feelings and would not then be upset with them for also being numb to their feelings.

And they didn't do it by smoking marijuana. They did it invisibly. They just didn't use their feelings. And so she came, you know, in a way, she was called herself a stoner. She came from two people who didn't use marijuana at all, but really were stoners. And so that was just to be how it was. Now. Her reactivity was her rage at never having her feelings understood in her family. So they were very happy once she started to use drugs. A lot of the time liked that it quieted her. Often in families, you'll see people like when difficult people, people who might call out problems or cause problems or be the holders of upset are quieted.

Just stop bothering me. And so this was what she did. She said, okay, I'll please you. I'll both be exactly like you. But she had more feeling than they did to begin with. But she said about completely getting rid of it because they didn't want to tolerate it. If she ever had expressed her feelings, what came back to her was completely uncomfortable or unsatisfying or hurtful. Right? So why would you go? It was abandoning. It was belittling, and it never felt like, oh, I actually understand why you might be so upset and angry. I understand that we've missed you, and that we had you taking care of our feelings and what we needed, but we weren't using our feelings to at all help you.

This is so big and so common. Yes, this is really common, you know. And so she would take her medicine thinking, oh, I just like this. This is just my life. And I want everybody to be able to do this. Everybody should have access to this. This isn't an argument to me about whether you want to use marijuana or not. It's what her unconscious tells me the marijuana meant to her. People could be using anything. You could use heroin, you could use ham sandwiches, whatever it is one is using to fit what has been required of them in the family. And here it was.

We don't want to deal with your feelings. Take care of yourself. Go figure it out. Okay, well, she did, and it almost destroyed her whole life. And this is at the root of so many of our issues in that we're not allowed to have our feelings. Right. And and the way in which we work for the, the family, work for the parents, like, oh, you don't want me to have my feelings. Okay. Now, I may not like that. That may have enraged me. I may have then had to cover over the rage and get rid of it, or think, imagine I'm getting rid of it. But then what I have to do in my life is continually murder my own feelings.

And then I've also got to find every place where I don't feel I'm taking care of the right way, where I don't feel what I'm talking about is really understood, or I don't fit into the group, or it's got to be really hard because that's what that experience felt like. And I will go duplicate that over and over. So you can see it gets really tough because, oh God, I had some feelings. Well, that didn't go well. I better get rid of them. And then what? And then I'm a ship at sea with no way to navigate, because I don't have my feelings. And anybody who's ever had a difficult situation and go, oh, I know I'll make a pro and con list.

All right, well, after 50 items, you still don't know because the intellect can't always discern what the best path is you need feeling. But if you've murdered them, had to, then what do you do? Right? Then? You can't solve your most complicated life problems. You can't find the right path. You're putting this so simply. It's. I'm sure so many of us, millions of us can hear what you're saying and think about how we've been unable to use our feelings as a matter of survival. And that becomes your world. So you just would fall into that world everywhere you go through life, right?

That's right. You know, you find what you know. Often if we find somebody who's really good at understanding, I mean, you know, understanding our feelings that may or may not feel good to you. That may be too revealing. Well, you have to weigh that. And you do in treatment, you look at these things and see. Well, what do you mean, wait, maybe that person is able to do something you're not able to do. Still may mean it's not a good match. You may not be ready for that kind of relationship where somebody actually expects you can use feeling, but we at least want to know the why.

I remember being told by my parents, mostly my father, when I was a I think I was 12 or 13, and I was your typical angry young teenager, dealing with all kinds of emotions and my ideas about the way the world is and, you know, speaking my mind. And I was eventually told, you know, we don't think we love this new you. We were this isn't going to work for us. And it just literally took my breath away. And I thought to myself, but I still have to live with these people. I still have to live with these people. I mean, this was a tangible thing that was happening, and I just had to say, screw it, I'm just going to.

I am just going to be the person they need me to be so that I can survive. I have to be like them, right? There's a point at which where you go, oh, I could feel I had to abandon myself. Yeah. I mean, and I already had, I already had, but here I was, maybe experimenting. Right. Pushing that there was still, you know, we look for that these sort of signs of life. Right. There's a rebellion, a spirit that says, well, but I have I have a feeling about. This and contain this. And. Right. And I have an opinion and look as, as development goes, that may be made of a whole host of things and you may not end up there.

That may not be who you are in the end. But we look for that. Is there a fight to stay alive? Is there some way to preserve yourself? And sometimes yes, sometimes no. And sometimes too much life comes and the whole family goes, no, we don't do that here. We have rules. You're going to be in this family. You follow the rules and you're, you know, whatever. 13, 14, 15 not quite ready to leave home and go make it on your own. What are you going. To do? I guess I get quiet, yeah, I guess I get quiet. For me, that was just fuel for the person I'd already had to become.

It's like we told you not to go there, right? What are you doing? Lots of people, I think are. And again, sometimes it isn't blanket. But we don't tolerate your anger that there are just ways in which the family culture, the family rules are told to you. It's what you get in trouble for and not what are you praised for? What are you allowed to have as a toddler? Are you allowed to scream about something or not? Kids. Infants are reading you constantly. They know already what's allowable and what isn't. Unconsciously, they can't put it into words.

No, but those boundaries are are quickly established. So the a lot of the work is helping people know their true feelings. And sometimes first you have to get feeling back to know what the true feelings are, because sometimes it's all over the place, you know? Oh, but I have a lot of feeling. My gut tells me to go left. You listen to the story, you go clearly. You should have gone right. Patient cannot make use of that. The gut is not right. So people always go, oh, it's a gut feeling. And sometimes I have to say, first we better calibrate your gut.

It was calibrated to a system that was designed to get you off track. So when you've been separated from feeling for a long time, the idea of getting it back is not always so welcome. As we were saying, you might be terrified. You may not want it. You get a lot of resistance. Dreams may come and go. The dreams may scare the hell out of you. Meaning as feeling is coming, dreams can get very scary. I'll start with one that is not so scary but gives the picture. This is a middle aged man who says in the dream I'm working as a waiter in New York, but really, I'm a Broadway singer.

All these workers are with me. I have camaraderie, I walk between a few places in the restaurant and then outside for a few minutes, and it's raining, and one person I'm with has to measure something on my hat and won't give it back. But that means I'm getting wet. I'm annoyed and finally get it back. So you hear a dream like that and there's lots of things to chase down. Wait, you're a waiter, but you're really a Broadway singer. But for our purposes today, one of the big pieces is somebody takes my hat off my head and I start to get wet and I'm annoyed.

Well, the water is feeling. I took the hat through the interpretations. I was starting to say, we're measuring everything. What have you got? What's on your head? And the patient is saying, well, I'm annoyed because now I'm feeling things. The patient may or may not be feeling things so much in their waking life, but you have to see it happening in the dreams, in the unconscious before it will happen. In life, in waking life. So we start just getting, you know, it's like, oh, the hat's taken and the patient is already annoyed. I was covering my head.

I didn't want feelings to get in. That was not safe in my life. And here it is now. The patient is coming to treatment. The patient knows we're working towards this. So this is not a surprise. But still, here's some of the feeling coming through. Oh, a lot of times people may be able to feel the negative side of things. You know, again how much can they do with that. But they certainly often cut out the good stuff. I can't feel love the way I think I should. I can't use positive things to allow myself to have comfort in life, or to connect to people.

In that way, they might be able to tell you about the things they hate and don't like and don't work, but those don't help them at all. Truly. You know, it keeps things miserable, but it doesn't. They're not allowed into the good side of feelings. And that's going to be a person like this where they are able to tell me, oh, that's annoying. And at this point then in your relationship, the two of you, is there a change in the dynamic? But in the circumstances. I'm the person that took the hat. So yeah, you're going to and you're going to see that you may feel that that maybe in the transference, meaning the way the person is treating you in the treatment, the way they're relating to you.

Do you see a shift? Are they telling you more, telling you less, not coming to to sessions, showing up late? Originally, the people that took the person's protection were the parents. So that's why I say it's a transference. Because yes, I am seen as somebody taking something and there is a truth about that. But the original people who took away the protection were the people that said, don't have your feelings because the feelings are really the protection. Feelings are what let you go out in the world and navigate know what ally is safe to go down and what isn't.

So that will come up. So yes, there may be a shift or there may be no shift. All looks fine on the surface and you don't see it until you get into the dream. So I have another dream from a different patient. The dream is to run into Rita and a meal and another woman. First I see the woman and they tell me something, but it's a little unclear. But then I realize they're telling me they both got engaged. Rita to a meal. And this other woman to some other guy. I look for the rings, but they're not huge like I expect. I congratulate them and see a meal who was sitting right near the scene and congratulate him.

He seems a bit shy and reserved about it. Okay, so what's happening in this dream? And of course all of this happens in a session and we are having conversation back and forth. I will usually say something like, tell me what comes to your mind, try to leave it open and let the person start telling me whatever comes into his or her mind about the dream. But really, it's about anything because you want to leave it as open as possible. But they just told me the dream. So as we work this back and forth, what becomes clear is that the masculine and the feminine inside the person.

I starting to come together. So this person has been using more of the intellect or the masculine side to do life. The feminine or feeling side has been pushed far into the corner, but now we get an engagement. These two are going to be working together, which is what you want. We want feeling. We really want feeling leading. But I will happily take I there's an engagement that means feeling is getting engaged. And again resistance is an expected peace in change. So you're not going to get that without the mindset of going wait, what? In some way, this isn't horrible resistance, which could be something like I stopped dreaming for six months.

Right now, that may be a case in which it's not just a rest to get strong. It may be a case where it says, I can't let feeling. In no. Way they got engaged. I they better break up. Yeah. And what about the rings? Not as important or as big as I thought. Right? When people are starting to get their feelings back, I, I think there is often a big surprise that the whole world doesn't shift immediately, that it isn't like, oh, now I feel and everything clicks into place and ask me any question. I know the answer. And so I think this is sort of a much more understated sort of just there's a ring there, there's a commitment, there's a sign, there's a commitment.

But this isn't going to be what people often imagine. I think with big changes like that, sometimes the fantasy is very big. It is magic in a certain sense, because you get connected to a side. But I think it's also there is still work. And this doesn't absolve you in a way of having to be a person who then works with his or her feelings and consults them and uses them. I was wondering to if, because Emil was a smidge in the background, was this person some way telling themselves that the female? The feeling part is, let's think about how how valuable that bit is relative to how you've been guiding yourself.

Yes, we can move intellect off to the side a little bit and allow feelings center stage. That would be helpful. And the woman who doesn't have a name and her partner who isn't there are also engaged. Is that kind of in support of the more present woman? I can't remember her name. And Emil. Yes, yes, I think I think it is a support and we have the actual couple. And then I think we have the sort of universal mother, masculine and feminine coming together. So these are not overly scary dreams. Sometimes as feeling is coming back, it's not just, oh, Amelia either pushed off or sitting off to the side.

It is. I'm going to be hunted down and killed. I will be chased. I've now got something and thieves are after me. They're going to steal it because it is felt to be valuable. And in the family that was so not allowed. And there was such ravenous hunger for feeling such unconsciously. People knew they didn't have what they should have had emotionally that the person is. Now what if I have some of this? They will hunt me down and kill me. And you get dreams like that where they're being chased. You have to deal with those. Those are scary to people, but once they understand what's happening, it becomes less scary.

And you can say, okay, internal saboteur, you are trying to scare me out of this because I wasn't allowed. But I'm a grown up now and I don't live in my parents home and I'm allowed. It's okay. Now you're going to get the truth of what it was like living at home, and it may have felt like you were living with a pack of murderous villains. That may be true, that you had a family that went through so much violence in the history that that's how the unconscious relates to everything. Here's another dream. As somebody is in the process of getting feelings, the dream says, I'm with my friend P at a home of someone who has died and left a lot of things behind.

I think it was a woman who collected chairs. It's an apartment building and P likes to go there. We have been there a few times. There are also shoes there so we each get a pair. It seems fine to take them. I have a pair of gray heels and I've somehow fixed them up a bit, and then later we're going to leave and I can't find them. Maybe they got mixed in with all the other shoes. I keep trying to find them but can't. I'm also angry with P about something, so I'm trying to leave her as well. There are other people around and I see all these black kittens around two.

They're possibly dying, or at least not being taken care of and seem too hot on the lawn of this apartment building. That's a lot to contend with. It's a lot to contend with. Sometimes the dreams are longer than that even, and I don't want to overwhelm people as we're doing this. So I do try to pick some of the shorter dreams, but I also want people to get a sense of what dreams people bring in. And you listen to this, okay? And dreams carry their own charge, even if the person isn't feeling it. The feeling is all in the dream. And so you are listening, trying to keep all of it straight and feel what feeling comes.

And it's interesting because I imagine if those of us who know we have dreams can look back and think, wow, that was a convoluted night. That's right. What do I do with all of that? Yes, yes. So people know this would of course be a dream. Somebody is telling you and we have conversation. I want to hear what comes to the person's mind. They're going to take me and tell me about P and about the dead woman. And why does she collect chairs? That's interesting. The shoes, the cats. Right. And oh, and there's all these shoes. And what about these gray shoes?

And how do you fix them up? And what does that mean? And you know, we're listening to I want to hear about it all sometimes, you know, people may think, oh well that's not important. Well, if you think it's not important, it may be the most important piece of the dream or not, but we have to weigh it. What it seemed after all of this discussion to the patient. And what I said is that it was really the patient's mother who was dead. She didn't have a good connection to her feeling, so she was dead. And the patient had to take those gray shoes and wear them, but try to fix them up, try to make them better.

Gray being dead without color? Yeah. Without feeling. So she thought she did fix them up. And she probably did. She did, you know, have more connection to herself than her mother did, but nonetheless still contending with all of this deadened mother. So it's a good thing that she loses those shoes and doesn't have to take them with her. She doesn't need to wear those shoes. Go get your own shoes, whatever color. Now we've got these cats that are, you know, around on the lawn of this apartment building. And I think what was starting to happen and what she's afraid of is that the warmth is going to kill these cats.

She thinks, oh, there will be too hot. They're going to dehydrate, and that's it. They'll be dead. Well, that logically might make sense, but I think in the scheme of the dream and her emotional world, what's really happening is she has cats. There are feelings that are now starting to roam around and be more available to her, and she's terrified they're going to end up dead like my mother. They will be dehydrated. Too hot. They will die. That is her fear. As these cats are coming back, it will be too much. They'll get killed. But not true. In fact, here they come.

And if you can let go of all that is dead, you can have the cats. So that's a good dream. That would be hard to tell. Is a good dream initially. Then there's another dream. As feelings are returning and different. Patient. The patient says I'm asleep in my house and I hear a noise and go to the other bedroom and I walk in and all of a sudden I see someone standing behind a chair, and I know someone has broken in and I think I might get killed and I wake up. So that is one of the dreams where feelings now, the intruder and the intruders gotten in.

And you think that's it, I'll be killed. Well, actually, you're coming back to life. Your feelings have broken in, but they were deemed so scary and forbidden that now one assumes, well, I'll just get killed like I did before. It's so interesting to me that when we have dreams like this, where something is so scary that we actually wake ourselves up to not go there. Yeah, right. It breaks through what we normally, you know, we can do a lot of things in our dreams, and we're not up running around the house, you know, we're paralyzed and not acting everything out.

And then there are some where the mind goes, nope, wake me. And it could have just shifted the dream. The police could have arrived and taken it out, you know? Right. I mean, there are many ways to handle something like that. And then there are times when the mind just says, no, okay, we've hit on something and wake me, and you do, but then you can at least come and find out, okay? Because, you know, I know what I'm working on and I'm doing all of this. I can understand what this is, and then I don't have to be as terrified. But I want people to also get a sense, once you've wrestled with all of the intruders and stop thinking the rain on your head was such an annoyance and you've, you know, worked with this.

Over time, you start to get some of the enjoyment of it. You start to get some of the benefit. So here is a very transparent dream, but I think it would be easy to understand. My patient says, I dreamt that I get back something good, like ingredients that I needed or something similar in the dream. Maybe they were gone or I thought they weren't working. But then there they are and I'm relieved and happy. Beautiful. That is all about contact with herself and her own feelings. She. Those are ingredients you need. They are your ingredients that make up your personhood, your personality.

Finally coming back now, hopefully you are also, by the time you get a dream like this, feeling that in your life things should be getting easier. It's a it's a path we're going to walk forever. That's right. But you're going to walk it now with all your ingredients. And I feel like this is a good place for me to go. I feel like this is not the alley I want to walk down. Right. And you can start to be guided by those things yourself. Yeah, guided by yourself. And all of this is coming to you from this. Well that you have inside. Yes. Your birthright.

Yeah. This is your birthright. We should have our full complement of feelings. That's how we're built. And if we don't, we've got our challenge. Go get them back. Yeah. That's what we need to do. And what you've presented to us. A sequence of dreams in between. What you've presented to us are lots of other dreams along the path. Yes. We're going to talk about everything but one of the big pieces and why I wanted to focus on this is if you don't have access to your feelings and you don't know it, we've got a problem because you're going to be frustrated in a lot of ways and not know why.

And dreams are one of the nice ways our mind wants to connect to us and say, hey, you need to work on this, and this is going to not only benefit you for your life, it's going to benefit your kids and your partners and your friends and everybody. Because the more we are all relating with feeling, the better we all do. If we're all just up here and it's checkbox and this and then we're not really being human. And our job here is to be human. Along with the other humans. Along with the other humans, and to make a good world for humans. And do you feel like given the way the world is now, it's tough on everyone.

Do you feel like people are becoming more curious about this? Because the other things we've tried, the things that we've tried that are based on our intellect, are clearly not working, that people are like, I'm giving up. What else? Where do I go? Where do I look? Because these outside ish things are getting me nowhere. Well, I have a little bit of a bias because people turn up in my office because they're, you know, either desperate or curious or both. I'd have to ask you, do you notice that when you're talking to people? I do, but then I wonder, is it because of what I'm talking about?

But people have come to me and almost taken when I've described what it is that we do. They almost take a sigh of relief, like, oh, this is what I've been trying to figure out. This is okay. So it's okay for me to start thinking about the inside of me and what about my feelings? And I know this a big thing happened to me in my life and I just can't get past it. And that can't control my life. And I'm just trying to figure out where to go with all these things. I keep coming up against roadblocks, and I feel like a lot of people are saying, it's okay for me to give myself some tender, loving, right attention.

And I think I've noticed a shift in younger people that both seem to be saying, I need somebody in a partner who has looked inside themselves. I need somebody who's curious about how they work. I don't want to date anybody who hasn't done some therapy. And so there seems to be a shift there. Also, this sort of just some of the past generations in, in a certain way, very tough, hard working, great and will put their own feelings aside and just soldier on. And I've noticed a shift that younger people aren't so eager to do that, that they sort of get upset with things.

And I think the older generation. Oh, they're wimps, you know what I mean? What are they doing? But I think that transition is about saying, well, but we're not just to soldier on. We have feelings. And what about quality of life? What about quality of life? So my hope is certainly that people are realizing there is this untapped wealth of information inside of themselves and that they will become curious and about themselves, about the people around them, and compassionate as well, you know, understanding that everybody has a history and emotional history, and it has left marks.

And we are not all the same. That's a hard thing to get away from, too. You know, what we feel is an existence we sort of put upon everybody else. Yeah. So we want to open that ability to connect, but to feel I want to do one other dream. Im with my family, and we're eating out at a place where you have to order and give your name at the counter, and they call you to come and get it. When it's ready, I give a fake name and then I'm not even sure why I do that. I'm at the table talking and laughing and the fake name is called. I don't respond at first because I don't recognize the name, but then my sister tells me, hey, they called that name you gave.

Okay, that's the whole dream. So after talking, what became clear is the patient felt the patient had unconsciously felt made so much progress getting feeling back that they were a different person. So they gave a new name. It's the new name for this person that has access to feeling. So that's a great dream. That is. That's fantastic. So good note to end. On that is and that person who had that dream then recognized all of that through conversation with you. Yes, the work happened in the course of the treatment. And then as we talked about why at this point.

Are you giving a fake name you've worked so hard to get in touch with who you are and what became clear? Well, it wasn't a fake name. It's a new name. So accessing our feelings? Yes. Most important. Most important. It's a critical step. So we have to get in touch with ourselves. Then we can connect with each other and also with the divine. And then we get everything flowing, all based on feeling connections. Thank you, thank you. We'll see you again soon. Great. Please follow, rate and share our podcast and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

This is and now love. Listen to your dreams. Listen to your dreams. Live from your heart.