Healing Nightmares: An Experiential Process

Running head: HEALING NIGHTMARES

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Healing Nightmares: An Experiential Process

Drew Smith

1730 Bedford Square Dr. #103

Rochester Hills, MI 48306

[email protected]

Dreamwork—DJA – 825

Track ZZ, Year Two

Dr. Nancy Galindo


September 19, 2014

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Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the "treasure hard to attain" (Jung, 1956/1977, p. 531).

I am standing in the middle of a room of slick white tiles,

steam rising off my body, sunlight streaming in through a frosted

window, as water trickles over me and rinses down the drain; I am

clean. Refreshed. I'm in my college dorm, washing myself in the

communal shower. I have showered here countless times, always

alone. But this time, as the warm water flowed, I was not alone.

A banded serpent, red and black and white and yellow, slithers up

out of the drain. This chthonic figure rises to meet my face. I

stand there, mouth agape, frozen in fear, this sight too horrific

to comprehend, as its tongue darts in and out at me. This serpent

strikes at my face, and with lightning speed, it enters my open

mouth and tries to slither down into my throat. I start gagging!

In terror, I grip it, forcefully tugging at it, trying to pull it

out of me. It forces its way in deeper, my eyes are watering, I

can't breathe, and I think I might die. And then I wake up.

Dreams are elusive creatures. They flow in and out of our

nighttime, affecting our quality of sleep, our memories,

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affecting our moods the next day. Sometimes they stay with us for

hours after we wake, just hanging out like a familiar friend.

Other times they play ephemeral and are whisked away just we open

our eyes, like a whisper we didn't quite hear. And then, there

are those unnerving dreams that choose to linger behind and

crouch in the dark corners of our mind; the horrible ones that

lie waiting just below the surface, that refuse to leave no

matter how vehemently we demand they go. These are the

nightmares. And their residual effects can disturb us for years.

In my case, this vivid serpentine image has haunted me for over

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While most of us run away in terror from these tormentors,

there is great power bound up within them. According to Stephen

Aizenstat (2011), there are "inherent healing properties" within

dream images (p. 189). But does this include the nightmare? And

if so, what do my nightmares want to heal within me?

Aizenstat, a deeply insightful and gifted dream-tender,

offers us a completely new set of tools when it comes to looking

at dreams. His approach is not in trying to interpret the dream,

but instead to "tend" it. Rather than seeking the singular

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meaning behind a particular dream, which we may call

"interpreting" the dream, he opens the dream up and explores, or

tends, all of its multidimensional possibilities. One might say

dream interpreting is when you figure out what the dream means;

dream tending is when the dream figures out what you mean.

No one knows for sure what nightmares actually are, other

than terrifying. They affect all of us, regardless of age, race,

gender, or religious affiliation. There is no definitive answer

as to where they come from or why we have them. Of course, there

is much speculation as to the root causes, with guesses ranging

from anxiety to slow metabolism to taking medications to pre-

bedtime media (Meredith, 2014). So, to rid ourselves of them we

employ diversion tactics: Ambien, alcohol, more caffeine, more

melatonin. Anything we can do to keep the nightmares at bay. Yet

I would argue that nightmares are our psyche's way (our soul's

way) of alerting us to an imbalance, or a wounding, within the

unconscious—an imbalance that needs to be remedied as quickly as

possible. And psyche chooses such jolting and horrific images in

order to illicit in us action, or to motivate us into re-action.

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James Hillman's approach to the dream image is to see it in

relation to Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, the god of

death, the god of the invisible darkness, the god of depth.

Hillman (1979) says that, "to know the psyche at its basic

depths, for a true depth psychology, one must go to the

underworld" (p. 46). But the journey into the underworld is

accompanied by an overwhelming, violating, deeply disturbing

fear. We feel invaded, assaulted, ripped apart, even raped (p.

49) by Hell itself.

This sounds just like a nightmare, no? And this deep fear

(depth fear) is something we tend to shy away from, or even run

away from, within our contemporary culture. Our modern idea of

Psychology (entomology: from the Greek word "psukhē" meaning

"breath, spirit, soul" and -λογία, "the study of") has very

little to do with getting to know the Psyche. Instead, we have

created Pop Psychology (Pop Psyche?), which are "optimistic

therapies that focus on peaks, freedom, cures, and creativity" as

a hyper-manic defense against this painfully uncomfortable

underworld experience (Hillman, 1979, p. 48). And God knows we

are a culture who does not like to be made painfully

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uncomfortable. We prefer the Dr. Phil and Oprah-esque style of

Psychology, the kind that gives us formulaic answers and miracle

self-help book titles, all in tidy little bite-sized 10-minute,

commercially interrupted chunks; big enough to make us hungry for

more, but small enough so we are never truly satisfied.

These terrifying images, these nighttime assaults where we

are trapped in the dreamworld and therefore forced into seeing

such horrific living pictures, is Psyche's way of bringing the

chthonic underworld up to us—to meet us on our level. However,

Psyche does not do this so we'll run away in terror. She is

forcing her way in the door, to make our acquaintance, coercing

us to get to know her, to study her, to Psyche-ologize her. Once

we are willing to endure the suffering and really see the

dreadful images, we begin a journey into the underworld to

experience them, by going deep enough to meet her, Psyche. We

must be willing to go down into the deep dark, to the depths, and

see what Psyche discloses for us there.

Aizenstat (2011) employs a six-step process for working with

nightmares (p. 64ff). There is intrinsic value in this, of

course, and it is a protected way to engage with terrifying

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images. Yet these steps are meant to bring the dreamer into a

safer relationship with the monster, and encourage an

imaginational relation with them. Again, very valuable in

context. However, I would like to take this a bit further. I am

more intrigued by his ideas that dream images are potent with

medicinal qualities.

In this context, he refers to "wounded" dream images as

being linked to healing of physical disorders, and that our

"attitude of healing is informed by our relationship to our own

mortality" (Aizenstat, 2011, p.191). While Aizenstat references

healing the physical body through dream tending, I believe there

is also healing for the soul-body through dream tending. After

all, a healthy body with an unhealthy soul is still not

completely healthy. If we are indeed dealing with our own

relationship to mortality, per Aizenstat, we are, in essence,

dealing with a journey into the underworld, the land of the dead.

We are experiencing a death, and ultimately a re-birth, through

the crossing down and in. I would argue these "wounded" images

Aizenstat speaks of are the same images that come to us from the

underworld: the nightmares themselves. They are the wounded ones.

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Chiron, half-man half-horse, an immortal Centaur from Greek

mythology, was wounded by an arrow dipped in the venom of a

Hydra, a nine-headed water serpent. Knowing this wound to be

incurable, and its suffering immeasurable, Chiron relinquished

his immortality and volunteered to descend to the underworld by

death. Yet instead of being relegated to Hades, as happens with

all who make the descent, he was lifted by Zeus into the starry

heavens and is still present today as the constellation

Sagittarius (Atsma, n.d.).

Chiron suffered a great and painful wounding, an assault, an

invasion (a "violent raping") he did not ask for. He was granted

the option of living eternally crippled and in immense pain, or

give up immortality to be free of it completely. By making the

conscious choice to fall into the underworld rather than resist,

he was rewarded with the transformation and re-birth into

immortal starry light. It seems this venom from a poison water

snake (this imagery is quite meaningful in relation to my own

dream), was the impetus for his transformation, and subsequent

healing. Chiron himself is closely associated with restoration,

medicine, and surgery, and he brought great healing to many

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wounded heroes, or so the myths tell us. Yet he could not heal

himself from this wound. He could only achieve healing through

death.

If we can consider the wounding that Chiron experienced to

be parallel to the assault of the nightmare, we would be wise to

follow his council and seek healing by going through the agony of

such a painful affront, rather than "live with it" or try to

ignore or pacify it. We must recognize this wounding (wounded)

nightmare will not leave us alone—it will torment us for eternity

—unless we psychologically descend into the underworld on our own

accord.

The choice to descend seems to hold much power, especially

when applied to the psychological realm. We see after Chiron's

descent, he was exalted to the heavens and reborn as stars in the

sky. Similarly, the Christian story tells us of Jesus who chose

to endure the cross, a weapon of wounding and pain, and face

death. Yet, we are told, he became a conqueror of death after

three days time and is now seated at God's right hand. This

Christ offers the same conquering power to his followers, as

well. When viewed through a lens intent on healing the soul, to

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heal psyche, this "going down" must happen in order to receive

the healings inherent therein.

This myth of Chiron resonates within me personally, not only

for the correlation to the Christ story, but also for the latent

figure found in the shadow of both myths: the serpent. My

"Serpent in the shower" dream has been haunting me for a very

long time. The image of this snake trying to choke its way down

my throat will surface intermittently through my waking day,

often seemingly unprompted and jarring, and it always leaves me

with an uneasy feeling. When I had the dream over 20 years ago, I

remember violently waking up from it and wanting to immediately

vomit.

Snakes have always held a dark spot for me. Growing up

within the Christian tradition, the snake has always been equated

to evil, to deceit, to the Devil. Of course, there are other

instances of snakes within the Bible, and not all of them within

an evil context. For example, in an Old Testament story in

Numbers 21 (New International Version), God sent a plague of

poisonous snakes to punish the Israelites for their groaning and

complaining. As they cried out for mercy, God told Moses to make

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a snake and put it on a pole. Anyone who was bitten by these

snakes could look upon this elevated serpent and be saved.

Christian scholars have always equated this healing snake on a

pole as a type and shadow of Christ, who is also a healer, and

was also lifted up on a pole (cross). While it's an unusual

story, it runs in symbolic tandem with that of Asclepius, the

Greek god of medicine. He holds up a similar rod entwined with a

single serpent (Atsma, n.d.). The snake was not only a symbol of

evil, but also of healing.

Yet for years, I had only associated this serpent with the

shadowy, wicked, chthonic and demonic aspect of the image. The

healing side of this image was far, far removed from

consciousness. No, this dream-snake must be malevolent to its

core, and this is what I would tell myself every time the image

reappeared in my mind's eye. I perpetually interpreted this dream

based on a very limited understanding of symbols. The snake is

demonic; the snake is destructive; the snake is pure evil.

But now I'm not so sure. Given what has been argued thus

far, it seems that this serpent in the shower has something

vital, even healing, to say to me. This poisonous snake has come

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forth, as if a wounded Psyche herself were bringing me a message

from beyond, below, from beneath my own consciousness. And the

snake brought along healing within it.

Until recently, I had lived in a world of dream

interpretation. But I conclude now that I, or we, need to resist

the urge to find/make an interpretation for the dream, or

nightmare, and refuse to say "This is that" or "That means this."

Such interpretation can deaden a dream image, and lock it into a

singular meaning, such as, "This snake is demonic." Interpreting

this way can be ego-driven and, while valuable at times, is not

our goal here.

Instead, we want to tend to the dream, as one tends to a

garden. We will work with the image. Patiently, gently, we will

give the image space to be, to express, to heal. We want to

amplify the image, permit it to speak, say what it wants, and

allow it room to breathe. To do this, we will employ the process

of active imagination.

The Western tradition of active imagination was made widely

known through the work of renown psychoanalyst, C.G. Jung. As

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Sonu Shamdasani (2009) writes in the introduction to Jung's

magnum opus, The Red Book, Jung began "deliberately evoking a

fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a

drama" (p. 23). This is a basic and bare-bones explanation of

active imagination, yet it's exactly what transpires when

engaging in it. There is no premeditation or planning as to what

will transpire when one engages with an image; that would be

allowing ego to direct the drama. The purpose of active

imagination is to transcend the ego, move beyond its control, and

allow the images themselves to dictate what plays out in the

drama.

Jung (1989) recognized that, "below the threshold of

consciousness everything was seething with life" (p. 178). This

inspired revelation opened a door for Jung, allowing him to see

images as fully autonomous figures living within the unconscious

itself. The trick, of course, is to allow these images a chance

to breathe on their own. He goes on to say, "In order to grasp

the fantasies which were stirring in me 'underground,' I knew

that I had to let myself plummet down into them… I felt not only

violent resistance to this, but a distinct fear" (p. 178). Jung

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is employing words that sound much like a personal choice to

descend into the underworld, including the natural resistance and

dread toward such a movement. Jung began returning to the fantasy

by engaging in active imagination with his dreams and images from

the dreams. Always the academic, he struggled to understand

exactly what he was doing, and finding any credibility within it.

As he says, "I once asked myself, "What am I really doing?

Certainly this has nothing to do with science. But then what is

it? Whereupon a [woman's] voice within me said, "It is art." I

was astonished… She had become a living figure within my mind"

(p. 185). Thus the anima was born, an independent feminine entity

living within him.

As Jung (1989) engaged in dialogue with these

voices/figures/images (one of which happened to be a snake), he

found it essential to differentiate between himself and the

unconscious content that visited him. He did this through a

personification of the images; he allowed them their own voice

(p. 187). But in doing so, he is also implying that what these

characters verbalize is autonomously spoken of their own will.

These images took on a life of their own, and spoke words to him

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that were beyond the scope of logic and reason. As he began to

recognize these dream/fantasy figures as actually alive, he

realized that oftentimes this recognition is the very thing we

neglect to do. When we do not seek to understand them, but merely

"wonder" about them, then the unconscious has no option but to

conjure up its own negative effects (p. 192). I would regard this

"negative effect" as another expression for "nightmare."

To model ourselves after Jung and engage in active

imagination, we must be willing to move beyond the resistance and

fear. Just as Chiron moved beyond the pain and suffering, just as

Hillman moved beyond the goody-feely pop psychology, and just as

Aizenstat moved beyond the horrifying monster, we must move

beyond our own trepidations and re-engage with those images that

come up out of the sewers and scare us awake. Jung (1989) notes

that on December 12, 1913, he made such a decisive step, and let

himself drop into the underworld (p. 179).

And so, on August 13, 2014, I dropped too.

I am in the shower again—naked, wet, alone—except for this writhing serpent in my right hand. It's straining to get into my mouth still. I am repulsed and want to throw it to the floor. But I cannot. My hand and its

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body are fused together somehow; we are One. It thrashes wildly and I wait for it to stop."I am your core—I am your spine, your root and your grounding." Her skin is soft, not scaly. She does not struggle anymore. "Your anima."

"But why are you a snake?" I ask.

"Because you wouldn't feel comfortable with that. You have sought after your animus for so long, you have left me defenseless. I am surviving—in survival mode. Ineed to return home—to have a voice. You have seen me as an enemy—but I do not fight against you. I fight foryou."

I open my mouth and let her slide down my throat…and itis warm.There is no struggle.

I feel her down my esophagus. Now throughout my body. She fills the void. She is a snake—the shape shifter, the shedder of skins, and she returns home. She is the illusion of danger and fear, of poison, yet she is not poisonous. She is healing. She milks her fangs into my spine. The fluid runs up and down me. This milky white substance is nourishing.

"This is where I belong," she says. "You abandoned me, in searching for another. But you should not push me out, or away. You pushed me deep, into the sewers, as if I were dirty. You relegated me to the slime. The darkness. But that is not where I belong. I am not fromthe underworld. But because you have pushed me down, I now rise with greater power, with greater understanding. I bring back from the depths a wisdom not known. I bring a new perspective. You shoved me away for a time, but now, I return. I reclaim my rightful spot in your soul—in your voice. I run the gamut of your being—up and down, connecting soul with

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body. You are now clean, internally as well as externally. You bathe the outside, yet I bathe the inside. I make a home here, I tend to the inner gardens, I fertilize them with my milk. I nurture and cultivate. I am returning to you now. Into you. We werenot meant to be apart. I needed to come to you at your most vulnerable, your most naked. Your most pure. This is how I can come in, this is when I return."

I feel her within me now, the presence ascends and descends, like an angel climbing Jacob's Ladder. The showers are sanctified. And purified. There is holinesshere—holy water. A cleansing without and within. This snake's name is Hope—she spoke it to me. She is my soul, she is my constant, my center. She is my anima—and she will be present within me. Her voice is mine—wespeak in harmony, our tones mixing together—the waves of sound like the waves of a snake gliding back and forth across wet tiles. (Author's Personal Journal, August 13, 2014)

I must take pause here to reflect on what I just witnessed

and heard. The depth of insight, wisdom, and genuineness is

almost too much for me to handle. I am awestruck by the words

that came forth from this image, from Serpent, from Hope. The

experience itself, of allowing a dream snake to slide into my

mouth, seems on the surface so horrifically disturbing, yet the

experience, the initiation through active imagination, was

completely calming and centering. This snake named Hope offered

me healing, rather than death.

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During my college years, when the original dream took place,

I was seeking answers about my own sexual identity. Struggling

between sexual desires and spiritual conviction, I wrestled with

who I was. Having been raised with an absent father left me

wondering what it meant to be a man, to be manly, or to exert

masculinity. College was a time of trial-and-error for me and I

was overly conscious of cultivating my own masculinity. It was

during that time in my life when this dream surfaced.

Were I to have interpreted this dream through a Freudian

approach, the meaning would be traced to erotic desires and

unfulfilled fantasies (Freud, 1914/2001, p.41). I would have

taken it back into the actuality of day, and have seen it as an

expression of latent homosexual desires, with a longing to have a

strong phallus enter my mouth. A Jungian analyst may begin to ask

me about my associations with snakes, with its colors, with my

college experiences, with water and showering, focusing on

context and symbolism. We would likely spend a great deal of time

interpreting these images, looking through their appearances in

myth and history, and settle on one primary meaning for the

dream. But through the process of active imagination, the

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interpretation isn't even a necessity. The dream image itself

tells me what I need to hear.

The words that came from her mouth were not my own. Yes,

the image originated within my head/mind/dream, or so I had

always told myself, but the insights that were expressed and

spoken to me were not mine. They were not from within me, nor

could I conjure them up on my own accord. No, this image had

autonomous wisdom. Perhaps if this snake's spoken wisdom is

autonomous, the snake, too, is autonomous. Perhaps this image

didn't originate within my head/mind/dream, but from some place

otherworldly/underworldly. And perhaps this snake visits others

too, at their most naked. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole

and inhabiting a dreamlike dreamworld; perhaps my dream images

came up from the rabbit hole to inhabit my dreamlike dreamworld.

That means I am the guest and also the host.

I pondered this thought of Alice and the hole, and going

down below, and then in an interrupting flash, the shower drain

from my nightmare begins to speak:

"I am a gateway—a portal. What you wash away, I gather. And I hold, and see. And when you are ready, I will allow you entrance down the hole. Here there are

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pieces of you—remnants of your past. What you once washed away, I collected. And they are on display—not to remind you of your dirt, but to remind you of where you came from. Only then are you grounded enough to seewhere it is you belong. It is in being rooted in the muck and mire, in knowing your past, and being remindedof it, that you will truly grow. The most beautiful flower still needs dirt to survive.

"Do not fear what is below—it is hidden from sight, butstill present. Allow the journey down—Hermes beckons totake you across the rivers, and to show you wonders of a world that most men only dream of. The life from thisworld came to visit you…and you are blessed. Consider yourself one of the fortunate ones. You have found wisdom. She is divine—able to hold that which is above,and which is below. She is your guide, and your spine. She is your centering pole. She often looks dangerous, or poisonous, but she has been into the depths (not always by her own choosing) and she returns with the rains. To bring refreshing, and cleansing. Wisdom and Hope are the same word. They grow together within everyman. The milk we feed on can be toxic, but only ifit is incomplete. Do not rest in the shallow pools of ashower. Let yourself float in deeper waters." (Author'sPersonal Journal, August 13, 2014)

Whoa.

This shower drain speaks effortlessly and eloquently. Here,

an inanimate object, something that I had overlooked within the

dream image itself, was espousing wisdom about the most beautiful

flowers still needing dirt to survive. It's acting as a threshold

to the underworld, mysteriously beckoning me down. There must be

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a deeper dropping that needs to happen here, into deeper waters.

And I think that's the point. There is always a deeper drop to

make. There are always deeper waters to swim. The choice then

becomes whether to be forced deeper through yet another

terrifying nightmare, or to choose the descent of our own accord.

This very vocal shower drain, the passageway into the darker

places, spends a great deal of time speaking to me about the

serpent, Hope. And I think I'm beginning to understand why this

drain feels so inclined to admonish her. The drain recognizes

just how vital she has always been to me, and how rejecting I

have been towards her. I had assumed this snake's initial

confrontation with me was one of demonic proportions—and for good

reason: it terrified me! Yet her intent was not to terrify, but

to bring the wisdom of the underworld back to me, to bring the

"treasures hard to attain" up out of the shadows.

The drain knows her intrinsic value, and knows how

desperately I needed her at the time of my dream, and how much I

still need her now. My initial reaction to her was one of

abhorrence, of disgust, of repulsion. "She is evil and vicious,"

I thought. I literalized the image, and "literalizations that

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kills the flow and bury the soul" is dangerous indeed (Hillman,

1979, p. 153).

This dream image, this nightmare, my anima, that I assumed

wanted to harm me… I am the one who had harmed her. She was the

one who was wounded… by me. I am the Hydra's poison that caused

her pain and forced her down to Hades. I am the one who impaled

her on a pole, for my own healing. Through my own witlessness,

and my own refusal to appreciate the very thing that makes me

uncomfortable, I created my own nightmare. I ignorantly set its

manifestation in motion. Certainly Aizenstat (2011) is correct

when he says, "[w]hen dream images are experienced as embodied,

the life force with all of its medicinal properties is present in

each image… The image is the medicine" (p. 220). The serpentine

image brought healing to my soul (psyche) through her forceful

emergence from the very underworld I thrust her into. Indeed,

this nightmare image was in need of a deep healing.

And with compassion, this nightmare returned deep healing to

me.

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References

Aizenstat, S. (2011). Dream tending: Awakening to the healing power of dreams. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal, Inc.

Atsma, A. (n.d.). Kheiron. Retrieved September 17, 2014, from http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/KentaurosKheiron.html

Atsma, A. (n.d.). Asklepios. Retrieved September 17, 2014, from http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Asklepios.html

Freud, S. (2001). On dreams. (M.D. Eder, Trans.). Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1914)

Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Jung, C. G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. (A. Jaffe, Ed.) (R. & C. Winston, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Jung, C. G. (1977). Mysterium coniunctionis (H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire, Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (Vol. 14). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1956)

Jung, C. G. (2009). The red book. (S. Shamdasani, Ed. & Trans.). New York, NY: Norton.

Meredith, S. (2014, June 4). Sleep disorders guide: Adult nightmares. Retrieved September 16, 2014, from http://www.webmd.boots.com/sleep-disorders/guide/nightmares-in-adults

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http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Asklepios.html

http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/KentaurosKheiron.html

Healing Nightmares: An Experiential Process

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