What’s in a Dream? Love & Insecurity

This is a little out of my usual realm of blog discourse, but I wanted to write about it and see if anyone else out there can relate or offer some insight.

My fears (insecurities?) have really been manifesting themselves in my dreams. Mostly in dreams involving my boyfriend and myself.
What’s in a dream?

First things first — I’ve never been one to dismiss a dream’s importance (and I doubt anyone else will now that “Inception” came out). It’s only an American thing, I think, to relegate dreams to the realm of the insignificant.

I truly feel that our psychological well-being is implicated in our dreams. There has got to be a reason some people have recurring dreams and a reason why some people tend to have “good” dreams more often than “bad” dreams, etc.

I haven’t read enough dream theory to take a side with any one position, but going off my gut and experience, I’d say that there is certainly a distinction between dreams that are an expression of, as Freud would say, latent sexual desire, dreams that are abstract and symbolic meant, perhaps, to open the possibility of new interpretations to beliefs that are hard to access – or inflexible – when conscious, and dreams that are vivid and realistic. I think one thing most dreams have in common is that they allow us to question what we truly believe, and what we truly fear.

Why do I bring this up? Because my dreams have been telling me something that I really don’t want to hear: you’ve got a lot of emotional growing to do.

I’ve made it a point to keep my relationship out of this blog, but I feel like there’s one part of it that kinda needs to be talked about.

A few days ago I had a dream that left me literally shaking and crying as I awoke in the middle of the night. I don’t want to get into specifics, but here’s a sampling of issues in the dream: Infidelity, nonchalance, lack of remorse, ability to break off a relationship as if it had never mattered (cold; detached sentiments), splitting of the assets/children (yes, my little Kahlua became the child whose custody was in question). Waking up from the dream physically feeling its effects, as well as feeling emotionally distraught, I knew that I had to really reflect on what this dream could mean.

I feel like there are two insecurities that have been fueling these sorts of dreams — both insecurities are based on life experiences. One insecurity is looks-based. Having felt the alterity of being 280 pounds, and then seeing how incredibly malleable my life experience was after a 150-pound weight-loss, I have a general fear of the extent and limits of how my outer appearance affects or detracts from my ability to achieve and maintain the things I want from life.

I can only make conjectures about where these insecurities stem from and wonder if they’re any “worse” than those we all typically feel as young women in a very looks-centered society privileging a type of look and status that so few of us actually have. However, for me the issue is much more than the weight and its sociological effects. The second insecurity fueling these sorts of dreams has to come from my family-based observational and first-hand experience.

I come from a family where my parents separated right when I was at that awkward pubescent age of…thirteen. Yep. (There’s a scene in “Friends” when Phoebe’s psychologist boyfriend is intrigued by Chandler’s use of humor to divert feeling & attachment. He then finds out his, Chandler’s, parents divorced when he was 13 and he’s like, yep, “it’s textbook!”). Clearly, I’ve got insecurities about the possibility that two people can truly love each other without contingency – happily and, well, forever.

Loving someone has got to be one of the most vulnerable situations you can place yourself in. Add vulnerability + insecurities and you get one very uncomfortable person.

I’ve spent most of my life in bubble wrap. Therapists have always raised an eyebrow when I couldn’t answer how I “felt” about something. My twin and I have often discussed our ability to seemingly cut people from our lives at the drop of a hat as if they had never existed. My twin uses sarcasm and humor to keep a distance, I simply just keep a distance.

So, while I have felt removed from immediate access to my emotions — I’m actually quite emotional. I just access my feelings in indirect ways (I get way too emotionally invested in movies, for example) and don’t find it easy to express my feelings on the spot, even though I know I feel them. This would explain why I don’t really ever boil up and get enraged. I’m always too busy thinking about what I feel and trying to analyze the “why” to actually go with it. I am also inclined to analyze feelings rather than act on them because I’ve seen too many relationships fizzle out due to hot-tempers, and hasty and violent outbursts. Seeing those things has sort of left me paralyzed to act when I feel something. So, this would also explain why I love to improvise song lyrics as if channeling all the repressed feelings without actually having to dig them out and face them one by one. This would also explain why all these repressed and inaccessible feelings are manifesting in my sleep.

Here’s the thing. Even though I just wrote above that I usually keep an emotional distance from people, there’s one exception (among a few friends): my boyfriend. And it wasn’t always that way. I was certainly a big roly poly of bubble wrap in the beginning, but now – I feel myself raw and exposed. Yes, at 27, I finally know what it feels like to look at someone and feel truly invested in his happiness and to feel this weird little thing I was always unsure existed – that feeling that someone is actually in my corner without contingency. I guess they call that thing love.

And, yes, love is beautiful and grand and all those sentimental things written on “Love is” cards illustrated with the big-headed little girl. But it’s also a whole load of other shit Hallmark certainly doesn’t address.

You know that distance and detachment my twin and I claim to have? I think as much as I project fear of my boyfriend developing it for me, I fear my own experience enacting that very detachment. My ability (or at least my belief in it) to turn cold and detached leaves me emotionally stunted.

It’s weird for me to think that insecurities still plague me because I don’t usually consider myself an insecure person. Not anymore anyway. I know there are certain areas of my life that I feel a little insecure in, but, overall, I’ve worked very hard at building upon a strong sense of self-acceptance — It’s been an integral part of my health journey since how one views herself is invariably tied to how she treats herself. And, perhaps, it’s less to do with insecurity and more to do with facing adulthood – facing that very fear of letting go, of allowing myself to be immersed in feeling and allowing myself to be vulnerable: popping the bubble wrap and allowing for the potential to end up bruised and scarred. It’s uncomfortable.

But it’s also necessary. One of the things that propelled my eating disorder was that very fear of feeling. Bulimia is a way to bypass feelings or to immediately turn feeling in the moment to an activity of consumption where the brain pretty much turns off. No more binge-purge cycle means I actually have to face these little buggers called feelings. And while I’m still dream-accessing them, it’s abundantly clear that all those emotions I’ve spent my life repressing are coming to the surface and I’ve got to put down the armor I’ve worn and welcome the discomfort. Who ever thought recovering would feel so damn bittersweet?

I’m clearly taking strides. 150 pound healthy weight loss. Recovery from bulimia. Feeling. Yet, there’s still more to do.

Can any of you relate to having dreams that really make you question how secure you are, or force you to face uncomfortable fears and/or insecurities?

<3,

The Cranky One