Sharing Hope, Sharing Dreams |
Dreams help reveal shared feelings and emotions.
Group dream work fosters connection among members.
When the focus is on a dream, talking about feelings and sharing aspects of oneself can be a lot easier.
The man seated across from me is a real estate agent. He’s also an avid golfer. I’m neither, just so you know. But when he recounted his dream of teeing up on a brilliant sunny day, getting into the perfect stance, and executing the perfect swing… only to whiff it and hit the air instead, I understood.
I wouldn’t know the right stance for a golf swing if you paid me. But I certainly have experienced the frustration he described, the sense of putting everything into place and then somehow missing the target. Like most of humankind at one time or another, hey—I’ve been there.
In today’s world, we might think that people are pretty far apart from one another. After all, our opinions seem so different. Surely, we don’t see the world in the same way. These thoughts are reflected in my clients. Many of them are talking about a certain sense of separation from others lately, a distance from the communities with whom they once felt aligned. They report to me that their feelings of trust and safety in the world around them are somehow fractured or compromised.
Interestingly, dreaming just might help.
What We Hold in Common
Until the advent of electricity, people in England had a custom of waking in the night and recounting dreams to family members (Ekirch, 2013). Anthropology has shown us that numerous cultures across time have shared dreams as a group (Brody, 1981; Bulkeley, 2016). Regardless of your stance on whether dreams hold intrinsic meaning, the point here is that people sat and listened to each other. And not just to any topic, but to something deeply subjective and personal.
The modern-day equivalent of the campfire might be dream groups—online, or in person. Provost (1999) found that working with dreams brings groups together more quickly. It can be difficult to talk about feelings in straight-forward conversation, especially with new people. When the focus is on a dream, however, talking about feelings and sharing aspects of oneself turns out to be a lot easier.
Similarly, Goelitz (2001) found that group dreamwork in cancer support groups helped participants go below the surface and delve into deeper and more difficult subjects, such as loss and dying. Dreams cut across all lines of difference in terms of diagnosis and outcome, simply by bringing people together to focus on shared feelings and dream experiences. As a result, groups quickly reported feelings of connection and cohesion.
Just as I don’t know a thing about golfing, I’ve also never built a house or worked at NASA, but I understand hopes, desires, joys, and defeats. Surely, like you, I know the anxiety of not feeling prepared, and I’ve felt moments of soaring bliss that seemed to lift me off my feet. When a client recounted in a dream the shock of looking out the window and noticing a long-neglected tree, I understood those feelings, and the urgency and importance they carried. My client reconnected to their spiritual practice, and after our session, I pulled out a long-set-aside writing project of my own.
Dreaming with others helps us to grow as individuals. Schlachet (1992) found that individuals in dream groups resonated with feelings and scenarios in dreams brought by other members, and that doing so helped them to recognize similar, previously unrecognized feelings within themselves. In her support groups, Goelitz (2001) found that the combination of the group work and the surprising, healthy elements that appeared in individual dreams, even alongside elements expressing fears and worries, helped all participants enlarge their own perspectives and begin to see more possibilities in life.
Dreams are a universal language we all speak, because feelings are universal. While our dreams reflect the unique, very particular details of our own waking life—the specific things we relate to, like teeing up a golf ball or dancing—these particular details center around certain universal aspects of feeling that connect all of us as human beings.
Dream Groups: The Modern-Day Campfire
My clients who are feeling a certain distance from others these days, and who are longing for community, come from different countries and walks of life, and hold differing political, spiritual, and social belief systems. And yet, at the end of each day, they are all reporting a shared desire to reconnect.
Working with our dreams, and especially sharing them within a group, can reveal and repair this connection with one another by recognizing the feelings, life challenges, and celebrations we hold in common.
Maybe it’s time to circle around the campfire again and share some dreams together.
Brody, H. (1981). Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier. Douglas & McIntyre.
Bulkeley, K. (2016). Big Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins of Religion. Oxford University Press.
Ekirch, A.R. (2013) At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Goelitz, A. (2002) Dreaming their way into life: A group experience with oncology patients. Social Work With Groups, 24:1, pp. 53–67, DOI: 10.1300/J009v24n01_05
Provost, J.A. (1999) A dream focus for short-term growth groups. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 24:1 pp. 74–87, DOI: 10.1080/01933929908411420
Schlachet, P.J. (1992) The dream in group therapy: A reappraisal of unconscious processes in groups. Group. Winter, vol. 16 (4), pp. 195–209.