Dreaming during the pandemic: What to do with the escalation of collective and dreadful images
Have your dreams suddenly become more intense during the coronavirus pandemic? You’re not alone. Dream expert Dr. Leslie Ellis offers some practical insights about how to manage these strange and disturbing images that are visiting so many of our dreams. And invites you to the Spooky Dreams Cafe.
The coronavirus pandemic has generated such strong a strong collective wave of emotion that dream images of large inexorable forces, feelings of being confined or trapped, people wearing gas masks and other coronavirus-themed images are showing up frequently. Over the past few weeks, I have received a marked increase in questions about dreams, requests to work through disturbing dream images, and requests for interviews with media about the rise in dream intensity.
A case in point: my daughter called me yesterday to tell me about her dream conversation with Death. In the dream, she is on board an abandoned cruise ship eating, drinking and socializing with some friends. Beside the ship, Death rises out of the water in complete Grim Reaper garb, scythe and all. He points at her, makes a downward motion with his hands and she copies it. To her horror, the prow of the ship starts diving and she says no, that’s not what she wanted! The sinking stops, but she knows Death is ultimately going to sink the ship. She is nervous going down to her cabin to sleep. Death meets her in the corridor, and speaks in an effeminate southern drawl, so surprising it makes him much less daunting. He points to a door labelled ‘eternal summer.’ As she is deciding to enter, she wakes up.
Many of the coronavirus dreams I have been hearing have this strange dual quality. There are frightening scenes juxtaposed with mundane or beautiful ones. I believe this speaks to the duality of our current experience. We are all painfully aware that there are thousands of exhausted health care workers tending a growing wave of virus sufferers, some of whom are dying despite all their heroic efforts. At the same time, many of us are holed up at home with our families, every day much like the last one. When we do venture outside, the world is relatively quiet and still. Traffic is light, spring flowers are blooming, the sun still shines.
Our dreams may be an attempt to reconcile this strange mix of emotion. Because the world has changed so quickly and dramatically, we are in a state of collective shock that we may not recover from for many months. Dreams often stir up the feelings from the depths, those that we may be repressing. As most of us navigate life from home and all of the logistical changes we are faced with, there is both surface anxiety and boredom, and underneath, something much larger and darker. As a whole world, we have come face to face with how little control we truly have. Death is lurking in an abandoned cruise ship, and in many other unexpected places in our collective dreams.
Cocktails at the Spooky Dreams Café
One of the beautiful counter-forces to all of this fear and uncertainty is the way people are coming together to offer mutual support. For a dream-world example, on the Jung Platform, an online classroom offering practical ways to apply Jung’s ideas, Robert Bosnak is hosting a free Friday-night Spooky Dreams Café, a gathering place for those who want to share and metabolize their disturbing dreams. For an hour every week, Bosnak has been doing speed-dreamwork with participants and plans to do so for the duration of the pandemic.
I have offered to co-host, so I will be filling in when needed, as was the case this past week. I worked with a dream that combined the horror of groups of people turning on each other with the implication of cannibalism, juxtaposed with the dreamer’s sense of inner strength as he stood up against such inhuman action. There was also a sweet feeling in part of the dream of tending to the vulnerability of a Michael Jackson figure.
Bosnak uses the metaphor of a cocktail bar for the dream café, and he is serving potions as dream medicine. For example, in an earlier session, he offered a concoction representing martial arts, an example of how to use the tremendous power of dream images by making their power our own. Even dark images can lend us their power — in the same way an Aikido master will turn the force of an attack back against the attacker, using their own aggressive force for good.
My menu item for today is a sandwich, that lovely metaphor we often use when delivering bad news. Start with something kind, deliver the blow, then end with another kindness. In my daughter’s dream, she visits the group of friends who are eating and drinking together, a slice of the bread of community that is so needed right now. This brought a feeling of lightness in her chest. Then, for the filling, we had a visit with death and touched very briefly on the sense of the ship sinking. It was embodied as a great weight in her chest and stomach. In times of crisis, I suggest a touch-and-go approach to scarier themes. We can’t ignore them altogether, but we don’t want to dwell there. The time for deep trauma work is not when the trauma is still ongoing. The final slice of bread was the square-shouldered strength she felt when her willpower was strong enough to stop the boat from sinking. This might be a pattern to follow in your own dreams. In this way you can leave them feeling resourced without completely ignoring the disturbing feelings they bring.
Dreaming the Dream on
Imagining a dream onward is another option. It is a tried-and-tested way to work constructively with nightmares. Even if the dream does not appear to lead toward something as promising as endless summer, I would suggest if you suffer from nightmares, try scripting a new dream ending that leaves you feeling less disturbed, and with more of a resolution to your dream. I have applied this simple method working with the nightmares of those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and have found it usually helps change the dream for the better, sometimes dramatically so.
For example, I did some dreamwork with a man who dreamt of the dragon so large its shadow threatened to block out the sun. At one point I asked him to imagine he was the dragon, and from that vantage point, he was filled up with immense power and agency. I asked the dreamer to carry that power with his as he continued the dream from where it left off, just as if he pressed the ‘play’ button on the final dream image. Typically nightmares wake us up at their most frightening place. In this imagined dream ending, the dragon began to fly higher and higher until its shadow was a mere speck on the surface of the earth. In subsequent dreams, the dragon returned, but now as a helpful force, as a sentry watching out for trouble.
Imaginal ways to manage overwhelm
The overwhelm and sense of powerlessness is a common dream theme right now because it is how so many of us are feeling. One thing I often suggest, whether with day-world feelings or looming dream images, is to use imagination to make them smaller, more manageable. We might find the right distance from our dream dragons (ie much further away) or shrink them down to the size of a tiny gecko. What we are feeling in response to the coronavirus is a sampling of the collective fear, and this is always more than one person can manage. Another way to work with such images is to sense how much of what you’re feeling belongs to you alone. It is usually a much smaller piece.
One more way of managing the enormity of the feeling in dream images of the pandemic is to limit them in time — to just this present moment and the next one. For example, when I sensed into helpless horror I had in a recent dream where I watched a friend of mine whose health is fragile fall to her death, I looked inside for a sense of just the right next step. It was clear what I needed to do: I called my friend and was reassured that she is fine and being extremely careful.
I have also felt moved to use my particular skill set to help reduce some of the collective anxiety and suffering. I wrote an article for first responders (and anyone else suffering from nightmares) with some suggestions about what to do help reduce their intensity. I have opened up dream sharing groups and remote therapy session times for front-line workers. I offered to be back-up bartender at the Spooky Dreams Café. I am using the ways I know best to help reduce collective anxiety one person and one dream at a time.
Dr. Leslie Ellis is an expert in the clinical use of dreams and in the treatment of PTSD nightmares. Her book, A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge 2019) provides mental health professionals and anyone interested in dreams a look at how to understand and work constructively with dreams. She also runs online dream groups and courses, and offers dreamwork sessions. See www.drlesliellis.com
