Hey #091: Few nights back, a dream made me aware of my people-pleasing behavior

Dreams and inability to express!

Among many kinds of dreams I have while sleeping, there are few which repeat themselves in different forms.

Among those few, there's particularly one that makes me uncomfortable.

It's the dream in which I try to speak but words don't come out of my mouth.

Its different variations has been:

- I'm in a very crowded place, surrounded by people inch-to-inch. 

I'm screaming so that someone can hear me. But no-one does. They just keep passing by me. Sometimes, this crowd has all strangers. Sometimes, this crowd has the people I share the closest bond with.

- I'm speaking about something very important to a person I'm close with and suddenly words stop coming out of my mouth.

They're getting angry at me, asking me to be active in the confrontation but my words just get stuck. No I don't go on mute. Because the gibberish sound does come out of my mouth. Just not the words which I want to say.

In some variations of this dream, I feel as if my tongue is tied up. And only tears are falling down my eyes.

- I'm expressing something that really matters to me and people are listening.

Suddenly, they start smirking at me, making weird expressions and not paying attention to what I'm saying. This makes me angry. And I wanna demand their attention. 

But I fail as my words stop making sense. I get frustrated. The people start laughing, which makes me feel worse about myself.

In all these variations, the feeling of saddening helplessness remains constant.

It's the feeling of being ignored and abandoned. It's the feeling which I try to express via my words. But my attempts fail miserably.

Every time I have such dreams, this feeling stays with me for many hours after waking up.

Earlier, I used to believe that I couldn't do much about it, except for believing it is what it is.

But then, my personal development journey led me to the understanding that these dreams are telling me something.

I started observing.

I figured a pattern of going through something in my waking life where I'm not able to express myself, or I'm expressing myself but people are misunderstanding me which I'm not able to make peace with; and hence such dreams at night.

Gradually, I realized that the frequency of these dreams is more than what I like.

In fact, there were several old experiences (esp in my teenage life) of me suffocating myself in my inability to express and feeling helpless about it, which appeared in those dreams.

THE reason was directly rooted in my inability to express myself in my waking life.

It was a difficult yet transforming realization!

With time, I worked on my self-expression. A LOT!

And those dreams disappeared.

Although after a long time, a few nights back I had one of such dreams again.

It was regarding a friendship.

In the dream, the friend was blaming their actions on me, denying their responsibility. And when I started sharing my feelings, my words suddenly went gibberish.

In a few moments, words stopped coming out of my mouth, no matter how hard I was trying.

I got helpless, flustered and sad.

But my friend ignored me and walked away.

Of course, I didn't "like" the feeling this dream left me with. But now I know that it's not about me liking or not liking those feelings, it's all about using them as a clue to identify where I'm biting my tongue in my waking life.

I got the clue.

The next day, a series of events led me to expressing my feelings about that friendship to my mother. The more we discussed, the more I started seeing my people-pleasing behavior. It was sneakingly taking over in that friendship (which I couldn't see at all earlier).

It's no-brainer to understand how one can fail to express themselves authentically due to people-pleasing.

And my dream highlighted just that via my inability to express myself.

In the following days, I did have a difficult conversation with the said friend. I told them what I had been meaning to say.

The flow of conversation wasn’t as smooth as I’d have liked it to be. But I knew more than the smoothness, it was the need of mine to express my thoughts and feelings…which my dream highlighted.

Strange yet mind-boggling. Isn’t it?

Do you also have such dreams at night-time which reflect your helplessness in waking life?

Any kind of repetitive dreams? Have you tried to use those dreams as a clue?

Dive into the safe-space that HeyEmotions is and share your experience. Hit reply or comment.

🦋

I'll see you next Thursday,

Ashi

/A dreamer dream investigator/

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