Confused Dreams

Found here

So I went to bed last night feeling quite tired. It has been an exhausting 10 days since I stopped in here. I was so tired that I couldn't make it back to the hospital to do my rounds and see my patients. Just completely wiped out. As I was leaving the hospital, I checked in to one department to introduce my intern to the staff and tell them what medical family therapists do and that we are available to them should they ever be interested. The woman in that office smiled a rather stiff smile and made a comment about me not stepping on the toes of social workers. Yes, of course, I reassured her. We stick pretty close to psychiatry, whose service we are part of. Something about the way she spoke to me and the look in her eyes made me wonder if she could be trusted. I've already been lambasted by social workers and a chaplain who did not appreciate the overlap in our various jobs and set out to defend their turf in a most unfriendly manner. So I've kept a very low profile and taught my students to do the same. We see the patients who we are assigned, and that is the size of it. There is plenty of work for us and I'm not looking for more.
So I came home, ate a light supper and climbed into bed. Very, very tired. My plan was to sleep early, then go in to the hospital first thing and make rounds--to see those three additional patients who really needed sessions. I know the units where I need to make myself scarce, and because I'm not one to make a row, I had a certain amount of dread to do my work. With a head full of thoughts, I drifted off to sleep.

Funny, what our minds do when we are anxious. Sometime this morning, I dreamed that I was on a blind date with one of the chaplains--someone I have no attraction to. We went to a dinner party and I was seated at a table with two other women and this man. Off to the side at another table (we were suddenly in a restaurant), a woman sat who had previously dated him. She stared daggers at me. It was really uncomfortable. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, here came Sam. What in the world was I doing with this chaplain if I was married? But was I married to Sam in the dream? I couldn't tell. I did know that I was living with him but I wasn't married to him. Or was I? Why would I live with someone if I wasn't married to him? That was not something I would do. As Sam herded me off into the party, my date wandered out of the building and into the garden. He seemed utterly confused himself. He kind of wandered about, chatting aimlessly with people, looking forlorn and distraught. I guess I had really hurt his feelings. Or had I? He is a friend of Sam's, so he would have known that I was at least living with him. But was I?

Somewhere in that morass, I ran into his sons. They were pretty friendly to me and in fact, behaved as though I had some sort of relationship with their father. As I was talking to them, I could no longer see Sam and Sir Chaplain stepped up to my side. Leaning toward me, he whispered a most tender and riveting comment to me. I could feel a surge of warmth toward him when he made this remark and could smell his cologne and feel the warmth of his face on my cheek. Then he seemed to drift off again and here came Sam, jaunty, familiar, but somehow disconnected and out of place. I stood there then, completely confused.

Then I woke up. Disoriented, perplexed, bewildered, and with a sense of urgency to do something. That was 4:30 a.m. Sleep came and went until 6:00 when I finally dragged out of bed feeling disconcerted about all of this.

What did it mean? I didn't have time to think it through this morning, but the emotional impact of it kept me preoccupied most of the day. There was a really bad feeling that went along with it.

Interestingly enough, the dream was symbolic of my anxiety and feelings of not fitting in at the hospital--behaving somewhat surreptitiously, unable to read the meaning of people's actions, aware of hostility and resentment, but so off-balance that I don't know what to do about it. I am intimidated by the treatment of a few aggressive individuals, and instead of focusing on the appreciation that is expressed to me about my team's work, I have allowed the words and actions of others to cow me into a corner.

My work is good, and valuable to the psychiatrists we work for, and for the patients and their families. We do good work. Ours is a good service and we have a legitimate place at the table, so to speak. We come highly recommended to patients. And I am shaking in my boots to go over there and have to run into a few people who have been less than welcoming.

I've noticed this about myself in the past. The first class of students to whom I taught Group Therapy was composed of clinical psychology students. They laid into me for everything I did: they disliked the experiential component of the class. They didn't like my choice of words. They didn't appreciate the way I graded their papers and they didn't like my lectures. They told me that I didn't understand their patients and I didn't know what I was doing. I was flabbergasted, because for the last four years I had been teaching Group Therapy class to students at the University of Minnesota and had received excellent evaluations. Was it that these psychology students didn't like MFTs? Yes. But it was more than that. There was something condescending and accusatory about them all at the same time. No matter what I did I wouldn't be accepted by them. By the end of the quarter they all hated me. It was devastating.
Fast forward a year. I did a Gestalt therapy training in Prague for 9 days. Most of the people in the training group were clinical psychologists. Although none of them treated me the way these students had, I was almost completely immobilized and could hardly function. I cried in my room, avoided being called on in the group, and in a word, was miserable the entire 9 days.

I think the world is full of people who are cranky, who act superior, and who posture for power. To my credit, I have carried on in each of these situations as though nothing was wrong and with the dignity and self regard that was required in each setting. But it ate me up on the inside. If someone intimates that I don't belong or am inferior in some way, and if they have social power, I am deeply wounded and shut down. Even though I do good work and am a nice, collaborative person who is eager to learn from other people. Even though I treat others in these situations as I would wish to be treated, and I try to cultivate connections to these people.
Sam says I need to toughen up.
I need to get over it.
Parts of life are not for the faint of heart.