Did You Know You Could Rescript A Bad Dream?
How a hypnotherapist friend helped me turn mine around
It’s been a particularly good year for bad dreams.
I dont even bother googling what they mean, anymore. Salivating wild animals, zombies, natural disasters, shadowy figures, riots, mass shooters, all end up making not so friendly appearances till I wake up, sweating. Only to realize I‘m out of a metaphorical nightmare bang into a living, breathing covid one. There’s nothing to be done but to go wash my hands and stay home.
Then a few days back, I had a new variation on an old nightmare.
Where I am nine months pregnant and due to have a baby. The entire pregnancy seems to have flown by because I’m quite clueless about it. There is panic, there is the usual hurried calling of a taxi, the hunt for a doctor who never picks up her phone and when she does I speak in a language I dont understand myself — then I wake up.
Ok, it isn't rocket science. My parents are no more, I am in my fifties, a parent myself and it’s a pandemic. I’m allowed to feel lost and rudderless.
It’s the variation that unnerved me. Here’s how it went. I’m at home and I am very pregnant. There are lots of screens in my room. Big ones. A phone, two or three open laptops, many huge tv’s, and they are all flashing the date of my delivery — which is today. There are notifications and reminders, all beeping and buzzing at the same time. I am flying from one screen to another to check the date in a daze. Then I whip around rearranging the tasks in my head. There is a baby to prepare for. Should I pack a bag first or should I tell mum first?
Mum is right outside bustling around somewhere near the kitchen. She will know just what to do. So I waddle out, all panicked and bursting with my news. What should I do, mummy? What’s going to happen? I can’t remember a single ultrasound, will the baby be fine? Before I can get to her, she sees me and walks towards me, then she disappears from my sight. She’s fallen. This is not going according to plan at all. I hold her and call out repeatedly to my dad who is behind a white closed door and cannot hear me. A few seconds later, I know why he can't hear me. I can’t hear myself. End of dream.
I tell this to a friend but it’s not like telling anyone else. Usually friends or family listen very sympathetically and I feel lighter and that is the end of that. This friend is a hypnotherapist and she takes dreams very seriously. She asks me if I want to revisit my dream to see what happens next. I humor her, I can see she wants to. So I find myself one bright and early morning, closing my eyes as her voice guides me back into my dream.
Everything happens as I described it and when it comes to the closed door and my silent shouts for my father, my therapist friend asks if I would like to get up and open the door. So I go along with her and I say, ok, sure, let me try.
I dont remember much of my childhood with my father. It’s my favorite crib. I dont remember. I can count all the scenes with him on my fingers. Scenes without dialogues. This is strange because I was in college when he died. That's enough time to have a bank of precious memories. Where did they go?
Back to the closed door which I now open to go in. What happens next is something I didn't expect. It was unknowable. Turns out bad dreams are just half the story.
My father had a heart attack when I was in college. It was just me and mom at home when it happened. My mother told me to go find my brother and get a doctor. I never did see him that day and when I did, he was well, gone.
In my dream, when I open the door I found my father sitting on the bed, happy to see me. I am my college self, nineteen years old. There is a familiar gleam in his eyes like he’s saying, ah there you are! He pats the space next to him and asks me to sit down. I am calm, all the panic is gone. I tell him not to worry, everything is going to be fine. He seems quite satisfied with my answer. I chat about a few things. Then I let him lie down, put a warm cover over him and hear him say “ trust your heart”. I have no idea what that means but I nod. He says I will always know what to do and when. I nod again. I hug him.
My friend’s voice now asks me if there’s anything else I would like to do. I think hard and before I leave my father, I say, let’s have a drink because now I am old enough.
So miraculously, the scene changes. I am me, fifty years old, which is more than old enough. My father is fixing us drinks in the built-in bar he designed in the new house. He’s in a crisp white Kurta pajama and is full of stories and wants to hear, mine. Then like in a movie, where the two principal characters are having a nostalgic evening, we flip an album full of imaginary moving pictures. I am a bride getting married and he is there with me, holding me with pride. He is in the nursing home when my babies are born and when they go to school, he is the one clicking the pictures. There are many family gatherings with all of us on a huge table laden with all sorts of delicious dishes.
This is when I‘m aware of heaving in my chest. A big unburdening. This seems to have been the purpose of the entire dream. To be able to see what I had missed, what had not been possible. Very cliche perhaps but very necessary.
All I needed was that nudge to get up and open the door. Once I did, I was no longer panicked, all the doom I felt outside, receded in a whoosh. I saw myself as someone- and this is a real wonder- who was very calm and very much in control. I would lean on this person, I would. Even my mother, falling unresponsive in my lap was a way to get me to go open the door.
As a writer, there has been many a time I have been stuck in a story. It's like being in a room, caved in with walls. I can't get through. If I‘m lucky and I persevere, there is a door in the wall. A door that opens to what happens next. It turns out that dreams are like that too. You dont have to be a writer to spin it a new way but a writerly curiosity helps. You can give bad ones a whole new spin and they go from nightmares to dreams you can re-dream.
There were many other happy scenes I imagined for myself and I won't bore you with those, except this one last scene.
I’m in a pine-scented garden with a wooden bench. I’m waving bye to my parents who are leaving in a car, down a curving road. Inside, on a low armchair propped up by many cushions, is my pregnant self. She has her feet up on a diwan and she is lost in a book. Upstairs, in a room with a slanting roof is my nineteen-year-old self. She is immersed in work on an heirloom writing desk next to a window that looks out to a stunning view of the valley.
It’s a sunny day and the light is blindingly beautiful.
