As Rev. Jeremy Taylor has said, dreams always have more to teach us. We could conceivably work on a dream for many hours, even days, and still look at the dream months later and see additional meaning in it.

A good way to work with your dreams at home is to have a note pad or journal and a pen light next to your bed.  When you wake from a dream during the night, write down the main points of the dream, and when you get up in the morning, fill out the dream in as much detail as you can, writing it in present tense and feeling back into the dream. Then give the dream a title that summarizes it.  I highly recommend that you keep a dream journal for all of your dreams.  There may be “themes” to your dreams, and the themes may be a way your deeper wisdom is trying to get you to pay attention to something in your waking life.  The same applies to dreams that recur –they recur for a reason, and I suspect the reason is that you aren’t getting the message the dream is trying to send.  Another great thing to do with dreams is to draw or paint aspects of the dream you are drawn to, or to create a mandala that represents the dream. Then ask your depiction of the dream what it has to tell you and gaze at it for awhile until answers come.

Rev. Taylor has written a number of very good dream books, such as "The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap Into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life."  His books give you more ideas for working with your dreams.  Also, Patricia Garfield’s books, such as her book "Creative Dreaming," are very helpful.

Rev. Taylor has said, “dreams come to us for our healing and wholeness.”  Our own deeper soul wisdom has so much to teach us if we would just listen and reflect.

Question: My daughter often has nightmares that a monster is trying to get her.  What do you recommend I do to help her?

Answer: Have your daughter draw the monster.  Then hold her picture up so that the monster is facing her.  Tell her the monster is trying to get her attention to tell her something that is actually helpful for her. Then have her talk to the monster and to imagine it is talking back.  You might also tell her that the next time she has a dream with the monster, if she can remember to do so, she should try to turn around and face the monster instead of running from it, and ask the monster what it wants to tell her, just like she just did. If she is able to do this, the monster will usually not be scary anymore, and may even disappear or transform itself. The monster will usually never appear again as a scary thing.

As a psychotherapist, I always hope that my clients are willing and able to tell me the truth, as best as they are aware of it.  But I am aware that most clients have a hard time doing this, even with their therapist.  As my clients work with me in therapy, a big part of their work is becoming aware of their truth and being able to express it in a safe and comfortable way.  Once they are able, it no longer keeps them in a place of self-rejection..  In fact, the ability to know and speak one’s truth sets us free. 

Truth-telling is something most of us struggle with. We even struggle to tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves. Why is this?

First, we often don’t tell ourselves and others the truth, because it’s emotionally painful.  We don’t want to be hurtful, even to ourselves.  It often seems more comfortable to live in a fantasy “bubble” that feels less painful than the truth would be.  Another reason we don’t tell the truth is that we want others to like us, especially our therapist.  Therefore, we make the decision, often unconsciously, to withhold painful information.  Clients may also withhold truth from their therapists because they may not feel ready or able to work through their current painful circumstances and internal reality.

Occasionally a client will suddenly terminate therapy without telling me why, even when I explain that I can handle their truth, even if that includes some anger at me. It’s actually “therapeutic” for clients to tell their therapists the truth as often as possible, including why they want to end therapy prematurely. I encourage my clients to do their best to tell me if they are uncomfortable with anything I have said or done during our sessions together.  This helps my clients’ ability to share uncomfortable truths with others in their lives.

One downside to my clients telling me their truth is that they may share something that I am required to report to authorities.  If so, the information is no longer confidential.  I always tell clients during our first session together that if they tell me about someone who is (or if they themselves are) harming a child, a disabled adult, or an elder adult over sixty-five, I am required to report this information to either Child Protective Services or Adult Protective Services. It is always a very difficult situation for me when I need to report this abuse and break my client’s confidence, especially since my client has told me something truthful and difficult. 

Something I never see discussed much, if at all, is the fact that much of why people seek psychotherapy is because they don’t tell the truth, and ignoring it “comes back to bite” them.
For example, when a client has an eating disorder, the client often hides the eating disorder, or hides “in” it, and is unable and unwilling to tell themselves and others what the eating disorder does to destroy the client’s body.  The eating disorder voice always lies to my clients, telling them things like “if you eat less and weigh less, you will be much happier.” (This can be true for the short-term, but lower body weight is never part of longer-term happiness.)  Actually, almost every mental health issue for which someone seeks therapy involves some way in which truths are ignored or denied.

In my Authentic Relationship Skills therapy group, adult men and women practice being with and expressing their truths with each other, however painful.  When they do this, they find their truths are accepted and embraced.  The truth can feel humiliating, but as a spiritual teacher once said, humiliation leads to the ability to be humble, or without ego.

Telling the truth to ourselves and others is always a huge part of our growth and healing.  It’s an important reason to see a therapist and an important thing to work on in therapy and in the rest of our lives. When we tell the truth, we are in integrity with ourselves.  We feel more self-acceptance and before long, greater self-confidence.

Ask Deborah

Question:  I heard that there is an official diagnosis for women like me who overeat and binge,  Is this true?

Answer: Yes, the diagnosis is called “Binge Eating Disorder.”  The criteria are as  follows: “an eating disorder marked by repeated episodes of binge eating and a feeling of loss of control. The diagnosis may be based on a person's having an average of at least two binge-eating episodes per week for six months.”

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What is Hypnotherapy and How Does It Help?

Hypnotherapy, (the therapeutic use of hypnosis), is often misunderstood by the public.  It is thought to be similar to “stage hypnosis,” where a hypnotist seemingly puts a volunteer “under a spell”, wherein the volunteer “loses control” and does whatever the hypnotist suggests.  With stage hypnosis, the truth is that the volunteer who is receptive to being hypnotized will have a loss of inhibition, at least to some extent. However, the volunteer will not do anything against his/her beliefs. 

Hypnotherapy, however, is simply a way to connect with the subconscious mind to effect positive change.  Through a process of deep relaxation, the client can make changes such as stopping addictions like binge eating or smoking, as well as to adapt to (and often decrease) pain, overcome insomnia, and heal from past traumas that are still causing current anxiety and distress. Under hypnosis, clients who struggle to make healthy decisions can dialogue with different inner parts of themselves to eliminate inner confusion and come to a more integrated, wiser solution.  Hypnotherapy can also be used to gather deeper messages and wisdom from one’s dreams, and to improve confidence and to more easily access intuition.

Almost anyone can be hypnotized. Hypnosis is a state we experience everyday.  Who among us hasn’t had the experience of driving a long distance along a highway and suddenly finding oneself with no memory of what took place during the last hour of driving? This is similar to being in a hypnotic state or “trance”, whereby time speeds up as we enter a state of deep relaxation and have access to another, deeper level of consciousness besides our conscious, “surface” minds.

The therapeutic value of hypnotherapy is gradually becoming more widely recognized, especially when it comes to healing from addictions such as nicotine. Many physicians and scientists now see the value of hypnotherapy and refer their patients to psychotherapists such as myself who offer hypnotherapy.

One of the ways I utilize hypnotherapy is for healing from past traumas such as accidents and sexual abuse.  After leading my client through an induction -- the initial stage of hypnotherapy where the client becomes deeply relaxed but is totally aware of what is happening in the therapy room -- I have my client connect with a current or recent event that caused the client deep feelings of dissatisfaction or emotional pain.  As the client connects with these feelings, I lead the client through an “affect bridge” to the past, where the client connects with a memory of experiencing similar painful emotions. The client has a conversation with the person who seemingly caused the client’s emotional pain.  For example, the client may recall being age six and receiving a beating from his drunk father.  I would then have the client stay in the memory and talk to his father about his (the client’s) feelings regarding what the father did to him, as if the client were six and the beating was happening now. Then I would ask the client what  conclusions the client drew (subconsciously) about what took place.  I would also ask the client what decisions he made about how to be in relationship to his father.  (For example, the client may have concluded that his father didn’t love him and the client may have then decided to avoid his father when the father drank.)

The last part of the hypnotherapy session involves the client connecting with his inner wise, adult self who is able to have a conversation with the six year old child-self, where the adult tells the child the things the child longed to believe about himself but couldn’t, like that the child was loveable and didn’t deserve the beating. This is a very healing experience for my clients, who still carry around inside themselves these wounded, “frozen” children.  

I tape the hypnotherapy sessions and my clients benefit greatly from listening to the tape between our sessions. 

Hypnotherapy usually provides deeper, faster healing than talk therapy. I hope you will consider trying hypnotherapy for some deep healing if you haven’t done so before.

Ask Deborah

Reader Question: I would like my sixteen year old daughter to see a psychotherapist because she is struggling with depression, but she doesn’t trust therapists.  What do you recommend I do?

Answer: It is common for teenagers to distrust and/or rebel against psychotherapy.  In general, teens rebel against parents and adult authority figures.  The thought of an adult “prying” into their minds is disturbing and often frightening.

If you have a strong sense that therapy can help your teenager, I would suggest you ask your daughter to call a therapist who works with teenagers.  Have your daughter ask the therapist how the therapist works with teens and might be able to help her. You might also try requiring your daughter to see a therapist for three sessions and then discuss with her whether or not the therapist is a good fit for her and if she should keep going.  Usually, if the therapist is good at working with teens and if your daughter feels relatively safe with the therapist, your daughter will be more willing to continue the therapy after three sessions.

It is also helpful to explain to your daughter that psychotherapists are advocates for their teen clients, and as such, the therapist can offer support, and a safe, neutral place for her to explore challenges in her life.  Explain that the therapist is there to help your daughter find her own, best solutions to her problems, rather than to tell your daughter what to do.