A somatic approach to tricky dreams in recovery.
This method came out of my research and the dream group I ran for several years in a partial hospitalization program for substance use. The relapse dream came up over and over in group dreamwork: the dream where you use your drug of choice again, or decide to take a drink even though you’ve committed to recovery.
Relapse dreams can leave dreamers dysregulated, and the body craves an outlet to sequence the lingering emotions. Left unattended, it feels like a loop that never gets to close.
Untaming dreamwork
Our traditional dreamwork framework in Western clinical mental health counseling comes from a bunch of old white men. Perls, Jung, Freud… The framework I offer here takes a feminine, body-centered approach.
It draws on my adaptation of Deb Dana’s take on Polyvagal Theory, using the idea of a nervous system glimmer (the opposite of a trigger) as a way to resource when we wake from an unsettling recovery dream. And it draws on Christine Caldwell’s Moving Cycle as a way to sequence out the somatic residue a relapse dream leaves behind.
Traditional dreamwork practices are tame. They’re cognitive, wordy, and can be too highbrow. These dreams originate in the nervous system. They’re primal material from the subconscious, and they have to include the body, sound, and breath.
This is an invitation to untame your dream interpretation.
Five steps for an unsettling dream
One: Find your glimmer dream. Before you start with the harder dream, lean into a happy one: a dream that felt fortifying, cozy, or pleasant. How do you feel when you remember it? Where is that feeling located in your body? This is Deb Dana’s glimmer, a brief, simple delight for your nervous system that helps titrate a harder experience.
Two: Bring in the relapse dream. Once you’ve established your glimmer dream and can come back to its felt sense, bring your awareness to the troubling dream. Where do you sense the relapse dream in your body? If it tips over into too much to handle, go back to the glimmer dream.
Three: Tell it without words. If you had to explain the relapse dream without words, what would that look like? Think dream charades: a gesture, a movement, a sound. Make it smaller. Make it bigger. Put it in your entire body, then in one part of your body. Explore and play with the movement or sound. This step is inspired by Caldwell’s Moving Cycle, which was created for embodiment in addiction recovery, shifted here for addiction dreams.
Four: Find the opposite. What’s the opposite of that dream gesture? Do the opposite movement or sound for a while. Make it bigger, smaller, more global, more micro in the body, with the breath.
Five: Listen for the call to action. What does this relapse dream want you to do? What is its call to action in your waking life?
If a relapse dream stirs up cravings that don’t settle, reach out to your therapist, sponsor, or recovery community. A dream like this is information, not a verdict, and you don’t have to sit with it alone.