SelfhelpMagazine

by Richard Wilkerson, Dream Educator

You most certainly have the right to tell your friend about your discomfort about listening to her dreams. She may not be aware that she is crossing a boundary by telling you details of her inner life that seem too private to you.

Many people will ask a friend ahead of time if they'd be willing to listen to a dream or dreams. You might look at this friend's other behavior and see if there are other areas where she encroaches upon you in uncomfortable ways.

Whether or not there are other boundary infractions in your friend's relationship with you, there might be something to be learned about you, and why you are so uncomfortable.

1. Is it simply that you don't know what to say? (After all, there are only so many "Wow!!" comment someone can make....)
2. Might it be that you've never been exposed to someone so free with their inner life, and her revealing her inner life makes you keenly aware of how unfamiliar you are with your symbolism and inner life?
3. Do you think she is getting too personal with you in other ways?

Regardless of what's going on, you have at least two ways to go with this problem. First, you could simply tell her you are uncomfortable and ask her to limit or stop telling you her dreams.

The second approach would be to consider this a learning experience and "experiment" with where it will go. That means you could tell her about your discomfort and inexperience at listening to dreams and asking her to help you by showing you what other people say and do when listening to dreams.

If you go this latter route and suddenly do not want to continue, you can always back out if it by telling her that the "experiment" has shown you that your initial instincts were right, and that you just aren't comfortable. Then you could ask that she limit or stop telling you her dreams.

On the other hand, if you experiment with understandign both her and your inner worlds, you might learn about yourself in ways that you've never explored with a friend.

Either way, this situation is going to force you to step outside your comfort zone and express something to her. For that experience, you can be grateful. When friends force us to speak up for ourselves, we grow.

If she respects your expressed boundary and stops telling you her dreams, she will have learned that not all people are to be used as sounding boards for her dreams. Permission usually needs to be obtained before revealing dream after dream to someone, even if we consider them friends.

What more can we ask of our friends than
1. to be honest with their feelings about us and
2. respect our expressed wishes toward how they treat us.

To address the broader issue, let me also add that we don't have to send her into psychotherapy to simply share dreams!

Many people like to talk about their dreams. Some families do it more than others. Most of us have dreams as part of our normal existence and routinely discuss them with those we trust. For many people, it's a way to share a deep and personal side of themselves.
Therapists do work with dreams, but for different reasons.

You might also want to suggest that your friend join or start a local peer dream sharing group where there are no experts, but simply other folks who are interested in dreams and would like to share them. Some such groups are also available on the Internet.

See the Reference Section for a Dream Network Directory.

About the Author:

Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.