A milestone moment for me in my own dreamwork was when I realized how reactive I am to the sudden appearance of the stranger in dreams.
Some of you, as I did at first with my dreamwork practitioner, may protest. “Stranger Danger” is real, you might say, and I’d agree. Indeed, in particular settings and scenarios there may be grounds for concern in the appearance of a stranger.
However, in my own dreams, and perhaps in yours, the stranger sometimes appears in objectively non-threatening scenarios. I emphasize the word “objectively” because often the dreamer will report otherwise, claiming a context or a “knowing” that precedes the entrance of the stranger to the dream, which makes the stranger seem threatening to the dreamer.
In a dreamwork session, though, when we examine the actual events of the dream, we often find that our story — or our initial “knowing” at the beginning of a dream — can’t be backed up by images, sounds, senses, or interaction in the dream itself. Without these, we have to ask ourselves: how do we know?
Stories and beliefs we bring into the dream with us (as opposed to the spontaneous images of the dream itself) are evidence of our own conditioning, as well as evidence of the beliefs we carry around with us consciously and subconsciously all day and night, whether awake or asleep. Some of these beliefs may already be well-known to the dreamer. But working with dreams often brings to the surface stories we have about people or the world we weren’t necessarily aware of.
It wasn’t a surprise to me that, in certain scenarios, I fear the stranger. What was a surprise to me was how quickly my stories take over when I am confronted by an unexpected stranger. What came as an even bigger surprise was how my reactivity in such situations not only keeps me from knowing people as they truly are, but prevents me from relating to people in a way that could be nourishing or helpful to me or them.
Let me give you an example, from the milestone dreamwork session I referenced above.
Dream: I am in the kitchen of my childhood home. In that kitchen in waking life, as well as in the dream, there was a sliding glass door that led to a deck in the backyard. In the dream, it feels as if I am coming from some event or party prior to this moment. It’s dark outside and rainy and I’m about to go upstairs for the night, but someone has left the screen door open to the deck.
I try to close the screen door by latching it, but the latch won’t catch. Eventually, I try to latch the glass door instead. This works. Then, outside, a woman approaches the glass door: A stranger I don’t know. She looks like a “regular” person my age, but I believe she is dangerous. I’m afraid. I grab a knife from the knife block on the counter, and hold it up. But showing her the knife doesn’t seem to do anything.
She’s got a knife in her hand, too. I believe she is going to cut her way in.
I woke up from this dream very frightened and when I worked the dream with my practitioner, who pointed out my reactivity, I righteously argued in defense of my fear.
“But I don’t know her! What was she doing in my backyard?”
“Who enters through the backyard?”
“It’s night time! Doesn’t she know better than to approach a house from the back?”
All of these would be good arguments, perhaps, for a waking life encounter with a stranger. That said, even in waking life (and especially in this dream), there would be possible alternate actions to take when a woman appears at the screen door, even if her appearance arouses fear.
Would it be possible to be with your fear a moment longer, before reaching for the knife? My dreamwork practitioner asked. At the time, it was too hard. I felt very defensive.
For homework, my dreamwork practitioner offered this:
See the woman at the screen door. Instead of going for a knife, face her with courage and openness to whatever happens next. You may feel fear, that’s okay, but just stay open to this stranger.
The invitation is to be with “whatever happens next.” In other words, she may be dangerous, but she may not be. In the dream, I left no room or time for curiosity. My fear took over. I immediately reached for the knife to protect myself.
What if I had been able to be with my fear a moment longer? What if I didn’t possess such a strong fear of the stranger?
Remember how I reported that the dream opens with me feeling as if I had just come from a party or an event? Perhaps the dream did drop me into the end of a party, and this woman was a straggler, or a late guest, or someone who left something behind.
Maybe there was no party, no event. Perhaps, this woman was simply lost in the neighborhood or her car broke down in the rain and she had seen the light in my kitchen was on.
I don’t really know. I didn’t give myself time to find out. I didn’t give her the chance to move from “stranger” to “one who may make herself known to me.”
My mind, my story determined everything for me in an instant, perhaps before she even appeared at the screen door.
Perhaps she was a fulfillment of a fear I didn’t know I had of “doors with broken latches.”
* * * *
There are clues in this dream that indicate the woman at the screen door wasn’t there to harm me, and perhaps may have been there to help me, but I never got the chance to find out, due to my immediate reaction and determination that she was a threat.
I realized in the weeks that followed, as I did the homework, that this is a familiar way of being from waking life; specifically, that there are ways I “arm” myself at the start of an encounter if it takes me by surprise, even with someone who otherwise appears safe, and especially during fragile times of life when I don’t feel like I can “latch the door” to keep the unwanted out.
You may still be thinking: “I don’t blame you! I would reach for a knife, too, just in case.”
But the imagery of the dream indicates the woman at the screen door is not an immediate threat. The first clue is that she appears behind a glass door. She doesn’t try to get in. She doesn’t yell or make an threatening gesture. Her only “crime” is being there behind the door.
The most telling clue is that when I raise my hand with the knife in it, she stands there, still behind glass, and raises her hand, too. In her hand, suddenly, is also a knife.
A mirror image of me and my knife.
Is it possible the “regular” woman who looks “my age,” is not there to harm me, but to show me Me? To show me how I react in the face of unexpected encounters? Especially when I already feel very vulnerable (ie. in the “dark and rainy night” setting of the dream)?
* * * *
In the many months since this dream, I have worked more dreams with the stranger. I am still often afraid of the stranger, and I still often react. However, it’s become easier for me to notice my reactivity when I work these dreams, and there have been some subtle shifts in the outcomes of my dreams of the stranger. Sometimes, I allow for more time between the stranger’s appearance and my reaction. Sometimes confusion arises rather than fear, which is an indicator that I’ve begun to question my own stories, my own conditioning. At times, I am even curious at the appearance of a stranger in a dream situation in which in the past I would have quickly braced myself for confrontation.
And there is a lot more sensitivity in my waking life to situations in which I may have previously reacted as a result of imagined danger, but instead I am able to pause, take in my present surroundings, and ask myself, “what in the here and now indicates I am in danger or this person is a threat?”
As a result of these dreams and some waking life practices (including embodiment and orienting exercises), I am starting to feel a little bit safer in the presence of the stranger, both in my dreams and in waking life. I have also become much more aware that when I don’t immediately “reach for the knife,” the stranger before me (who isn’t always even a stranger, but a person I haven’t yet made the effort to get to know deeply) doesn’t reach for the knife so quickly either.
This allows us both a little more time for curiosity, for presencing ourselves in this moment, and for encountering each other as we are now, not as the other’s story “knows us” already to be.
(Feature image, photo credit: Jen Sonstein Maidenberg)
