Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norie with you.
Speaker 2: Lady Dolphin Back with Us founded the Dream Interpretation Center
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety seven. She has been teaching dream
Speaker 2: analysis to the counseling students at Concordia University in Montreal
Speaker 2: since two thousand and five. Lady's interest in dreams stems
Speaker 2: from her early experience in Freudian analysis, where dream work
Speaker 2: was the primary tool. She's been a member of the
Speaker 2: International Association for the Study of Dreams since nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven as well. In addition, she writes the Understanding Dreams
Speaker 2: column at Psychology Today known as the Oprah Daily. As
Speaker 2: the dream Catcher, Dolphin's goal is to introduce you, the public,
Speaker 2: to the value of understanding your dream and a view
Speaker 2: towards long term change. I mentioned one of her books,
Speaker 2: Have a Great Dream Book too, but she also has
Speaker 2: have a Great Dream Book one Lady, welcome back. Have
Speaker 2: you been.
Speaker 3: I've been good, George? How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm doing fantastic. I love dream I think they're fantastic
Speaker 2: when we can remember them.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, to remember them is the first step, no
Speaker 3: question about it.
Speaker 2: Is there a trick to remembering dreams?
Speaker 3: Well, I find the most helpful exercise that I love
Speaker 3: is to just sit down in a chair and look
Speaker 3: all around the room and take note of the paintings,
Speaker 3: the pictures, the carpeting, the furniture, the lighting. Just go
Speaker 3: around the room with your eyes and then close your
Speaker 3: eyes and go around the room in your mind's eye
Speaker 3: with your eyes closed. And you can even do that
Speaker 3: with your childhood home, by the way, and you do
Speaker 3: that a couple of times, and you are waking up
Speaker 3: that part of your brain that's the same facility you
Speaker 3: need in order to remember a dream. So it kind
Speaker 3: of gives you that feeling of eyes open, eyes closed,
Speaker 3: eyes open, eyes closed, and that's going to help you
Speaker 3: remember your dream.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the beginning when you got interested
Speaker 2: in dreams. What happened?
Speaker 3: Oh well, okay, I when I was twenty, I had
Speaker 3: a crisis in my life and I ended up, thank goodness,
Speaker 3: in Freudian analysis with a brilliant New York doctor who
Speaker 3: had just recently moved to Montreal. And because I wasn't
Speaker 3: so well able to articulate my feelings when I was
Speaker 3: in my early twenties. I'm a dreamer and I've always
Speaker 3: been a dreamer, and I used to walk into the
Speaker 3: sessions with a shrink, always with a dream. And so
Speaker 3: before I studied Freud, I learned Freud because I did Freud,
Speaker 3: and it made me realize, I'm just putting up a
Speaker 3: little wallpaper for all of us right now. I learned
Speaker 3: fifty years ago that actually a dream is an interior
Speaker 3: problem solving conversation that happens between your conscious and your
Speaker 3: unconscious mind, and it gets triggered by something very specific
Speaker 3: that you either thought about yesterday or that happened to
Speaker 3: you yesterday. And so when we go to sleep at night,
Speaker 3: if you had, you know, ten thousand things happened to
Speaker 3: you today, which you probably did, your unconscious is going
Speaker 3: to prioritize the one thing that's bugging you the most,
Speaker 3: and all of your dreams tonight are going to be
Speaker 3: about that person or situation. And that's the conversation that
Speaker 3: is the dream. And so what I did over these
Speaker 3: fifty years is I developed a very simple six points
Speaker 3: of entry method that anybody can use to understand what
Speaker 3: the heck you were saying to yourself when you had
Speaker 3: that crazy dream. So I'm just going to give you
Speaker 3: those six points of entry, because the whole rest of
Speaker 3: our discussion this evening is all around those six points
Speaker 3: of entry and the dream I'm going to give you.
Speaker 3: I'm always moving back and forth between the points of entry.
Speaker 3: They are the feelings, the action, how is the dreamer
Speaker 3: moving in the dream, The play on words and puns
Speaker 3: because we use puns and play on words constantly in
Speaker 3: our sleep, the same way as we do in our
Speaker 3: waking life. The repetition because we repeat the plot and
Speaker 3: the symbols. And so those are the six points of entry.
Speaker 3: And you'll notice, I mean, everybody's going to know how
Speaker 3: to do it by the end of this interview because
Speaker 3: I always go back to the points of entry and
Speaker 3: you'll get to hear all of them as I go
Speaker 3: through a dream.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you fantastic And how did you
Speaker 2: come up with these six points?
Speaker 3: It's I'm eclectic in my approach to dream analysis. And
Speaker 3: when I finished Freudian analysis, somebody at the university, one
Speaker 3: of the teachers there, said, wow, if you love Freud,
Speaker 3: you would love Frederick Pearls and Gestalt. So I enrolled
Speaker 3: in my thirties at the Gestalt Counseling and Training Center,
Speaker 3: and I became a Gestalt counselor. So I learned how
Speaker 3: Frederick Pearls looked at dreams. And I'm as you know,
Speaker 3: after eight interviews, George, it's our anniversary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: I learned. I'm an eclectic person. And so in my
Speaker 3: forties I went to the Alfred Adler Institute and I
Speaker 3: learned how Adler looked at dreams. And then I became
Speaker 3: a member of the C. G. Jung Society. So that
Speaker 3: is me. I don't know why the fathers of psychology
Speaker 3: were arguing, because what I realized is all of them
Speaker 3: are right, and it doesn't really matter which point of
Speaker 3: entry you choose to uncover the trigger. What's the thing
Speaker 3: that triggered this morning's dream. That's always my question, And
Speaker 3: the reason why I have that question is because I'm
Speaker 3: a first things first kind of girl. Even though I
Speaker 3: love Freud, love going deep. I've got no problem with deep,
Speaker 3: but I always want to stay surface first, because if
Speaker 3: you and I are going to dig for gold, which
Speaker 3: is funny that you had a commercial about gold just
Speaker 3: before I came on, I'm always digging for the gold.
Speaker 3: But if you want to dig for gold, you have
Speaker 3: to know where are you going to begin digging? And
Speaker 3: that's what the surface reason you had the dream because
Speaker 3: you're aggravated with your girlfriend, you're aggria with your husband.
Speaker 3: And so once we know the dreamer and me understand
Speaker 3: what is the surface reason that triggered this dream, which
Speaker 3: I call the first level. Once we get the first level,
Speaker 3: then you know where to dig to go to deeper,
Speaker 3: a deeper look. And should I run in and just
Speaker 3: tell you quickly what a deeper look is?
Speaker 2: Yes, And let me ask you one real quick question.
Speaker 2: These six points of entry? Are they in every dream?
Speaker 3: No? Not necessarily?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, go ahead.
Speaker 3: When you hear a dream, it's going to call you.
Speaker 3: Like for example, if you say to me, I was
Speaker 3: trying to run but my seat were not working right,
Speaker 3: that is an action point of entry. That's calling me.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to say to the dreamer, where do
Speaker 3: you think you're trying to get to in your life
Speaker 3: that you're having difficulty getting getting to?
Speaker 2: Or you fall they or you know, or you fall
Speaker 2: and never hit the bottom.
Speaker 3: That's an action point of entry also, And that was
Speaker 3: that fall is a great one for the feelings. Also,
Speaker 3: how did you feel in the dream, because maybe that
Speaker 3: person's going to say I felt completely out of control,
Speaker 3: which is going to help me. Ask the dreamer, what
Speaker 3: do you think of going on in your life this
Speaker 3: week where you're not feeling like you have your control?
Speaker 3: And so that's going to help the dreamer name Like,
Speaker 3: what I do is the exact opposite of a psychic experience,
Speaker 3: because in a psychological experience, you're telling me the dream.
Speaker 3: I am not telling you why you had that dream.
Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you the right questions based on
Speaker 3: those six points of entry, and you're going to tell
Speaker 3: me why you had that dream. It's not going to
Speaker 3: be me telling you because the dream belongs to the
Speaker 3: dreamer only, and you can ask questions to the dreamer
Speaker 3: and maybe that's how you're going to uncover what's going on,
Speaker 3: but you can't. It's not a psychic thing where you
Speaker 3: tell me the dream and I tell you why you
Speaker 3: had it.
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk about some of the things that you
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about tonight, and that includes your own dream.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm going to just dip us deeper first, because
Speaker 3: then when I give you my dream you and I
Speaker 3: will be able to more easily go through all the layers.
Speaker 3: And so the principle that I'm presenting here is that
Speaker 3: when we arrive in the world, when we're born, we
Speaker 3: come into the world whole. We have everything, every potential
Speaker 3: I call it. We could be shy, assertive, selfish, giving.
Speaker 3: You could be a hero, a chicken. Maybe you're the
Speaker 3: comedian in the family. Maybe you're the person who's more serious.
Speaker 3: Are you the person who always reaching out to make
Speaker 3: the plans, or are you the person who's always on
Speaker 3: the receiving end of the phone call. You could be quiet,
Speaker 3: you can be outspoken, calm, nervous. And so there's all
Speaker 3: these parts of ourselves and the people that bring us up.
Speaker 3: And they don't do it on purpose, there's no blame.
Speaker 3: But people who bring us up teach us that it's
Speaker 3: better to be one way than another way. And so
Speaker 3: you get over exercised I call it in some aspects
Speaker 3: of your personality and under exercised in others, which is
Speaker 3: what Carl Jung would have called our shadows, these less familiar,
Speaker 3: under exercised parts of yourself. And a great example for
Speaker 3: this little section is those people that don't know how
Speaker 3: to say no. Maybe come from a home with siblings
Speaker 3: and you hear. If you're in a home with siblings
Speaker 3: and you're not an only child, you probably hear your
Speaker 3: parents say things like, you know, go help your sister,
Speaker 3: go look after your brother, and so you hear these.
Speaker 3: You know, in any way, your whole waking life experience
Speaker 3: is all about sharing your parents. So it's a big
Speaker 3: focus on sharing and doing, sharing and doing, and those
Speaker 3: are the people that they don't know how to say
Speaker 3: no because they turn into many of them, including myself,
Speaker 3: by the way, over accommodators. And the only reason that
Speaker 3: one personality trait it's that it's not good to be
Speaker 3: stuck with an overexercised part of your personality. The problem
Speaker 3: there is that life throws you every different kind of
Speaker 3: situation from divorce, cancer, death, I mean, oh my goodness,
Speaker 3: the job. There's like so many different things that happen
Speaker 3: to us in our waking life. You don't want to
Speaker 3: be stuck with your same knee jerk over exercised response
Speaker 3: to waking situations and your dreams. This is the key
Speaker 3: every single night, and not by random. Your trust the
Speaker 3: unconscious mind gives you on a silver platter, the appropriate
Speaker 3: response to whatever waking life situation you're going through. Because
Speaker 3: my biggest message I could give everybody tonight is there
Speaker 3: is no good, no bad, no right, no wrong. My
Speaker 3: question on a deeper level is always am I responding
Speaker 3: in the most appropriate way to whatever situation I'm facing?
Speaker 3: So it's not a good or bad, it's is this
Speaker 3: appropriate or not? Because if it's not appropriate, I want
Speaker 3: to have the other parts of me well exercised enough
Speaker 3: that I'm not stuck with my knee jerk reaction. And
Speaker 3: I'm seventy one, So if there's someone who's twenty or
Speaker 3: thirty or forty out there, you don't want to be
Speaker 3: turning seventy and you always have the same darn response
Speaker 3: to every different situation that happens to you. You want flexibility,
Speaker 3: because flexibility is called power.
Speaker 2: Wall said. Wall said, when you look at when you
Speaker 2: interpret dreams for individuals, when you look at them, how
Speaker 2: do you start to ascertain what it is?
Speaker 3: Well, first I hear the dream, and from hearing the dream,
Speaker 3: that's what starts you on this long road that I
Speaker 3: just told you about. And I'm actually going to use
Speaker 3: a dream of my own tonight because it's so funny.
Speaker 3: After eight visits you and I, I had to think, like,
Speaker 3: what am I going to talk about? I want to
Speaker 3: keep George interested, and so I chose a dream that
Speaker 3: I had when I turned forty, which also happened to
Speaker 3: be the same year that my dad passed away. I
Speaker 3: started having a series of dreams where I was having
Speaker 3: trouble standing up. And one morning I said to Andy,
Speaker 3: my husband, I described to him I was walking on
Speaker 3: a campus, the lower campus of a university in Asheville,
Speaker 3: North Carolina, and I was on my knees. Because these
Speaker 3: are called my kneeling dreams, because I had a series
Speaker 3: of dreams for a couple of weeks and the stories
Speaker 3: in the dreams would change, but I was always walking
Speaker 3: around on my knees. And so this morning I told
Speaker 3: him that I was doing fine on my knees, except
Speaker 3: it started to snow and I was trying to get
Speaker 3: to the upper campus, and I said to him, I
Speaker 3: couldn't stand up. And because Andy knows the six points
Speaker 3: of entry, when he heard me say I couldn't stand up,
Speaker 3: he said, why who you're having trouble standing up to?
Speaker 3: Because that was a play on words. That was fun
Speaker 3: right there, And so I started thinking to myself, who
Speaker 3: am I having trouble standing up to? But I couldn't
Speaker 3: get it. And the next night I went to sleep,
Speaker 3: and this is an example of repetition. I dreamed that
Speaker 3: I was kneeling in the office of a guy whose
Speaker 3: name is Neil. So it's like your it's like your
Speaker 3: unconscious takes a plastic baseball bat and hitting you over
Speaker 3: the head with it. Scripts that's right, and that's why
Speaker 3: I'm getting the kneeling twice. And the guy's name is Neil.
Speaker 3: So using a symbols point of entry, I asked myself,
Speaker 3: who is Neil? What comes to my mind about him?
Speaker 3: Name three things about Neil. And the first thing that
Speaker 3: came to my mind about Neil is that he's my
Speaker 3: brother's business associate and friend. And actually it was my
Speaker 3: brother who I was having trouble standing up to. And
Speaker 3: if I use Neil as a solution, because I'm talking
Speaker 3: about he aggravated me about I wanting to approach him,
Speaker 3: not as the younger sister who might be crying and
Speaker 3: sad and emotional, because if you want to get through
Speaker 3: to my brother, by the way, and I still say
Speaker 3: the same thing today as I did thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: If you want to get through to my brother, the
Speaker 3: last thing you want to do is be emotional. You
Speaker 3: don't want to be behaving like the young sister. And
Speaker 3: so I needed to access that shadowy, unfamiliar, business like
Speaker 3: aspect of myself. That's like Neil. I needed to become
Speaker 3: and approach my brother the same way that his unemotional,
Speaker 3: business like business associate friend of his would. So Neil
Speaker 3: is the solution to the dream. That's what a solution
Speaker 3: looks like. And that's why I said, it's never an accident.
Speaker 3: It's not random the people that appear in your dreams.
Speaker 3: I needed to become Neil. And because I'm eclectic, and
Speaker 3: this is also Carl Jung's active imagination, but it's also
Speaker 3: behavioral modification, I borrowed a tie from Andy and like well, First,
Speaker 3: obviously I called my brother and I did not make
Speaker 3: the meeting at his house where I would be his
Speaker 3: little sister. I booked the meeting at his office because
Speaker 3: my dream took place in an office. So my dream
Speaker 3: is pointing me to all the answers to help me
Speaker 3: become less emotional
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