These Dreams

In mid March I had a few bad nights with very intense nightmares.  This is pretty normal for me but these 2 were really intense and rattled me.  When I woke up I thought about them and I see they are very deep issues I am unwilling to deal with or even had on my radar.  I read an article (I am reading a lot on the ketamine either from other clinics or the Major medical centers like Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic) that gave suggestions on how to get the most out of the treatments and one suggested journaling 4 questions in the time prior to your treatments so you can gain some focus.  The questions lead you to see what things you want to work on.  For me there are obvious things.  My weight. My career issues. My anxiety.  My social issues that came about due to the pandemic.  But these nightmares are showing me that my issues are so much deeper. 

I read that you have to do the hard therapy work to get the most out of this and I got some recommendations to journal just notes immediately following treatment because the ketamine is like an amnesiac so although you will have these intense experiences during the "trip" you might end up forgetting a lot of it (like a dream state where you wake up and remember but then after a few hours forget details).  So they say to jot down feelings and insights so you can reflect on them when you are beyond the day of treatment. 

I am kind of thinking these dreams/nightmares are similar to that experience, so I wanted to gain some perspective from them. 

The first nightmare was my whole neighborhood was on fire, all the houses around me, I was racing around trying to take photos quickly knowing that the fire would come to my house because the wind was blowing really badly.  Then I realized Jym had gone to help our neighbor and he got sprayed with a chemical that got inside him and he couldn't breathe and I tried to call 911 but the call would not go through because of the fires and he died in front of me.  I was totally helpless to do anything.  Wow there is a LOT to unpack there. 

First of all, death itself is not something I deal well with at all.  I am still grieving people who died 20 years ago.  Not to mention my father and on top of it I have a very real fear that Jym will die.  It does not help that his weight, his drinking, his smoking. his aggressive driving are all things I can't control and feel helpless to stop and the constant fear of him dying is always weighing on me.  Don't even get me started on the "fire" all around me and the out of control winds upon it. 

Then the next night I had a nightmare about my former employer.  (I lost my job of 21 years in 2020 during the pandemic.  We were told the facility was closing and people were phased out gradually. Even at the point I was allowed in the building I was not allowed near my coworkers.  This resulted in me not even being able to say goodbye to people I worked with for 21 years or hug anyone etc.) In the dream I was walking through the halls and everyone's desk was boxed up but people were there still working and I knew it was ending and I was just sobbing as I walked through the halls.  All this time I have had so much bitterness and anger at the company for everything they allowed when I worked there and for everything they did to get rid of us but I never focus on the grief of losing my coworkers and those relationships (and yes I am still in contact with a lot of them but it isn't the same) and also having to do so in a pandemic so we never even got to say goodbye or have those moments of shared grief and just thinking about that makes me cry.  It is obviously something i need to deal with.  Something I have been squashing down and pretending doesn't exist for me. 

When I write it all down I feel so absolutely broken.  I have no clue how I am going to fix this mess inside me.  I am trying to break it down and separate everything and feel at least good that I am someone who is connected enough to what is wrong and willing and able to self-analyze and work through things.  So that is a positive I guess.  I know a lot of people suck at that.  So hopefully this will make the treatments work better for me because i am willing and able to put the work in to navigate this.  But seeing it all just makes me feel like I am a hot mess.  Like most people have 1 issue or whatever.  I have like 50.   

Either way I guess these dreams are probably similar to how my mind will work after the treatment so I definitely plan to journal notes when I come out of the “trip” so I can analyze later. (I was warned not to try to do this DURING the trip and to instead allow myself to fully and openly engage in the trip and allow my mind to steer in whatever direction it needs to without road blocks or distractions). I hope this helps me to get the most I can from these treatments. I have always been willing to put in the work to heal and I hope it makes a difference.