A program for using dreams as a tool for healing loss The universal experience of grief dreams can help us heal after the death of a loved one. T.J. Wray and Ann Back Price show how dreams can be uplifting, affirming, consoling, and inspiring. The authors guide readers in ways to understand and value their dreams, how to keep a grief dream journal, and how to use dreams as tools for healing and consolation. This book is designed to help mourners reclaim some measure of power in navigating the most difficult journey of their lives. And, because it is helpful for any type of loss, Grief Dreams is an ideal condolence gift.
Without proper support, navigating the icy waters of grief may feel impossible. The grieving person may feel spiritually bankrupt and often the loss is so painful that the bereaved may lose faith in what they once held dear. Mindfulness meditation can restore hope by offering a compassionate safe haven for healing and self-reflection. While nobody can predict the path of someone else's grief, this book will guide the reader forward through the grieving process with simple mindfulness-based exercises to restore mind, body and spirit. These easy-to-follow meditations will help the reader to cope with the pain of loss, and embark on a healing journey. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of grief, and the guided meditations will calm the mind and increase clarity and focus. Mindfulness and Grief will help readers to begin the process of reconstructing the shattered self that is left in the wake of any major loss.
A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy demystifies the process of working with dreams by providing both a grounding in the current science of dreaming as well as a simple, practical approach to clinical dream work. In addition to a survey of the current science and neuroscience of dreaming, this book includes clinical examples of specific techniques with detailed transcripts and follow-up commentary. Chapters cover how to work with PTSD nightmares and how to use experiential dreamwork techniques drawn from current neuroscience to engender lasting change. Readers will be able to discuss their clients’ dream material with confidence, armed with an approach that helps them collaboratively tap into the inherent power for change found in every dream. Backed by research, common factors analysis and neuroscience, the approaches described in this book provide a clear map for clinicians and others interested in unlocking the healing power inherent in dreams.
The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears. Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients' stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity's transcendence. Kerr's book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure. Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine's and humanity's greatest mystery.
While in training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich in 1988, Susan Olson suffered the loss of her daughter in an auto accident. In this intimate and unique exploration, Olson uses C. G. Jung’s psychological framework to describe her journey through tragedy, guided by a series of vivid dreams. In Images of the Dead in Grief Dreams: A Jungian View of Mourning, Jung's definition of the dream as a "harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods" evolves from theory into embodied insight as Olson describes her encounter with the transforming power of grief. Drawing from personal experience as well as theoretical and clinical material, Olson presents premonitory dreams, which occur before the loss of a loved one, and grief dreams, which follow a loved one’s death, and analyzes both according to Jung’s method of dream interpretation. Sharing her own dreams as well as those of other mourners, Olson asserts that such dreams play a crucial role in the dreamer’s emotional recovery and psychological development, otherwise known as the process of individuation. She sensitively offers an assessment of the stages of grief and draws on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, Jung’s memoirs, and other literature to amplify her experience of mourning. In this rare combination of grief theory and dream work, Images of the Dead in Grief Dreams is both a grief memoir and an extensive study of C. G. Jung’s view of the mourning process. This fully updated revised edition will be of immense interest to Jungian analysts and trainees, academics, psychologists, students of Jungian dream analysis, and to all who have suffered loss.
For the sort of dreams that humans have while asleep, you will have to consult other books. This book is not about bad dreams or nightmares either. This book is about dreams in real life that are dashed by death, divorce, moves, loss of a job, or a loss of a relationship. Hence, these are grieving dreams or dream death. The circumstances of life, for us all bring loss into our lives. Some loss is self actuated, other loss is from the actions of others, while other losses just happen in what we call, âacts of Godâ . In every loss there is a âdream dimensionâ to the loss. The âwhat would have been, what should have been, or what could have been,â is the dream element of the loss.
"This book is written in response to requests from all over the world for a comprehensive, step-by-step manual on how to understand and use dreams."--Xii (Introduction)
Learn to speak the language of your dreams with this fascinating guide to the 100 most common dreams—why we dream them, what they mean, and how they can help us in everyday lives We all dream, but our dreams often seem to be bizarre and confusing experiences that make little sense to us, no matter how much we try to analyze them. The true key to understanding our dreams is looking beyond individual symbols—and being able to see the bigger picture in the stories that we choose to create every night. There are one hundred dream themes that are consistently reported by dreamers around the world, regardless of country or culture. These dreams appear again and again because they reflect fundamental life patterns. This guide will help you recognize these common one hundred dreams, enabling you to achieve a much deeper understanding of your dreams and yourself.
With more than 250,000 copies sold, this classic exploration of dreams and how to use them has been updated to reflect recent research on dreams and dreaming.
Drawing from a rich understanding of dreaming in culture, history, psychology, and modern dream study, Kelly Bulkeley and Patricia Bulkley's Dreaming Beyond Death explicitly addresses three common aspects of pre-death dreams and offers interpretations that will aid both dying persons and their caregivers. Rev. Patricia Bulkley's experience with the transformative possibilities of pre-death dreams as a hospice counselor lend this book a deeply personal and human touch, while Kelly Bulkeley's insightful analysis and intellectual framework provide an understanding of the deeper meanings behind this type of dreaming. A final chapter provides resources and concrete methods for caregivers to respectfully guide a dying person through the dreaming process to a sense of peace.
