Getting to know yourself through reflection and dream journaling can be painful.
We all have an ideal, a belief about who we are. Our ideal self does certain things. Our ideal self thinks certain things.
This ideal breaks down.
I shouldn’t go around thinking about chocolate chip cookies all the time.
You’re a little out of control.
You shouldn’t crave a cigarette.
Or drop the f-bomb around children.
Pull off the veil of the conscious mind and we can find out how we think unsavory, subconscious thoughts: lustful; racist; hateful; whatever.
It’s easy to become dismayed at how we’re so far short of our ideal.
We should be there. It should be easier to reach. That we’re not automatically there means there’s something wrong with us.
Maybe we start hating ourselves a lot, or maybe just a little.
Maybe we forget this whole business of facing our subconscious selves.
Before you do that, reconsider.
Don’t label yourself simplistically
People label others simplistically. Racist. Pervert. Weirdo. Whatever.
Avoid doing it to others. Avoid doing it to yourself.
Name-calling: it’s wrong on the schoolyard. They’re often lies. They start fights.
You name-call yourself within your mind, you’ll start a fight within yourself.
Don’t do this to yourself. It’s wrong. Just because you or someone else can have thoughts like that doesn’t make you that thing.
Unapproved thoughts
In George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, thinking in ways that aren’t approved by the government is known as thoughtcrime.
Thoughts that aren’t approved by the society of other people are a form of thoughtcrime.
Do you find yourself persecuting yourself for thoughtcrime? What matters far more is what you do, not what you think. Admittedly, all actions start as thoughts. It’s better to nip them in the bud but having bad thoughts doesn’t make you automatically bad.
Thoughts are complicated things. Your brain has to run through different options and scenarios if it’s going to assess and understand the world fully. Let it alone without a destructive (and probably inaccurate) label upon it.
Christian forgiveness
One good thing about Christianity—even if it’s sometimes (maybe even often) maligned—is the idea of forgiveness.
Jesus, Christianity’s founder, urges forgiveness of others.
Forgiveness should extend to the self as well.
Forgiveness is a cornerstone concept of the “Our Father” prayer.
And forgive us our debts (tresspasses), as we also have forgiven our debtors (those who have tresspassed against us).
Translations vary.
It’s as if we’re meant to struggle a little against things we might like to do but know better (Matthew 6:9-13).
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
Id, Ego, and Superego
Remembering how the psyche is broken up into three parts can be helpful (the id, ego, and superego).
Id: The home of base, instinctual desires.
Superego: the moralizer, the part of you that holds yourself to your higher ideal.
Ego: the compromising part where the base desires get worked out with your aspirations to be better.
We’re meant to be this way! We’re meant to struggle with this! Your ideals are meant to collide with reality. The Ego needs the help that dream journaling and analysis can provide to work out the conflict between the id and the superego.
Don’t give up. If you feel overwhelmed by the discrepancy between these parts, help is available. Philosophy, psychology, and religion all provide helpful models and ways of looking at the base self and the aspirational self. Grow with dream journaling, dream interpretation, and by filling in your knowledge gaps in philosophy, psychology, and theology.
James Cobb RN, MSN is an emergency nurse and the founder of the Dream Recovery System, one of the top blogs on the Internet dealing with sleep and dream journaling.
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