S2E3 Sleep & Dreams

Dreams are one of the most misunderstood mental health tools we all have at our access. The biggest myth we hear is also the simplest: “I never dream.” We unpack why that’s almost never true, what sleep science says about dreaming, and how our brains keep monitoring the world at night to protect us. When a culture treats dreams as meaningless, we learn to tune them out, and dream recall drops even though the dreaming continues.

From there, we dig into dream interpretation with a therapy and coaching lens. Dream characters, celebrities, spouses, and ex-partners can feel like they are about someone else, but we argue the more useful question is often: what part of me is this image representing? We also talk about so-called prophetic dreams and how intuition can rise when defenses are down, helping you notice clues you have been missing in waking life. If you’ve ever woken up with a nightmare, a stress dream, or unexpected anger, we frame that as a “golden opportunity” to meet the shadow side and build real self-awareness.

We end with practical, listener-friendly techniques: how to remember dreams by recording them the moment you wake, why REM sleep depends on getting enough hours of total sleep, how sleep regularity supports emotional regulation, and what to do when you wake in the middle of the night and start ruminating. You’ll also hear our take on lucid dreaming, “sleep opportunity” as a calming mindset, and a few simple cognitive exercises that can help you fall back asleep.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s a dream you still remember clearly, and what do you think it was trying to tell you?

You can connect with the cohosts through their respective websites:

AFCCounselors.com (Dr. Shalley) / https://www.inyourdreams.coach/contact (Dr. Kelley)

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Therapy Coaching in Dreams. I'm your co-host D. Kelly and I'm here with Jim Shale. And together we love exploring. Sorry, apparently the introduction took too long. Would you like to jump right into this, Jim, and we'll get rolling here. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Do you have a few things you want to say? Is that No, no, no. I just wanted to make you feel welcome. You always do such a good job making me feel welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

I thought I'd like to welcome you. Yeah, trying to put forth the nurturer side, the responder side, therefore, I appreciate that. Absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah. Not not to combine combine the two podcasts, but yes, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So we are in season two, where we are digging a little bit more deeply into uh the idea of dreams and how they might help us in exploring what we covered in season one, which is the inner landscape of personality and how that plays itself out, both in relationships, but also when we're doing the inner work to become more self-aware. So I'd I'd love to talk a little bit about the notions we have about dreams, kind of the cultural norms, some of the typical questions that people have. So I'm hoping we'll cover a number of those this morning. Sound okay to you, Jim? Yep. Sounds great. Okay. One of the common statements that I have that occurs again and again, occurred just this last weekend with Thanksgiving when I was gathering together with a group of people was somebody who said, I never dream, haven't dreamed in a decade. And the I think the comment is kind of dismissive, but also maybe it's I don't know, when other people talk about dreams, is there any pride that I'm I'm not dreaming? I'm not sure where that comes from, but it's actually not true. Science shows that if we are prevented from dreaming but allowed to sleep, that within a very short period of time we'll begin to hallucinate because the demand for that kind of brain activity is so essential to our survival that the body, the brain, forces it to happen, even if we try and prevent it while we're sleeping.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Have you ever had someone that said they didn't they didn't dream to get to the point where they realize they do dream?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Aaron Ross Powell I think they are startled by that scientific neuroscience sleep clinic kind of thing. But then they're curious.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

And I think that the other piece that I will often add is that there's a cultural context to what we dismiss as white noise. I think I've already used the story that when I moved into the previous place we lived, the pipes that were clanging in the middle of the night down underneath the house, and that within two or three nights I stopped waking up in the middle of the night when those pipes were clinging, clanging, because my brain designated them as non-threatening. We actually sleep with an attentiveness to our environment. Our senses don't completely shut down. We still hear things. There is still stimulus that can come from light. And all of that is a survival mechanism because when we're asleep, we're most vulnerable. And back when we weren't sleeping in homes, but in tents or caves or whatever the case might be, you know, like 20 years ago when I had a lot less.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Well, no, I just I just came out of my cave recently. So that's good. I I find myself dreaming less now that I'm out of my cave.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

That's because there aren't as many threats. Don't need the alert. That's right. But your body is still alert. I there's a wonderful book on sleep that talks about the animal kingdom and the different techniques that are used in the animal kingdom. And one of the most fascinating ones to me are certain species of birds who often sleep in a line, like on a high wire line, an electrical line. And the bird at the far right, half his brain sleeps so that the outside eye can keep an eye on what's taking place. And the bird on the far left, half of its brain will go to sleep while its left eye is looking out and keeping watch for the flock. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yep. That's exactly right. And so it's fascinating the adaptations that the human that humans have had, as well as the rest of the animal kingdom, uh to accommodate they need to sleep. Right. I might be a little uncomfortable in the middle, though. I think I'll take one of the outside. That's true. That's true. That's that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah. Well, I noticed that if you have, like you were saying, if you have a a noise you're not used to, it'll startle you. Right. But then all of a sudden, if you know all that that's that noise again, to your point, you do relax. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

So you take that and apply it culturally. If we culturally have decided that dreams are unimportant, which I would say m much of the Western world has, then eventually we're going to designate them as white noise, unimportant distractions, and we will stop listening to them. We will stop seeing them or noticing them unless there's some kind of a nightmare that startles us awake. And so the cultural attitude toward dreams, I think, has had a great effect on the number of people who say, I never dream. Because we don't know what to do with them. They seem immaterial to our waking life. And so we just move on and pretend they don't exist. Do you have memories of periods of your life where dreams were more were more prominent or dreams that have stuck with you for a long, long time?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Uh yeah, I have. Some have been very challenging as far as the repetitive theme. Um that's always challenging. It's like when one person consistently shows up in the dream and they either engage or don't engage. That's always an interesting thing to try to process. Because uh I think you agree it's usually an expression of myself, not the person I'm dreaming about.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Do you agree with that or completely. I mean, uh the number of times where somebody will talk about a dream they had where there was some kind of film star or politician. You know, I had somebody would say, I had a dream about Brad Pitt. Am I supposed to call him? Because he seemed like he was in danger. Yep, that's I think exactly what it means. Yep, give him a call. If you got his number, give him a call. So yeah, uh truth is I had a dream that I adrenaled. This is probably about two, three years ago, but Brad Pitt appeared and got into the backseat of the car beside me and told the driver to take us to his house and we went to his home. Is that right? So it was interesting. But that's another great misconception about dreams. It has nothing to do with Brad Pitt. It has to do with some part of me that in that moment in my journey would Brad Pitt would be a great descriptor of that part of me. So I have to pay attention and say what part of me would be represented by it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah. Yeah. I think the the one that comes to mind that I have dreamt not as much lately, but in the past have, I realized that the the person that wasn't available in the dream but but would show up but emotionally wouldn't connect was really the part of me that I hadn't figured out yet. Wasn't I wasn't connecting with myself. And that made a big that made a big shift for me as how I as to how I interpreted those dreams, because before that I would always think, okay, it's because they they hurt me, they wounded me, or whatever that was, as opposed to, wait a minute, no, you're disconnected from what they represent, and that's the journey. And that's that helped with the masculine and feminine stuff we've talked about in last season. It's helped with a lot of that stuff so far as making sense out of it. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Because it is, I mean, it's it's entertaining on some level to think that the dreams are external and it it's about that person and and I need to call them or I need to reach out. And I I wouldn't discount that, and maybe in some rare circumstance it might be appropriate to check on someone if you dreamt about them. But I think ultimately it's it's the individual aspect of what's just saying about me and my journey.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah. I think uh I I had somebody mention one time a dream they had about their spouse that seemed in the dream like it was revealing something that she didn't know at all, that turned out to be true. And so she had this sense in which it was very prophetic. And I'm not discounting that that can sometimes be a possibility, but I would also say that dreams put us in a state where our defense mechanisms are down and releases our intuitive side, our ability to see things that we don't realize we're seeing because it's clues to those things are all around us. We just are not always paying attention to them. And my comment to her was that's wonderful. And if that was helpful to you, great. But I have the feeling that your intuition knew before your conscious mind knew what was going on. And it was appearing in the dream simply because your defenses are down as a way to help you and benefit your journey and to alert you to the things that you already were unconsciously beginning to know about your relationship. And it came to pass. So it felt very prophetic. Again, not denying that it can be at times, but more often it is kind of a revelation of the intuitive side of our own personal journey. Yeah. So we talked a little bit in a previous episode, or maybe in the sequence of these dream episodes, it may be in a subsequent one, I guess, about what we do when we don't remember our dreams. So let me just give a couple techniques that have proven very effective with all of my clients and workshop participants. The first is if you're showing up to a workshop or you're talking about dreams, you are by doing that, placing value on the dream and saying, okay, I want to pay attention. That's the first step is view them as important, as valuable. We begin to pay attention and notice those things that are important to us.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Before you continue, what helps someone get to the place where they they see the value of the dreams? Is there something that helps them face that aspect of it or it makes it makes them curious about it?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Great question, Jim. I'll give you a couple things that I find have been helpful. One is when you can pr provide a couple of examples of how dreams were beneficial in raising self-awareness in someone. Like I often I'm not always recommending in-depth self-revelation, but I will often use an example of a dream that either I know of of myself or of somebody that I have permission to use their dream and say, so here is a dream, and this is what the dream led to in terms of self-awareness and a problem resolution, increased creative thinking, all kinds of things that come as a result of paying attention to your dreams. So I think that that kind of wets the appetite. The second is there are very few people who haven't had at least one nightmare that they can currently still remember. May come out of childhood, may come out of recently, years ago, but uh a nightmare that they can draw on. And to say that the nightmare is often viewed as a way by which the unconscious is trying to get your attention. And then I'll give some examples. You have a nightmare about standing in front of a group of people naked trying to give a speech, kind of a common dream for some people. That nightmare is a way by which to depict emotions that you're not paying attention to, who you're feeling exposed or inadequately prepared. And when it comes to your attention, it gives you the opportunity to do some things to address that lack of preparedness or that feeling like your comparison to others is inadequate. So when I take a nightmare that somebody has had and try and give it a context of emotional weight in their life, that raises curiosity. The third thing that I will often do is to say that we've been exploring in our conversations some of the things that you're facing and how to bring some of that unconscious side into consciousness. And one of the best pathways to do that is through dreams, because that is the nightly ritual of your brain addressing the unconscious things that you're not noticing. And so if you're looking for a wonderful pathway to use imagery and characters that are representations of yourself, dreams are a great way to do that. So that is a way by which to get people to pay attention. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Good. So I think that for probably for men more than women, you think? Oh, absolutely. They struggle a little bit more with the idea that dreams have something to say. Yeah. Yeah. So if you've Again, that that's interesting because is there a connection with that in the masculine and feminine? The feminine's relational, the masculine's task-driven. So it's like if you can get them to see that there may be some sense to the dreams, that that could connect them to the relational aspect of their side.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah. It's also easy to give a couple very specific tasks for somebody who is task driven to do. One of those is to do a nightly ritual of putting some kind of recording device beside your bed and very specifically saying, I know I dream every night. Tonight I want to remember a dream. And whenever I awaken, I'm going to record it no matter what time that is. It's like a three-step statement. Say that every night for the next two weeks. Just do it as a disciplinary thing and just see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

I know it used to be they would recommend you write it down. Does it make a difference whether you record it or write it down?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Aaron Powell It makes a big difference. The issue with not writing or recording it, particularly whenever it is that you awaken in the middle of the night or in the morning when you get up, is that you lose many of the component parts because the defense mechanisms naturally come up soon after you awake and they cause so many parts of the dream to kind of disappear, like when the sun rises and dries the mist on the grass or in the air. It makes some of those things kind of disappear and you forget them. So recording is an act in and of itself of placing value on the dream. Yeah. So so one of the other pieces that I think is beneficial for a lot of individuals, and we've talked about this on another occasion, but is to value your sleep. It's easy to show the research that shows the value in a good full night's sleep. Life longevity and length of sleep is inextricably connected.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. I just read an article yesterday about they've done recent studies on not only just getting good sleep, but the regularity, like the same time every night, waking up the same time every day, and the value of that. I think this was had to do with uh with dementia, that that kind of sound sleep where the body can rely on the fact it's going to go to sleep at this time every night, it's going to get up at this time every day, it really adds a whole significant aspect of just the continuity of sleep.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

And a full night's sleep is essential for having adequate rapid eye movement sleep, which is the dream state. Because, again, I think I've mentioned this before for those who have followed along in the podcast, that dream sleep is weighted toward the last half or the last third, actually, of dream. Deep sleep is weighted toward the beginning. So the biological need for the kind of the chemical rebalancing takes place first in that deep sleep, along with a transfer of memories from short-term to long term. But dream sleep pushed to the last third of sleep is essential to our emotional regulation. And if we are cutting short sleep, and it can be that we're getting to bed too late, doesn't matter when we are decreasing from, let's say, eight hours to six hours, most of what we're cutting out of our time is dream sleep. So to value sleep is to value dreams. So that's like a fourth thing you can do to show that you value the dreams is to get an adequate night's sleep.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Aaron Powell Is there any uh evidence to suggest that the older you get, the less you dream because you don't sleep as long as you used to, or not?

SPEAKER_00 18:36

So the first part of that is yes, there is evidence that as you get older, dream sleep decreases, as does deep sleep, which is an interesting fact as well. But the correlation to what that does to your body, I'm not sure has been completely verified by science. It just is noted that it decreases as you get older. Yeah. More time spent in like stage one and two sleep, which is interesting. It's it doesn't help much for the restfulness or as much as the other two do for feeling rested the next day. So how old are you, Jim? And how have you noticed that?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Oh yeah, I'm I'm 13. And so uh I've I sleep till noon every day. Uh no, I've noticed, man, I used to be able to sleep. But man, it's interesting. As you age, you definitely don't sleep as as easily as far as just staying asleep. You know, I can wake up the same time every day and I can kind of take, you know, 15, 20 minutes to get up, but uh and lay there. But yeah, it's really fascinating to notice the sleep differences. I can go to sleep pretty quickly anymore, but I wake up the same time every day, usually, and it's like, can I can I sleep some more maybe?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Or a common challenge for a lot of people, it may increase with age. I'm not sure if I've seen the research on that, but is uh being able to go to sleep relatively easily, but waking up in the middle of the night and having a tough time going back to sleep. And there are a number of techniques I've I've listened to a number of people that talk about a technique that's called cognitive restructuring, which is just a technique of going through a mental process that tries to take your mind off of what you're ruminating on and placing it on something that is a relatively boring task, but can keep your mind engaged. And so that is a method that I have used a couple times that's affected.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

One of the things that I recommend for people that kind of wake up are they can't get back to sleep because they ruminate and they start thinking about everything and the next day and all over life's problems. I will say the brain can't spin and focus at the same time. So I said if you have the discipline to get up and just write out bullet points of what you're thinking, it'll slow the brain down enough to probably to help you relax to get back to sleep. And that's been pretty effective with people that have the discipline and the courage to do it in the middle of the night. They get up and start writing something down. But it makes I mean it it's true, the brain can't spin and focus at the same time. Although some people will challenge me on that occasionally.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

But No, I I think it's a great technique. And and the proof is in does it work for you? If it works for you, use it. If not, go on to the next technique. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah, and that was a personal experience year a hundred years ago for me. It was like, okay. And when I realized that, I said, okay, yeah. If I really get focused on the thoughts I'm having and I write them out, yeah, I'm not thinking about the next thought until I'm ready to write it down.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

So a slightly different use of that technique is what a Particular academician who was writing about cognitive restructuring used. And that is to pick a word. When I do it, I actually pick a person's name. So my kids' names, my grandchildren's names. Pick a name. And then with each letter of that name, name as many nouns as you can, or words that you can that start with that letter. Don't name them out loud, just quietly. And when you name it, visualize it. Try and think of what it looks like or smells like or tastes like. And when you've run out of the number of words where that letter go to the next letter. And for many, many people, they never get through the whole name because the brain stops the ruminating and it's focused on a cognitive exercise that is very boring but changes the way the brain is working.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Yeah, the same the same way that I do, uh, I'll tell people that if you're if you're overthinking and ruminating and you're setting at your office, just focus on the clock on the wall and what time is it, and where'd you buy that clock and why'd you buy that clock? Get caught up in the details of whatever you're looking at, that will slow the brain down as well. So yeah. It's all really cognizant techniques.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah. Let me toss out one other thing. The clock image reminded me of something that some people agonize that time passes while they're laying in bed and find it incredibly frustrating. And I get that.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

But one of the things that do they want time to stand still and then they wake up or what I think they're panicking that they're going to wake up for an early morning meeting and be exhausted.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

I think that's a good one. But one of the techniques, it's not a technique, it's a perspective that Matthew Walker uses. And his is the he's the author of the book Uh Why We Sleep, an excellent book that I've referenced a few times. But he talks not about how many hours sleep you get, but for him, his journey, he designates the amount of sleep opportunity. So if you're in bed and you're resting, but you're giving yourself eight hours of sleep opportunity, that's the language that he uses. And I've found that if I view my time in bed resting, even if I'm having a tough time getting back to sleep, as part of my sleep opportunity, it changes my perspective on it. I'm not getting angry at myself that I can't get asleep. I'm more relaxed that, okay, I'm I'm resting, which is the whole point of this. The last thing I will offer that's a technique that a number of people have found success, it's used successful in their life, is doing your own rapid eye movements, even though you're not yet asleep. So the technique is when they do that. Well, you do it with your eyelids closed, and you go left to right, left to right, maybe 15 times, and you go up and down 15 times, and then you make a clockwise circle with your eyes 15 times, and a counterclockwise circle with your eyes 15 times, and takes your mind off of You're hypnotizing people. It's exactly what takes place. But then relax at the end of it, and for many people it puts them to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Well, that's interesting because I mean, you know what, you know what EMDR is eye movement desinessation response. I mean it has the eye movement back and forth, helps release trauma. So I that's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah. So it could be releasing certain levels of stress that keep you away. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Yep. I think back to that title of that book. I mean, that's a pretty short book, isn't it? Why we sleep, isn't it because I'm tired?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

It's right. It it's just one sentence. But the guy's made a killing off of it. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Every page you turn, it says tired. I'm tired. That's right. Sorry, I couldn't resist that uh crazy way I my brain thinks sometimes. So I'm sure it's a wonderful book. I have not read it, so I'm not minimizing the book at all.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

I've made up for you. It's one of the few books I've read multiple times. So good. Yeah. Just a couple more things that people often go down interesting pathways concerning dreams. Uh we talked about I don't dream, I don't remember my dream, I had a dream about Brad Pitt, I had a dream about my wife.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

I so about if how about if it's a divorce and they dream about their ex a lot? Have you encountered that at all?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yes. So sometimes it's the kind of questions that you ask as a result of it. And often I would say it's far less about correctly interpreting a dream. Instead, it's about allowing the dream to interpret you. So whatever question you ask that is beneficial, great. I can give you generally what we do when we're doing it therapeutically or in a coaching session and what has worked historically for people in terms of the kinds of ways you view those things. But when you're dreaming of an ex regularly, should ask your question the question of are there things that are happening daily for you that are triggering that? What are the triggers? So it's not about your ex, but what's being triggered inside of you that you're not paying attention to? Is the emotion that comes in the dream anger, hostility, longing? Is there a loneliness? What are the kinds of emotions that are associated both in the dream and what you may not be paying attention to during the day? The second piece is that anytime somebody is married, that person leaves a strong imprint on the individual. So let's say that I'm talking to a gentleman who is in a heterosexual marriage and that he's divorced and he constantly has dreams of his ex. The question is, is that a representation of your feminine side? And what part of your feminine side were you attracted to in this person when you first got married? And what part of you now is not getting expressed, that desperately needs expression and be brought out of the unconscious? You pushed it away literally in your external environment by getting a divorce. Are you also pushing it away internally, that part of you that you were dependent upon your spouse to bring into your life? That's good. So that's where I would go with that if somebody came. That's great. Are you familiar at all with lucid dreams? Not a lot. Lucid dreams are those where you're in a dream and you know about the dream.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

You dream about the car, the lucid car? No, lucid car. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Electric car. Don't you have stock in that company? That's what I was referring to.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

No, I sold.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

I sold it. Yeah, lucid dreams are about the new truck that just came out that Lucid is doing. Yeah. Lucid dreams are when you're not only in a dream and you think you know you're in a dream, but you feel like you can control aspects of the dream.

unknown 29:39

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Those are usually those are the characteristics of lucid dreamers.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

I don't I don't know that I've ever had one, or at least I'm not consciously aware of that. That's interesting. I think that is it common? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

It is it's common enough that it gets a lot of attention in the literature.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

Yeah. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

The problem is for me, is it often comes across like a distraction. Like, look at this cool technique that I can do. And it's true. You can sometimes make choices in your dreams where a dream will go a particular direction. It's not far different from what Jung described as active imagination when you enter back into a dream and you say, What if I finished this dream? Or what if I went up to a character and asked that character, what do you why are you trying to get my attention? So that's active imagination and loose dreaming, it's kind of the same thing, except you're still asleep. I think for me, when I hear somebody talk about it, it's great, but I come back to the same thing. What is it that the dream's trying to bring to your attention? I get that it's really cool that you can control some items, but I'm not sure that changes the dynamic of what you can learn from a dream if you're asking the right questions. The more common thing is, which I'm sure is in therapy, if you ever get a client that comes in and talks about a dream, often it's a nightmare. A panic situation, snakes, spiders in front of a crowd, a confrontation with some shadowy figure. All of those are golden opportunities to talk about the shadow side.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Yeah, I think the way that my my shadow side shows up is that in the last two years I've had probably four or five significant dreams where I'm just really angry. And I'm I'm whether it's a good friend or somebody I know, and I'm just I'm just yelling at them. And I always wake up with kind of a smile because I don't naturally identify anger very easily. And so when I wake up and I think, oh man, what am I really angry about? Because I let that I let I let that part of me have it. And so that that's always an interesting thing for me to process when I when I wake up. Because on some level in the dream, I feel better that I've I've been I've expressed my anger. But when I wake up, I always feel like, oh geez, I kind of why was I so mad? Which is not an unusual pattern for me. If I if I confront, sometimes I'll have to work through feeling bad about confronting whoever in my personal life. So that's always been interesting for me when I when I have those dreams. But I also know that's that's my my shadow side.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Yeah. So on this last trail riding trip where you cussed me out two different times. You were actually addressing the anger during your awake life so you didn't have to do it during your dreams, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

No, I thought I'm sorry, I thought you meant my dreams, I wake up wake up swearing. Oh, it's funny. If I did do that, I apologize. I don't remember doing it, but maybe in your mind you thought I should have. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Do you want me to give you the specific lines you used? You know what? Maybe next podcast. Next podcast. Actually, that's probably a good place to wrap this up. This is I hope it's been helpful for some people who just want an introduction of some of the issues that we're going to talk about. You raised a great point, Jim. This really takes us back into all of the first season by looking at the masculine, the feminine, the androgynous characters in a dream, exploring that in our own selves, looking at the shadow side. I hope we get into issues of projection and how they appear in dreams and can take us down pathways in in ways that I think move us more rapidly towards self-awareness because we are generating all this imagery ourselves. And it gives us an opportunity to explore.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah, just like just like for some, the whole idea of the masculine and feminine is maybe new information as far as the framework. And just like this, people dream all the time and they may be curious, but they haven't followed through with that. So to make it a little curious for them to to investigate more what masculine feminine or dreams is, that that'd be great. I mean, that's why we I think why we're doing this to some degree.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Yeah. I agree. Cool. Thanks, Jim. Looking forward to this next series.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Dr. Kelly, I'll call you Dr. Kelly here at the end.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

So I appreciate it, Dr. Shelley.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Okay. That's it for this episode of Therapy, Coaching, and Dreams. If you're enjoying the podcast, we'd love for you to follow, rate, or share it with someone who might appreciate it as well. Thanks for being here, and until next time, keep growing. Stay curious, and take good care of yourself. Yeah, now it's good stuff.