Dear Brooke,

Thank you so much,
SSgirl

Dear SS,

What a gorgeous brave human you are for writing in with this question! The visualizations you’re describing sound like what I call ‘waking dreams’, and let me surprise you a bit…this particular type of ‘waking-dream’ is SO common. Yes, really. I have a feeling that countless people read your question with both dropped jaws and a sense of relief in finding out that they’re not the only one. Delicious delicious delicious. Cheers to you sweet girl, thank you for opening this topic up.

Diving right in… here’s the Soapbox take on dreams, both waking and sleeping.

Dreams are an opportunity for your unconscious mind–the part of your mind that usually takes a back seat in your day-to-day life even though it’s filled with juicy amazing knowledge–to send you important and meaningful messages that might be too painful, too complex, or even too embarrassing to realize in your conscious every day mind. In other words, dreams come to us for a reason, and are packed with knowledge worth paying attention to.

Let’s set the stage for your particular waking dream: Every human being has inside of themselves countless characters (also known as archetypes), including, for example, the attacker, victim, and hero. For understandable reasons, most of us don’t want to admit that each of those is part of us. It’s hard for a lot of people to accept that inside of them lives the potential to be an attacker, and hard for others to accept that inside of them lives a true hero. Regardless of our ability and interest in recognizing it, each archetype lives in every one of us. That being said…

After reading your story, it sounds to me that what’s going on is that the hero archetype in you is being played out in your waking dream/visualization. You have some incredible heroic energy inside of you that your day-to-day conscious self has yet to invite in, so your waking dreams are expressing that energy for you.

For whatever reason (for you to figure out, love), you have chosen to keep your hero self inside. Maybe you don’t want to make others feel insecure around you. Maybe you experienced being the victim, but never got the chance to be the hero… Maybe your own power scares the you-know-what out of you. Maybe maybe maybe. These waking dreams are asking you–pleading with you–that you put your fears and discomforts aside, and let your hero in.

The thing about dreams is that they allow us to express and acknowledge every beautiful-scary-repressed-supressed-restricted-contained-amazing-juicy part of ourselves…in safe ways.

The hero archetype is showing up in your visualizations to reassure you that you do in fact have the inner resources, strength, and tools to survive and prevail over anything that comes your way. You have a hero inside of you, and it’s time to invite her into your life…

My advice: Embrace your hero-self my dear, lift the judgment you’ve placed on your waking dreams, and give your inner heroic power permission to exist. Just like anyone else, she is just trying to be seen, recognized, acknowledged. So turn around and greet her.

Your waking dreams are far from pathetic. They are in fact proof that your inner self is full of amazingness and smart enough to make sure you see it…sounds pretty heroic if you ask me.

Love,