Could my rape dream be a suppressed memory of an actual rape?

The Mookychick answer to your problem

Ashley says...

It was a dream. We agree on this. I'm almost certain it was nothing more. What you've had filtered into your head over your lifetime about supressed memories about rape is almost all sham and a way for head shrinkers to make more money. We've all had those dreams - a brutal fight with a loved one, a parent who smashes up your bike, armed men breaking into your house - that seem so real they have to mean something. Sometimes, the feeling - betrayal, rage, fear - lasts for days. Given the length of your e-mail to explain this situation, you've obviously got a lot of time and energy to expend on focusing on this dream. You're feasting on it. If you were busier or not as fragile-seeming to your family and friends, it would go less far.

What you've got to ask yourself is whether you're seizing on this mental tragedy in order to get attention, sympathy and the status of victim. I don't imagine you've told too many girls who actually have been raped about it - I think anyone who really was pinned down by a drunk uncle when they were six would see right through it.

You'd have work to do and things to distract you and it would evaporate. In that way, it's sort of a microcosm of most of the problems of adolescence. Yes, it hurts when you bang your thumb with a hammer. Sitting there, soaking in the pain, won't help it get better. Sometimes, walking it off really does make it go away faster. But first, you have to be ready to stop using it.

Magda says...

Oh dear. You've been under a huge burden. It's changed everything for you - but I think you're letting yourself off the hook here. You've been thinking that you're finally facing up to the dragon, but what you've actually been doing is feeding it a bit of your flesh every night. Now's the time to face the dragon for real, sword in hand.

Are you ready? Of course not. No-one's ever ready. So let's begin.

We all have illusions in our lives. These beliefs might feel painful at the time, but actually illusions are created by our minds to protect us from something. Unfortunately, our minds are really powerful, so sometimes they create a dragon by mistake.

It's called the Little Death - that moment where you become a new person in your life. It happens when an illusion dies. It hurts. It sometimes feels like you're dying inside. It's because stripping away the illusion means you're no longer quite the same person - a small, useless part of yourself died, so the real you could grow and live on.

I have some good news for you. You were not raped. I know many people who have been raped, and I know a bit about memory, and I've got an open mind, and I would never shy away from helping you if you had been raped. But actually something else rather remarkable has happened to you.

Your mind thought that the terror of a rape would be a big event in your life, something that would make you feel special, marked, untouchable, an outlaw, tattooed on the inside. It heard you in the times when you've felt bigger than the life you currently have and frustrated that life isn't catching up, and it heard you in the times when you felt small and hurt and empty and alone, and it tried to help the only way it knew how - by giving you something Big. But your mind got it wrong - it created a dragon. Because your spirit is strong, it created a dream so vivid - somewhere safe to store your vast energy - that you believed the dream. Stupid mind.

Not stupid you. Stupid mind.

This is how false memories work. Memory takes a thread of imagination, a half-remembered thing, and builds a story round it, because memory has a natural instinct to fill in the gaps, even if it's with imagination. Your senses lie to you every day. Did you know that your eyes only actually 'see' what's right in front of you, and everything to the sides is filled in by imagination and memory of what the eyes were looking at directly a few moments before? Don't ever underestimate the power of memory, imagination, and logic.

You've made the mistake of thinking that there's a good chance you've been raped, just because the anguish was so vivid, and just because you felt pain after the dream, and just because - once you started giving the dream your full attention, feeding the dragon your flesh - your whole behaviour started changing in such a way that you could be undergoing the trauma of a rape victim.

These are lies and need to be cut down with the sword in your hand. I'm not saying you're lying. I'm saying your brain is lying to you. That's what brains do. The more dark energy you feed them, the more they'll lie, to please you, their master. The same way your eyes lie to you every time they look at something. False memory, and dreams so powerful that they can be mistaken for reality, are very, very common.

Now, I'm not saying you're common. You're unique. You always have been. But what you've experienced is common. That's why your friend has experienced something similar. Your brain is just rather powerful and wanted to please you by making the dream as real as possible. We'll be dealing with your brain in a bit - it deserves some thanks. But it can't be allowed to continue its game.

Your mind is unbelievably powerful. It loves you. It WILL lie to you.

Stilly think your dream might have been real? Still think your imagination can't give you a pain in your lower back? Your imagination will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make you think its gift to you, the rape dream, is real. A memory being triggered by an action, smell or voice would be understandable. But not manifesting in a dream, with no triggers.

Now, you could search back in your mind to the day you had the dream, and if you tried really, really hard, you'd find something you's think could have been a trigger to remind you of the rape, thus making you dream it. But you'll be wasting your powerful mind and feeding the dragon.

stop.

Stop.

STOP.

This dream may have been a powerful experience, one of the most powerful in your life, but many more powerful things will happen in your life. It's time to let this one go.

I hope you'll recognise I'm not coming out with the same old thing here and saying "This is just a dream". The real danger lies because dreams are one of the most powerful and important things you can ever experience. It wasn't just a dream. But it was a dream.

You can touch, smell, hear, see in a dream. You can love people you've never met before, and never see them in real life, and never forget them. You can be killed three times over and feel every cut and every burn. You can dream through an entire day and spend half of wednesday thinking it's thursday. I'm not belittling your dream - I'm saying that it's vital to recognise just how powerful the force of imagination can be.

Your dream was powerful. It was full of all the emotions and experiences that your hormones, imagination, desires and terrors could throw at you. Big dark mojo. Emotional currents run fast, deep and dangerous, especially when you're at a crossroads in life - which you are. You can learn a lot from a dream like that.

But you've approached the dream from the wrong angle. That dream was taking some of the most powerful forces you possess and giving them a safe place so that they didn't overwhelm you. A part of you needed that darkness. And another part of you wanted to drown in something bigger than yourself. So you were swept away by the dream's power.

If you don't channel these forces - and channelling them is VERY hard to do when you're 12-18 and going through a major shift in life - they will swamp you in a tsunami wave, or leave you feeling numb.

Now, the real question is - what do you do next?

1) Recognise that this wasn't just a dream, but it was a dream.

2) Recognise that by feeding the dragon you've hurt your boyfriend, your mother and your older brother. It's embarrassing and sometimes shaming to know we've hurt people when we never meant to - but there it is. Sometimes we do end up hurting people in order to grow and learn, it's a sad and unescapable fact of life. The trick is to make sure we're not also hurting ourselves, and to take care of and help the people we've hurt at a later date.

3) Recognise that a part of you needs something big in your life, and that rape dreams and past cutting won't fulfil that part of you - but something that channels your imagination, creativity and need for a full, rich life will.

4) Take a moment to formally give thanks to your mind, your spirit, your strength of will, and honour and love them the way they honour and love you. Your mind, your dreams, and all the forces at your command only want what's best for you. Sometimes they offer you gifts that you've outgrown, though.

So here's an exercise:

Thank your mind for protecting you and making you feel unique and special. Thank it for loving you so much. Thank it for storing your furies and desires and powers in dreams every night so that you don't explode and take over the world, because that would be embarrassing and leave a hell of a mess. Explain to your mind that you do know you're special really, even if sometimes you forget, and you have your own skills and friends to store your energies with, so you don't need to have your life coloured with dreams of such dark power anymore. At the same time, promise your mind that if it sends you a powerful dream, you'll promise to listen to its message with an open, honest and trusting heart next time. Take a few breaths and imagine your head and body bathed with light, as you talk to your mind, and thank it. Ask your mind if there is anything it has longed to say to you in return. Perhaps it would like to tell you how much it has enjoyed being a part of you, and how much it loves you. If it says anything when you ask it to speak, listen. If not, rest in the golden light a little while longer, as long as you like. Give yourself a little hug, hugging you and the mind within you. Then let the light spread out to fill the room and beyond, the whole town, then the whole of the country - becoming a little finer and more transparent as it spreads out. Then breathe out, and imagine the light becoming invisible, but feel yourself to be part of a fine, light web covering everything. A final deep breath - then go and do the washing up. Or listen to some metal and have a dance. And, very last of all - look in your cupboards and drag out your favourite skirt. Put that skirt on and go down to the shops. Buy yourself a treat. You've just faced a trial by fire. You're earned it.

5) If you prefer, decide the dream might have been real, or had some half-truths in it, remembering the mind is one hell of a trickster. Then tell yourself - SO WHAT. What's more more important? You? Your life? Your friends? Or some experience your mind's already buried for you so you don't have to bother yourself with it anymore? Just how much longer are you going to ruin your life over something that was probably a dream? How much longer are you going to upset other people over it? How much longer will it be before you give yourself the right to move on and get on with things?

6) From now on, if people know about the dream, tell them you feel like you've absorbed strength from the whole experience, and you no longer care if it was a supressed real memory or a false memory - you've decided to get on with your life. Telling people this will make you strong.

7) From now on, if you do decide to talk to any more people about the dream, don't say you remember a rape, and get them fearful and protective of you, then add later that as far as you know it was a dream and only might have been a rape. That's cheating, and you know it. Say it was a powerful dream, so powerful that it had you doubting for a really long time, but that now you're approaching the dream from a different angle.

Follow steps 6 and 7 and your life will change for the better.

It's truly time to approach your worst fear, now. And your worst fear isn't being raped. Your worst fear is that this was a powerful dream brought on by fierce desires and energies, and no more or less than that.

Your life is even bigger than your dreams. You and your family and friends are all more unique than you give yourselves credit for. There's magic and possibility around every corner.

And dragons.

So take your sword in hand, and cut through the shadows.