Have you ever felt there are parts of yourself that you avoid or dislike? These are the parts that you disown over the years for whatever reason. For example, a workaholic business man may have disowned his "needing to relax" part because whenever he relaxed as a child his father humiliated him. So he has an internal conflict between his natural need to relax and fear of humiliation. These internal conflicts could be brought up in therapy from life events or personal reflection, but there's actually a great shortcut-our dreams. Freud used to say "dreams are the royal road to unconscious", but the founder of gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls, put it differently: "dreams are the royal road to integration". The ultimate goal of gestalt therapy is for the client to have integration. This means to first achieve awareness of the disowned parts, and then allow the repressed emotions to flow, and eventually integrate the part into the existing self. Dreams, especially the memorable and recurring ones, gives us the precious opportunity to catch these estranged parts. Every person, place, object in your dream is solely created by yourself. Some gestalt therapists believe all parts of your dream are parts of yourself. It could be a loved one, a location, a piece of food, even the temperature in the dream. Dreamwork in therapy could be almost hypnotic, and it usually leads the client to somewhere s/he has never been. So, if you ever have recurring or strongly memorable dreams, make sure to bring them up in therapy, especially if you have a gestalt therapist. Your subconscious is eager to tell you something, let it speak through this magical medium-your own dream. What it has to say may rock your world. * * Follow me on Instagram @therapywithyiwen for tips to get along better with yourself and everyone else ✨

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