Session 11: Esteem Issues

What I believe is the cause of the recurring bad dreams I'm experiencing.

If I knew the answer to why someone has dreams I could go on the speaking circuit and make a pile of money.

My case is made worse by the fact that my dreams portray me as someone who isn't real. They portray me as a bad person who is the anthesis of who I am. I know this because I have a clear and lucid recollection of who I was and what I did in Vietnam.

So the problem is to determine how to best explain why I have these bad dreams that portray me as someone who I never was.

Facts bearing on the problem:

I am an honorable person who has always strived to live up to the expectations of others.

My dreams portray me as someone who was self centered, opinionated, inflexible and operated with all manner of bad motives that do not represent the nature of my character.

My memory serves as a litmus test of what I did and did not do.

My dreams portray me as someone I never was.

It is important to my self esteem that I strive to be all that I can be.

Assumptions bearing on the problem:

My memory is a fair repository of the actions I took in Vietnam.

My dreams are untrue representations of my past actions.

Possibilities:

Possibility 1: My recollections are a valid record of what happened in Viet Nam. Dreams are an amorphous manipulation of the subconscious in ways that follow no true and valid assessment and are not in the sphere of human endeavor to explain.

Possibility 2: I have a "Selective Recollection" of what I want to remember that has been reconciled with the comfort level of my self esteem and does not necessarily jive with events the way I want to remember them.

Possibility 3: My desire to do my duty was rigid at times and drive to that standard, did not always allow me open to courses that might have reconciled the military way with other approaches that might have satisfied both the mission and the welfare of the men.

Possibility 4: My dreams are a reminder that nobody is perfect and such aspirations belong to GOD and is not something a mere mortal should expect to achieve.

Analysis: I'm all but certain that my memory is a better representation of what I experienced in Vietnam than these dreams I've been experiencing ever since I served there. I have always felt that dreams are a mechanism of the mind that help people reconcile their fears with past experiences and serve as an aid for preparing someone to prepare for future events. They allow the mind to game play the trauma of bad things in the past in order to prepare for the same possibilities in the future.

I don't believe I have "Selective Recollection" like a defensive back in football who dismisses traumatic experiences in past games and remembers only those plays that they were successful in performing. While I will concede that I was rigid in my determination to carry out the missions assigned to me, this does not mean that I didn't consider the full range of options open to my duty to reconcile the mission with the welfare of the men. In conclusion I think that dreams are a defensive mechanism that offers a person the opportunity to game play future possibilities and thereby prepare themselves for the worst of what the future might offer.

Conclusion: I can't keep myself from having these dreams and fortunately they soon flee after I wake up from the sphere of my recollection. The cure of medicating them is worse than the experience. They are what they are and there is no getting around them without feeling doped up and tired all the time.

Recommendation: Continue to suffer my bad dreams and maybe they will eventually quit plaguing me.