[What follows is an edited transcript of a Dreamscaping demo where we changed the meaning of a loss event by resourcing positive felt sense memory to create a prescriptive memory.]
CASE EXAMPLE: S.H.
Age: 50+
Profession: PhD candidate
Loss: self-confidence and identity confusion
Sessions: in-person training demo
Prescriptive Memory: Imaginal
TOUCHING UPON THE LOSS & UNMET NEED
SH: So, I had a career of 25 years and I was a mother and now I’m here at the end of my schooling, to become a psychologist. And I don’t seem to be able to cross this threshold. A lot of losses are coming up. But also: What is this other identity I have about myself? So, not just understanding the fear, but a holding on to something in the background.
SEEKING POSITIVE EXCITATION
MD: So, you’re stepping into a new place that you don’t know about but stepping from a place you know very well.
Is that right?
SH: Yes. I have my own cleaning business where you step into someone’s personal home. Intimate spaces. You learn what furniture and structures
are built around their imaginations and how they see their lives.
MD: Does an image or some felt sense come to mind from that deep experience of stepping into someone’s home and knowing them?
SH: There’s this experience I have from when I was very young. I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer. I had a communication that I did with myself in
the water that gave me this essence of who I am. The water and I were one, and it was a spiritual experience that gave me a sense of confidence but also freedom that was inclusive — because water is inclusive. You can be in a pool with so many others are around you, but you maintain your own sense of self and you also have this ability to self-regulate.
MD: What part of that really stands out? Was it the community of the pool or was it that I was one with the water and I had a way of talking to
myself?
ASSEMBLAGE OF THE PRESCRIPTIVE MEMORY
SH: As you were saying it, I was thinking and feeling how it all was sinking into my body and into this memory I’m grounded in that is always there and not going anywhere. Because, see, I have already resourced it— I just forgot it for a minute. It feels like I’ve come back and that I am even more capable and that I do, you know, have it! I can make this [psychologist thing] happen, because even in sweat I made it happen. I made my business happen, I raised four beautiful children and have incredible grandchildren.
SSG: What I’d love you to describe is, what it feels like, to be in that pool?
SH: It’s very loving and it embraces not only the outer part of this body, but it is able to seep into my imagination and intellect. It filters through and that’s how I become one with that internal world and also one with the external world. It’s what I call God.
