Dream Therapy

TW: Mentions suicide and depression.

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here. Those were my thoughts as I noticed that I was no longer in the extra bedroom of my brother’s house. The last thing I remembered was lying awake with insomnia and contemplating suicide. But suddenly, the beige walls of my bedroom were replaced with bright, luminescent white walls. I was sitting in a transparent chair across from a man and woman also in transparent chairs. There was an empty chair to my right and a glass coffee table between me and the two people in front of me.

“Welcome, Rachel!” The lady spoke first. “I’m Anna. This is Ernest.” She motioned to the man beside her.

“Oh, hi…” I didn’t know if I was dreaming. Had I fallen asleep? Or had I gone through with it, and I was in the afterlife? But I didn’t remember leaving my bed.

“Yes, you are dreaming,” Anna said, seeming to read my thoughts. “No, I’m not reading your thoughts,” she said next. “I’m just confirming the first question that everyone has when we appear to them. Let me explain. But first, would you like something to drink?”

“I’m okay,” I said, confused.

“Okay.” She smiled. ‘You are dreaming,” she continued. “In fact, you are lucid dreaming. It is a dream we planted in your mind: this room, our appearance, and what we will show you. But you are free to respond however you want.”

I sat silently, dumbfounded.

Ernest continued. “You have been having suicidal ideation, but you haven’t attempted it yet, thankfully. We hope to help you stop thinking about suicide by showing you the truth. You see, Rachel, you’ve been believing some lies.”

A rush of indignation welled up in my chest. What lies? I wasn’t a dummy. I was very skeptical, in fact. I tried to compose myself. “What lies?”

“To show you, we’re going to have to bring in our first guest. You as a five-year-old.” Ernest snapped his fingers, and my five-year-old self appeared in the seat next to me.

I jumped, startled and unsettled. I had seen photos of myself at this age, of course, and had memories of this age also, but it was bizarre to see the small, blonde-haired girl with bangs. She was wearing my favorite dress from that era, a purple overall dress, with a white tee shirt underneath, and pink jelly shoes on her feet that were dangling above the floor.

“Hi, Rachel!” Anna and Ernest greeted her with an enthusiastic wave. The little girl waved back, not shy at all.

“Rachel, this is yourself from 17 years ago. Do you remember?” Anna asked.

I snapped my eyes away from the little girl and back to Anna and Ernest, then back to the little girl. “This is crazy. How can she be here if I’m here? I mean, how can I be sitting beside myself?”

“It’s a dream, remember?” Anna motioned with her hand as if to brush aside the absurdity of the situation.

“Now, Rachel and Rachel, we’re going to play a memory for you, and we want to hear what you think about it. We’ll start with young Rachel, okay? So watch this, and then we’ll ask you some questions.”

A screen suddenly appeared in front of us, and a memory played as if it were a movie. It was one of my earliest memories, and a painful one. My father and I were in our backyard in Lexington. It was hot and sunny. We were both wearing light clothes and hats.

“So what you’re gonna do is, you’re gonna pull all the weeds from this section.” My father motioned to the area along the fence from the shed until the gate. “Make sure you pull it out from the root, or it’s just gonna grow back. You got it?”

Little Rachel nodded. My father stepped over to another area of the yard to pull weeds, and little Rachel started pulling. She pulled everything that was growing in that area, pulling out some wildflowers as collateral. When my father came over to check her work about twenty minutes later, he was mad at her.

“Rachel! Why would you pull out the wildflowers? What is wrong with you? Can’t you do anything right?” My father was shouting. “Look! You completely ruined it!” He kicked at the uprooted flowers resting on the grass.

Little Rachel started crying, then ran into the house to find my mother, and the memory ended.

I glanced at the younger Rachel to my side and noticed a trembling lower lip. It seemed like she was about to cry again.

“Now, Rachel,” Anna spoke gently, looking at the younger Rachel. “What happened in this memory?”

Little Rachel responded unintelligibly while crying.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I didn’t understand you just now. Can you say that again?” The tenderness that Anna was displaying toward my younger self made me want to tear up.

Little Rachel caught her breath and repeated herself. “I messed up the yard because I pulled the wildflowers.”

“No!” I couldn’t help but interject. This was unfair. It was unfair to blame a child for a simple mistake like that.

“Do you want to say something, Rachel? Maybe you can comfort your younger self.” Ernest said invitingly.

I turned sideways in my chair and grabbed the young girl by the shoulders. “Rachel, look.” It was weird to say my own name, but I continued. “You didn’t know any better. You couldn’t tell wildflowers apart from the weeds. They look like flowers, too. Dad didn’t tell you or show you the difference. You were just following his directions, but his directions weren’t clear enough. It’s not your fault. It was an honest mistake.”

Little Rachel wiped her tears. “But I ruin everything,” she said, brow furrowed.

I was stunned. Had I really thought this way as a child? I blinked back tears and turned forward in my seat again.

Ernest spoke to me gently. “We showed you this memory because this is the exact moment that you started believing that you’re a screwup and you ruin everything. Isn’t that crazy? You were young and you drew the wrong conclusion from this situation. But you’ve believed it ever since.”

I quickly wiped a tear from my cheek, trying to pretend I wasn’t crying.

Anna cleared her throat. “Thank you, Rachel,” she was speaking to the five-year-old again. “We are going to invite another guest now. We’ll see you later, when you’re twenty-two. Bye-bye!” Anna and Ernest waved warmly to the younger Rachel. I also lifted my hand to say goodbye, but the five-year-old had already disappeared. In her place was an eight-year-old version of me. This girl’s hair had turned brown and some baby teeth were missing. She had grown out her bangs as well. She was dressed in an oversized green tee shirt, jeans, and dirty white sneakers.

My dream hosts greeted this girl just as warmly as the last one. She waved back shyly and said a faint hello before looking down at her shoes.

“Okay, Rachel and Rachel, we’re going to show you a memory, and then we want to hear what you think about it, starting with the younger Rachel. Here’s the memory.”

The memory started with younger Rachel in her bed, reading a Nancy Drew book. Her ankle was in a cast, and she was resting it on her bedpost to keep it elevated. Her parents’ voices drifted into her room from the kitchen.

“We can’t afford to pay the balance!” It sounded like my dad was worked up about bills again. “I told you, we need to use the Mastercard to pay the minimum of the Visa.” He was talking to my mom like she was stupid. I recognized that tone so well.

“The Mastercard has a higher interest rate, though.” My mom responded calmly.

“So what do you want me to do? Not pay the Visa bill? You knew we didn’t have the money, and you took Rachel to the emergency room. Now we have to pay $300! Where will it come from? Our only option is the Mastercard.”

The memory ended there. Anna and Ernest leaned forward, looking at the younger Rachel intently.

“So Rachel, what happened in this memory?”

Rachel sighed, looking at the shiny white floor. “My parents were arguing about how to pay the bills. They didn’t have enough money because I broke my ankle and had to go to the emergency room.”

“So you think you are the reason they didn’t have enough money?” Anna probed.

“Yeah. I’ve always been a burden, ever since I was born. I’m the reason my parents are poor.”

I felt a surge of indignation. “That’s not true!”

I seized my younger self’s hands. “Your parents are poor because they don’t earn enough money! Your dad should get a better job! And your mom should work more too!”

My younger self looked up at me dubiously but didn’t say anything.

Ernest knocked on the coffee table to get my attention. “We showed you this memory, Rachel, because this is when you started to believe that you are a burden. You still believe it, not just with your parents, but with your friends, classmates, your brother and his wife… it manifests in a myriad of ways.”

I felt a lump in my throat. I realized that I did believe that. I didn’t think I had enough to offer, or that I ever would. But I had never questioned why I believed that. I just assumed I believed it because it was true, not because my parents had always been talking about financial issues in front of me.

“Thank you, Rachel! We’ll see you again when you’re twenty-two! Bye!”

I rolled my eyes as I quickly wiped away more tears. “Are you going to tell everyone that?”

“Yes! But there’s only one more guest,” Ernest responded. “And here she is!”

A thirteen-year-old version of myself appeared in the seat and received the same welcome as the other two Rachels. Her hair was in a sloppy bun, and she had smudgy eyeliner under her eyes. She was wearing a striped polo shirt and jeans with flip flops.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

I leaned over to whisper to my young adult self. “You don’t think this is crazy?”

“I’m a figment of your imagination,” younger Rachel shrugged.

“All right, Rachels, we’re going to show you a memory, and we want the younger Rachel to tell us what she thinks about it first. Here we go.”

Rachel was standing at her locker at school between classes. The doors of the open lockers were blocking her from the view of her new best friend Ali and some other girls that she was talking to a few feet away.

“Who’s all going to your birthday party on Saturday?” One of the girls asked.

Ali responded, “The usual group: Jessica, Carly, Ashley, Lauren—”

“Are you inviting that weirdo Rachel?” One of the girls interrupted.

“Ew, no!” Ali responded. “Why would I invite her? It’s bad enough I have to see her at school.”

The girls giggled.

“Good! I don’t want to have to listen to her talk about anime all night!”

“For real,” Ali agreed.

The warning bell rang, and the girls rushed to get to class, while Rachel stood frozen at her locker, crushed. The memory ended.

“Okay, Rachel, what happened?

I braced myself for another sad explanation from my younger self but was surprised by anger instead.

“What happened, you ask? What happened is that Ali betrayed me to look cool in front of those other stupid girls. Ali likes anime too. I’m not the only weirdo! But she left me out of her birthday party just because she wants those other idiots to like her!” She hit the coffee table with a fist. “What a jerk!”

“Whoa, that’s a lot of aggression,” I raised my hands as if surrendering.

Younger Rachel glared at me. “Well, it’s true,” she mumbled.

Anna chimed in. “We showed you this memory, Rachel, because despite what young Rachel is saying, she actually believes that she is a weirdo and nobody wants to be friends with her. You started believing that you were unlikeable and even unlovable at this age.”

The younger Rachel began hyperventilating. “No, I don’t think that. I think Ali is a jerk!” She struggled to speak as she gasped for air.

“Thank you, Rachel. We’ll see you when you’re twenty-two. You will make it until then, don’t worry! Hang in there.” Ernest was less hammy this time as he delivered the line. The younger Rachel disappeared, and the three of them were alone in the room. They sat in silence for a moment as tears spilled onto my cheeks.

“Yeah.” Anna said knowingly, nodding sagely. “It’s no wonder you don’t want to continue living when you believe lies like that. You ruin everything, you’re a burden, you’re unlovable? That’s terrible.”

The tears were pouring faster now, and I took a shaky breath. “Are you sure they’re lies?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Anna tilted her head to the side. “Do we need to bring the guests back in? So we can see if the five-year-old really does ruin everything? Or if the eight-year-old is a burden? Or if the thirteen-year-old is unlovable?”

“No! I definitely don’t want to see the thirteen-year-old again—she scared me.” We all chuckled, and I continued. “I want to believe you. But how do I stop believing something that feels so true? Everything you said is a lie, it feels so true.”

Ernest came and sat in the chair next to me. He sat and squeezed my shoulder. “Feelings come from thoughts, Rach. Can I call you Rach? I feel like we’ve gotten close here.”

I nodded.

“As I was saying—feelings come from thoughts. You need to guard your thoughts. Ask yourself, ‘is what I’m thinking true?’ And then really think about it. If it’s not true, then what is the truth? We showed you just three memories of when you started to believe these lies. But once you believed them, you ran into dozens, if not hundreds, if not thousands, of situations that seemed to confirm what you already believed. But that’s just because of confirmation bias. If you keep reminding yourself of the real truth, you’ll start to see it confirmed instead of the lies. You were doing a great job of it with your youngest selves. Just keep doing it with your present-day self. It’s tough, but if you keep doing it, your feelings will eventually change too.”

“You can do it, Rach!” Anna raised a supportive fist.

“And remember,” Ernest continued. “You have people who love you. Reach out to them! They would want to help you if they knew you were going through a hard time.”

I nodded. I had avoided talking to my family because I didn’t want to burden them with my depression, if that’s what this was. But Ernest was right. They did love me. They would be there for me. You’re not a burden, I reminded myself.

Ernest began a slow clap while chanting melodically, “Stop believing lies! Stop believing lies! Reach out to loved ones and stop believing lies!”

Anna joined in the chant and stood up to walk closer to them. Eventually I stood up and started chanting it too. We rotated in a circle together as we chanted and clapped. The chanting lasted too long, maybe 5 minutes.

Suddenly, I woke up in my room. My cheeks were wet with tears. I wiped my tears away and reflected on my bizarre, yet enlightening, dream. It was late morning, judging by the sunshine coming in through the window. I jumped out of bed and left my room, looking for my brother. I would tell him I wasn’t doing well emotionally. I would reach out to loved ones and stop believing lies.