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Build your Self-Esteem by Exploring your Dreams
What follows is a dream by a middle-aged female client who was struggling with self-esteem issues in her personal and professional life. In therapy we were addressing her gift for promoting the needs and goals of others at home and at work but 
unable to stand up for her own needs and personal goals. At home, she was having a hard time letting go of being the main caregiver in the family even though her children were teens. At work she felt angry at being taken for granted and disrespected having been passed over for advancement in favor of a younger colleague. She recognized that she had trouble speaking up in her own behalf and bringing attention to her contributions because she had been raised to believe that this practice was egotistical and unlady-like. When she did speak up about her accomplishments, secretly, she felt like a fraud. The dream illuminates the magnitude of her psyche’s struggle to release the ego’s over-identification with the Self-Sacrificing Nurturer archetype to allow for the fuller development of her positive animus (masculine aspects of her inner self).
The Client’s Dream
I am vacationing at the Pacific Ocean with my husband and our two teen aged sons. The beach is at low tide, with a sizeable distance before the water’s edge. Families, swimmers, surfers, and lifeguards pepper the scene. Suddenly, an enormous wave 
rises!!! It grows higher and higher; looming ominously—until it takes up the entire horizon. This wall of water is at least as tall, or taller than the highest skyscraper in New York. We are still up among the dunes close to the chain link fence opening that is the only entrance onto this beach. There’s only room for one person to pass through the gate at a time. The wave is looming! Hurriedly, we turn back to the gate. The guys are all pretty calm. I am terrified. My husband gestures for me go through first. I am frozen with fear. I cannot manage to lift my leg up onto the natural step carved into the hillside on the other side of the gate. I look out at the wave. It hasn’t crested yet. The people are starting to run away from the wave, up the beach towards us. I am the stop-gap blocking the only way out. I am petrified with fear. I feel horribly guilty. I am stuck at the gate: Frozen with helplessness and terror. No one else will be able to go through because of me. They will all die and it will be my fault. I will never be able to forgive myself for surviving if they all perish.
Exploring the images of the dream we interpret the husband and sons as representations of the positive animus. The Dream Ego identifies with the Mother who — as she cannot put herself first and is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others — is a prime example of the Self-Sacrificing Nurturer archetype. This is the aspect of the client’s psyche that is stuck.
When the client brought the dream in to the session, she was still very much caught in the feeling state of the dream. She felt stuck and terrified, “frozen with fear.” We took the opportunity to work with the dream somatically in an active imagination exercise. In dream work using active imagination, the client re-enters the dream landscape in her imagination and interacts with the images in order to bring the dream story to completion, or to shift some relationship in the dream for a different outcome. Bringing the somatic aspect into the exercise involves having the client move physically in the room as though she is moving through the dream landscape.
Using Active Imagination in Dream Work
Working with the above dream, I instructed my client to physically recreate how she (the Dream Ego) was standing: petrified at the gate with her husband and sons knowing that the huge wave was coming. She stood very still. It was clear that she was re-experiencing feeling “frozen with fear.” She attempted to lift her legs up, with difficulty, one at a time; repeating this gesture as if to bring life to her numbed limbs.
To be honest, we were both expecting that she would find a way to step up and through the gate. But what happened was actually very different and much more effective in her process! This was a good lesson for both of us in staying true to the experience of the active imagination and not pushing for a preconceived outcome.
The client continued to stand facing the gate for a few more moments. She said, “I know I should step up and go through the gate but I can’t. But I can move aside for a moment and face the wave.” Then slowly, she turned and faced the wave. “I’m scared,” she said. “I am going to die.”
I encouraged her to describe what she was seeing. She described the fearsome height of the wave not yet crested, its ominous blue-green-gray color, people on the beach with their brightly colored umbrellas, blankets, and beach chairs. Now they were all in chaos, mothers and fathers carrying their children, teens, grandparents, all running for their lives, surfers on the wave desperate to make it to the shore. She looked at me calmly and said, “I can’t put myself first. It makes me very sad. I know that I will die. But I can’t put myself first.”
This was a very profound moment for us both.
As the session was shortly to end, the client promised to continue processing the dream in her journal during the ensuing week. We took the opportunity at her next session to explore some of the dream’s imagery and to discuss it in the context of her life.
Processing the Dream Work
We recognized here that the Dream Ego (who cannot save herself) identifies almost exclusively as the Self-Sacrificing Nurturer. True to her role she cannot put herself first even to save her life. In terms of the psyche, this aspect which has been the primary force in this woman’s life needs to step aside, i.e, relinquish control, and possibly to “die.” This will allow other more self-serving aspects represented by the positive animus figures and the many other as yet unknown parts of self (the swimmers, surfers, lifeguards, and families on the beach) to pass through the gate and move up the hillside to a higher level, safe from the potential devastation of the wave.
The gate represents an image of opportunity for development or transformation. The wave represents the overwhelming emotions that the vulnerable Dream Ego is experiencing. The ocean from which the wave comes is an image of the Collective Unconscious suggesting that her Sacrificing Nurturer aspect identifies deeply with women through the ages. We can see that the Dream Ego/Sacrificing Nurturer is overwhelmed both personally and collectively suggesting that this aspect of the ego self is severely limited in the ability to develop further, i.e., differentiate, in psychological terms. Her self-sacrifice, or choice to step aside, allows other more functional parts of self to be released into a higher realm of consciousness, away from the danger of overwhelming emotions represented by the wave.
In other words, these undeveloped aspects of my client’s psyche hold precious life giving energy for her as an individual. As these energies come into her conscious awareness, they will develop as differentiated aspects of her consciousness. As she becomes more aware of how these energies can provide her with ego strength, they will become more and more accessible as positive forces in her personal and professional life.
Key Points in Working with the Dream
The dream illustrates several key points for women struggling with developing a stronger relationship to their positive animus:
First, the Dream Ego is stuck in the area that needs the most change. The control that the Self-Sacrificing Nurturer holds over the rest of the psyche is overly extreme. Her dilemma forces a Life/Death stand-off with the positive animus as well as many other as yet undeveloped aspects of life and healthy well-being.
Second, the positive animus is not a bully. The positive animus operates in the service of the ego and values the individual ego. If the Nurturer could put herself first, the animus would honor her prerogative to pass through the gate and transform. This comes from a logical or thinking relationship with the psyche where the individual is valued for herself.
Third, the Sacrificing Nurturer experiences the feeling aspect of the dream which is overwhelming fear and an experience of impending death. This shows the immensity of feeling that must be addressed by self-sacrificing women as they confront the challenge of putting their own needs first. Here, the Dream Ego turns to confront her fear. She stands facing the overwhelming wave, knowing that she will die. It takes great courage and presence of mind to face death. Being able to withstand our fear in the face of an overwhelming experience helps us move up to a higher level of inner awareness and of outer interactive skills. This ability is called emotional regulation.
Ironically, we may have the idea that emotional regulation is an animus engendered skill. Emotional regulation is often taught using cognitive awareness and behavioral modification over dysfunctional emotional impulsivity and acting out. However, what we see here (and what women have experienced throughout human existence) is that emotional regulation is also a deeply feminine trait borne from the distancing of one’s own feeling needs from the reality of what is needed by the greater good in dire situations. This emotional regulation is not engendered from the thinking function but from the feeling function.
Emotional Regulation is Necessary
This suggests that the emotional regulation that is necessary in the process of bringing the positive animus into a more directive position in the feminine psyche needs to arise from acknowledging and confronting the fear of one’s own demise (metaphorically speaking) from a feeling place. This is not an easy thing to do. It takes great courage.
To summarize, in the role of primary organizing function of the personal ego, while temporarily useful in the raising of children, the Self-Sacrificing Nurturer will 
ultimately lead to the ego’s demise. This is to say, that for the personal ego, over-identification with the Sacrificing Nurturer cannot provide the essential functions necessary to the survival of the individual female throughout her lifetime. When we women only allow our identity to be determined by all the things we do for the good of others, we choke off access to the development of the very parts of self that need to evolve in order for us to be personally successful. Otherwise, our identity ultimately becomes absorbed into the feminine collective (drowned in the tidal wave). Allowing the positive animus to become a greater participant in our actions we are better able to express and successfully live our individuality in the world.