IFS: Meeting Rejected Boy, Daniel

Wow! I’ve barely begun to even DO IFS again, and already I’ve had an aspect dream, and it related to my session a couple of days ago!

The dream started I was at some kind of Meet & Eat conference to raise money for charity. Each table had a topic of conversation to talk about at the table, and people got to choose what they wanted to talk about at which table and paid their fee, and the speaker/host of the table got the conversation going, etc. It was a competition to some extent to have the most “inviting” table. The food was the same at every table, the only difference was the topic to discuss. As participants came into the room, each host got to give a quickie intro about their topic, then the people filed in and chose.

My crazy self-questioning began to wake me up a little as hurt feelings took over. I looked up across the conference room and noticed two things: a group of big jocks who were surrounding someone and not sitting down at any table. They looked ready to just leave the room all together. And Major Ray! He was just standing in his uniform quietly sipping a drink across the room!

DING! I went lucid!

“Okay! Okay!” I said to the busy room, “This is the Waking Mind here! What’s going on? Does somebody need to talk to me?”

No answer, but the room quieted down. I went and sat at my table and waited, confused. I looked around, trying to figure out what this was while not taking over too much now that I was lucid. I needed my parts to come to ME, since I was, technically, invading their territory!

The jocks began filing out of the room, but hidden somewhere behind them was a little boy, about 6, with dark hair down to his shoulders. He quietly approached me.

OH! I remembered my request to Major Ray, who was still across the room. He brought one of the aspects he protected out to meet me!

I yelled out to him, “Thank you!”

He raised his glass, “You’re welcome, but I’m still on vacation!”

That made me laugh. Then I turned to the little boy, and reached out my hands, because I knew who I was talking to!

My Shadow Child self who holds Rejection. The whole scenario revolved around feeling hurt due to rejection. I asked the kid if I was right, and he sadly nodded. I had him sit down and tried to talk to him, but he wasn’t very responsive. So I changed position to sit next to him and put my arm around him. I talked about how I knew what he felt, and I remembered blending with him a lot– even recently, with Tess, when her avoidance of me triggered some weird over-reactions on my part.

OH!– THAT was Major Ray! HE was coming out front to do battle to keep this little boy from being triggered and pained. So much more understood now as to why I was so fucking sensitive about that shit! The divorce must have massively triggered both Major Ray and this boy. The kid’s still in serious recovery after being violently rejected, and the Major saw the triggering of this kid to be what sent me on a spiraling path to serious, deathly depression! It also explains why he said he was angry he couldn’t catch a break in our session!

The little boy told me his name was Daniel. I asked him where the name came from, and he said the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. I wasn’t raised Christian, so I don’t actually know more than the basic parable. Daniel my aspect just thought of how being cast away to die by being eaten by lions was the most violent sort of rejection he knew of– hence the name. Also–? It’s about an envious enemy seeking to destroy a rival, and the 3rd party (king who like Daniel) wouldn’t prevent it from happening, though as king, he could have. God had to intervene to save Daniel. That makes me think, though, of that “Abuser–Possible Rescuer–Victim” triangle that’s bothered me all my life! My father tormented me, and my mother COULD have intervened to save me, but she refused to inconvenience herself. I wasn’t worth it to her. Just like the King refused to inconvenience himself to save Daniel. I can easily be missing some bits of the biblical story, but the jist of what I know, and the little rejected Shadow Child of me knows, is that being rejected HURTS, and when no one stands up for you, even when they can, it hurts a lot worse!

Anyway, more elements of my mind were made clear to me in this as well.

I started to fall more deeply into the dream for a bit, though I woke up afterwards so I managed to remember, thankfully! I rubbed the boys back and talked to him about how he was allowed to feel hurt. However, I did not reject him. I thought our topic we picked was wonderful, and it would have been funny to talk to myself at the table and have a great self-conversation. Think of how others would stare at us! But, more seriously, I meant that we spend more time just doing our own thing than anything else, and it’s okay. We love our own things!

And I talked about how, most of the time, people rejected us for shit going on in their own heads that had nothing (or very little) to do with us. Several people who rejected me at one point came back and apologized, and it came out they had shame issues of their own. Or their lives just got chaotic and they cast blame blindly. Whatever! We’re not always to blame for being “not good enough” to others.

I knew that loneliness was a factor, and I was slowly making plans to come back out into the social world again and make new friends and contacts and have more interactions with people. That was going to be a little scary, I told Daniel, because we are not everyone’s cup of tea, and we are rather outspoken and creative, and that doesn’t sit well with some. “But that’s okay,” I went on, “because for others? It is JUST what they’re looking for, and we’ll start to build our tribe as we go of like-minded or different-but-open-minded types and the feelings of worthlessness will start to fade away.”

I actually pulled Daniel into my arms and rocked him a little, hugging him a long time. I really felt for that part of me. Rejection may be one of the worst pains any of us can feel, and mothering an aspect of myself on this seemed right, and it felt very soothing in the moment.

I made sure to thank Daniel for coming to see me and waved at Major Ray, still across the room. The major waved back, saying, “You’re still welcome, but I’m still on vacation!”

I woke up feeling both like having myself a good, long cry, and like a huge weight was lifted from my soul. That was a powerful dream. Very healing and very enlightening (in all manners of the phrase!)