Liz Hargraves is a psychiatric colleague and occasional confidante—in other words, when the need arises we help each other.
And right now Liz needs me badly.
We’re sitting in my office after hours, sipping Dewars and talking about Brad May, another colleague whom she thinks is stalking her.
She’s twisting a strand of her hair and her brow’s furrowed. She was fairly straightforward at the beginning of our talk, but now she’s fallen silent.
I sense there’s more.
“So, is that it—the feeling he’s psychically stalking you?”
“No, that’s not all—now he’s in my dreams. That’s why I look like hell. I can’t sleep—I don’t want to sleep.”
She does look drawn and haggard.
“Would you call these night terrors?”
“No, nothing like that—just dreams—running into him and having conversations with him. It all seems so mundane, but when I wake up, there’s this aura that persists—as if I really did see him.”
I look at her thoughtfully.
“What do you think’s going on. Martin?”
“Do you want the DSM-5-TR version, or do you want what I think?”
“Obviously, what you think.”
“I think you’re picking up on Brad’s feelings towards you. Love can quickly degenerate to obsession, then stalking as a form of dominance.”
She shakes her head. “But he doesn’t actually do anything—physically, at least.”
“I think rare people have the ability to contact others mentally and those who are sensitive can feel it and respond to it.”
“It sounds mystical.”
“It is in a way. I think we all have the potential to do this—to think of another person and be in touch with them—to be present with them.”
“But this is spooky, Martin. It’s not normal. It’s scary.”
She shivers thinking about it.
“Look Liz, we all do this to a certain extent—and that’s the operative word. How many times have you thought of someone just before they telephone? It’s what Jung calls synchronicity.”
“Okay,” she frowns.
“But what I’m experiencing is unusual, Martin.”
“It is but it’s a perfect storm because you’re both sensitive.”
“But what about him appearing in my dreams?”
“You know dreams are altered mental states. When you dream about people, you talk with them and they respond the same way as in waking life—they’re not puppets you control—they have a life of their own.”
She pauses to think for a minute, but I can tell she’s still not convinced.
“But why is Brad intruding into my dreams?”
“He’s the shadow aspect of you—the parts you reject or repress. He represents something ugly or unappealing, so he becomes the stalker or pursuer.”
“So, how do I deal with it?”
I take a deep breath—she may not like what I'm about to say.
“Confront it. He’s a frightening figure to you, because he’s forcing you to see things about yourself you don’t want to face.”
“Like the fact I was once attracted to this creep?”
“Yeah. I think so. Your feelings of repulsion are as strong as his feelings of attraction—you’re feeding off each other.”
“So, I break the cycle by accepting the shadow aspects of myself?”
I nod, “and by coming to terms with them.”
She smiles in amazement. “Well, I’ll be damned—talk about a fire below.”
“It happens,” I smile back.
Liz made a start on her epic voyage to a new beginning.
The feelings and dreams were archetypal moments at a transitional time in her life—opportunities for her to learn significant things about herself.
It may seem impossible for such occurrences to happen, but they do—it’s like Physics, where non-locality is the direct influence of one object upon another distant object.
In terms of our mental life, time and space are not as binding as they are in material reality.
Liz was able to integrate her waking and sleeping self and use an unwanted attraction as a means for personal growth.
