May Magic Mailbag 💌 Decoding Dreams, Narcissism, Step Parenting & More!
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Hi, this is Jessica Border, and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. So today, we're doing something different and fun. And honestly, it's going to be fun for me too. I get asked a lot of questions from you guys through Spotify and Supercast and over my Instagram, and I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions.

But the truth is, it's hard to answer some of those questions on normal episodes. So we decided we'd do something called a magic mailbag, a monthly episode where you guys can send in your questions. And I'm here to hopefully, fingers crossed, answer some of them. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible.

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Some of you have already gotten in touch with your questions, and some of them are pretty juicy. I look forward to working with them tonight and seeing if I can shed some light on your issues. But before we go on, I got to be clear here. I am not an expert on any of these topics, except maybe hypnosis. I will give you my experience and perspective, but if I'm stumped by your questions, I won't pretend to know stuff that I don't.

And if you need professional help with these issues, I encourage you to seek it out. So finally, if you fall asleep listening to my voice, because that's what happens when you listen to my voice, that's fine. If you're interested in getting the details of this episode, you can listen again while you're cleaning around the house or taking a walk or whatever. But I don't recommend you listen to this when you're driving or operating heavy machinery, as they say on the pill bottles.

If you're used to relaxing when you listen to my voice, we want you to be in a safe and comfortable place. All right, so let's get into it. Our first question comes from someone named Helene. Let me read it to you. There's one aspect of my life I'm really struggling with. My brother has been married for 30 years to a narcissist, the sociopathic tendencies kind. Let's call her Winnie, not real name.

But Winnie is triggering me, big time. Every time I encounter her, she causes the welling up of raw, triggered emotions that takes me a week or more to work through. It's anger. It's resentment. It's wanting to put her and all other narcissists in their place, fight for the victims. It plays out in my thoughts over and over. I brew. I do not want her to steal my peace. And no contact is not an option.

Do you have any hypnosis for me to look at Winnie, greet her, and feel nothing? When she degrades my brother in front of me, look at her and feel nothing? Helene. Okay, very interesting question. Well, first of all, it's sort of difficult for any of us to technically diagnose a narcissist or some kind of personality disorder. So let's consider this person a very self-centered person. I think that's what's happening underneath Winnie.

all of these experiences we have with what we call narcissists these days. The person is like locked on continually bringing the energy back to themselves. And that can be really frustrating and induce a lot of rage because

You know, in my experience with very self-centered people, I'm coming to the table like wanting to create a connection, wanting to have sort of a circuit of energy between us. I'm bringing my heart, my brain, my gut. And this person, after a while, I start to realize whoever this person is, in my experience, is actually bringing the circuit back to themselves, like sucking the air out of the room, not creating an open, balanced exchange. And that...

The rage that I feel when I'm in that situation is very real, and it makes perfect sense. So first, I want to say, don't judge yourself for the rage. The rage is not a judgment of her, per se. It's that you feel thwarted in your ability to create a circuit with this person. Second, you can't change her. I think you know that, but it just bears repeating. You are powerless over Winnie. Powerless.

And it makes perfect sense that with this inability to create a communication with somebody, an inability to be seen, to be received, to relate, that you've been trying on some deep unconscious level, that you've been like reaching out tentacles of maybe if I do this, maybe if I manipulate this, maybe if I ask the right question, maybe if I listen more, then she'll listen more and give up. There's no changing that.

this person. But especially if someone falls into this highly self-centered category, they're even harder to influence. So it's okay to let go. In fact, it may be the only thing you can do. Now, you asked specifically for hypnosis to help you feel nothing.

And what I would say is it's actually pretty difficult to feel nothing. And the subconscious mind doesn't like to aim at nothing. It likes to aim very actively at something. So it sounds like a habit has been built up in your subconscious mind. And up until this point, every time you've dealt with Winnie, especially since you've realized that she's sort of impossible, every time you've dealt with Winnie, she's become this sort of anchor or trigger, as you say.

to you feeling tense and you feeling irritated and frustrated. And the thing about the subconscious mind is it's a learning machine. It doesn't stop. It keeps going forward. And whatever reaction you start to develop in the subconscious mind, it just gets better and better and better at that, like it's learning a language. And momentum begins.

So, whereas originally you may have just been frustrated with Winnie, then you kept developing your reaction to her and now it's rage. Now that's your side of the street, is the reaction that you're having. And because you're learning how to use your mind with sleep magic in more creative, positive, powerful ways, you understand that if you take yourself deep into relaxation and give yourself a new suggestion around Winnie,

that you can create a new experience. So if from up until this point, Winnie has triggered this rage in you, let's say from now on, every time you see Winnie or hear her voice, you relax. What if you did that? What if you made that choice? Understanding that you're completely powerless over her. You got to raise the white flag here. There's no fixing your brother's marriage. There's no fixing her. There's just changing your response.

So let's say from now on, for the rest of your life, when you see or hear Winnie, you relax. Now you need to give yourself that suggestion while you're deeply relaxed, and then you need to practice it. And let's take it a little further. So it's not just whenever you see Winnie, you relax. Let's say whenever you see Winnie, you take a nice deep breath and you say to yourself, I'm here to connect with my family.

I'm here to connect with my family. And then your energy moves into all the familial connections that are available to you under these circumstances. Maybe there's a little kid you can play with. Maybe there's an older person you can be of service to. Maybe there's a contemporary you can hang out with and talk to and feel seen by and listened to.

Chances are your reaction has become so strong that in even a group of people, you are subconsciously still like attached to Winnie because she drives you so mad. But as you practice this new response, every time I see Winnie, I take a nice deep breath and say to myself, I'm here to connect with my family. And then you do that. You actively steer this energy in a new direction, in a positive direction.

Now, you will have to practice this, maybe several times. And you may need to tell yourself this a few times in deep relaxation. Like maybe when you're first listening to sleep magic and you go into that nice state, you say to yourself, every time I see Winnie, I relax, I let go, and I say to myself, I'm here to connect with my family and see what happens. You have more control than you think. Great. Great question. Thank you for asking.

Moving on. So this next one is from Anonymous. She says, I have two kids under five and so far so good. They're not yet at the stage where they're embarrassed by me and they still love their mom. I know the days of this are numbered.

I worry about who my kids are going to grow up to be. It's so different from when I was a kid. Everyone's on TikTok and obsessed with their online image. It's like they're growing up too fast and disconnecting from the real world. I worry my son could be one of those chat room misogynists and my daughter obsessed with makeup videos and hating herself. Am I being too pessimistic or are our kids doomed? What do you think, Jessica? Well, Anonymous, that is a great question and

I'll give you one of the lines I've said my entire adult life. Parenting is hard. Take it from someone who watches other people do it. I don't have kids. But I think sometimes by not having kids, I'm able to observe people parenting in a way that's slightly more detached because I don't have my own skin in the game. And I tell you,

It looks daunting. I have mad respect for people who bring up children, especially these days. Now, let me tell you something as a hypnotherapist. Well, first of all, when I take somebody into deep hypnosis and we start going back through their childhood and the major players of their childhood, like their parents or their grandparents or their siblings,

becomes strikingly obvious immediately who was present for that person because it has registered on a deep, deep level, probably in the neurons of the heart and the gut. And that individual that I'm working with has this sense of who that person was like, oh yeah, my mom. I say mom because I'm Canadian and you're clearly British.

my mom, she was there. I could depend on her. She saw me. She heard me. She was present. Now, was she perfect? No. Did she make mistakes? Of course. But on some deep energy level, was she available to me? Yes. People know that. They know it in their bones. They know it in their cells. So what I want to say to you, Anonymous, is that

I get that kids are growing up in an entirely different landscape. We don't even know what the internet and social media is doing, really. So we're all kind of in this big experiment. But our humanity is still inside us. It's a biological thing.

And we resonate and entrain with other humans, loving them, connecting with them, seeing them, hearing them. That's the real stuff. And I think it's what you're afraid your kids are going to pull away from. And you know what? At certain points, they will. I mean, I watched hours of TV every day. And...

I know people who hid out in books, and the internet is kind of just another form of escape, albeit more complicated and potentially dangerous. It is our minds seeking altered states of consciousness. And by the way, it's completely normal to seek an altered state of consciousness. So don't judge your kids for wanting to space out.

In fact, Andrew Weil, in his really great book called The Natural Mind, says that the drive to alter consciousness is like second only to the sex drive, especially in adolescence. So it's okay that they want to enter these worlds. The question is what is at home for them when they come back to the so-called real world.

And that's you and the other humans in that environment. So by taking care of you, by staying centered, meditating, eating well, taking time, detaching from screens, etc., really listening to your kids, making eye contact, being present, not obsessively so, but just so that they have this rhythm of knowing that you are there.

And you're not a screen. You're not, you know, a chat room. For you to maintain that integrity in you, they know it. They feel it. And as frustrating and as scary as it can be to watch them make their forays into the digital world, it's really about the balance of them having a place to come. And that's you, energetically, and any other grown-up in their life. So I hope that makes sense.

I mean, I get that we're all in this crazy place in the world and we are launching kids into a world that none of us really understand or have too much experience with because none of us grew up in a digital world and they are the first, but they're still human. So let's nourish that part of them. I mean, on a technical, practical level, maybe you can set some boundaries around that stuff. I'm not great with that and

Parents, I'm sure, wrestle with that all the time. So I would speak to other parents about how to get that done. But know that your humanity is what they're in training with on some level and really show up for them as a human. And they won't lose that in themselves. Great. Next question, also from Anonymous. Help, I'm obsessed with my ex.

We broke up four months ago and I can't get him out of my head. I keep stalking him online and wherever I go, I hope I'll bump into him. What's weirder is that I'm the one that ended our relationship after two years. How do you let go of someone once your relationship has ended? I don't know if I want to be back with him or I just want him to still want me. Ha ha. Weird, right? I mean, not weird at all, I don't think. Um,

Full disclosure, I have been way more single than I have been coupled. So what I say may be of no use whatsoever. But I do think that when we get close to another human being, based on what we're learning about the three brains, the brain in your head, the brain in your heart, the brain in your gut, and then all the hormones,

that come into play with physical intimacy, we are so connected to that other person on deep, invisible levels, especially if you're on the female side of that spectrum, because we're very emotionally driven, that, you know, this idea that you can just break up in a minute and do this sort of karate chop of the energy and have it be over is kind of absurd.

I mean, it took time for the chemicals, the energy, the little tendrils of connection to develop and strengthen. It may take time for them to, you know, ossify and release and die off. I mean, we do have hormones and neurotransmitters, principally oxytocin, which women have lots and lots of oxytocin, and it is a pair bonding hormone.

That causes us to feel connected and sort of stuck to whoever we're with, even if it's a really bad choice in partner. Once we've spent enough time with that person and felt aroused, we get in there, stuck in there, and it can take a while for oxytocin to mellow out. All that said, what I would recommend that you do, if it helps at all, is...

I don't know. I live my life connected to nature or the quantum field. I think of nature as a big benevolent symphony of energies that I am a part of. Like I'm not the biggest thing in the room. There are forces moving through me and around me that I can trust and lean on and relax into.

Some people call this source, some people call it infinity, some people call it God. I don't think the word really matters, but I think we're part of a bigger system. And even just looking at nature is proof positive of that. So what you might want to do is write down your ex-boyfriend's name, put it on a little piece of paper, and put it in your nature box, or your source box, or your infinity box.

And just give it away to the bigger picture. Give him to the bigger picture because he belongs to the bigger picture too. And you have no idea what your relationship was meant to do for you or him, what role it was supposed to play in the world. And by giving him away, maybe you have to do it every morning, for a month, who knows, for a year, I don't know. But by giving him back to the bigger picture, you...

We'll feel, I hope, some relief and any grief or learning or fear of being alone or any of those other feelings that you may be repressing. You know, you give them a chance to come up and be processed. I think every relationship is here to help us grow.

And often within the meat and potatoes of the relationship, we feel so connected to that person, we can lose ourselves in it. And that's sort of a delicious feeling. It may be even part of our growth. But ultimately, you know, we're asked to look through this lens of ourselves and our relationship to our own life and the primary players in it and that bigger picture. So we need to stay responsible to our own experience.

And every relationship helps us to learn and grow and be a better person for the next one. So you may need to step into that work at a certain point. And putting his name on a piece of paper and putting it into your universe box or your nature box will help you do that. But be nice to yourself. Be gentle. My mother used to say it takes like 50% the time of the relationship to get over it, especially if it was hard.

And I always thought, oh God, that's a long time. And I think she was overestimating a bit, but I think it was a gentle, loving overestimation that would give us permission to just be messy for a while. Things take time. Things take time, generally more than we think. Thank you for asking that. Okay, next from Laura. My stepkid's mom won't talk to me.

I don't expect us to be BFFs, but she totally ignores me. It's uncomfortable for the kids, and I don't want them to blame me for it or stop inviting us all to their events. They have tons of extracurriculars, and I want everyone to be there to support them. But she's always huffing about and standing on the other side of the pitch or hall with a sour face. I try to be civil and start conversations, but she always gives me the cold shoulder.

She'll still talk to my husband in front of me sometimes, and it even seems like she's flirting with him. He doesn't tell her to stop, and he just ignores it. I don't want the kids to pick up on the bad vibes, but they're getting older, and I worry that they're going to pick sides. I also think she might talk bad about me to them. How can I balance this without sinking to her level? Should I talk to her? Well, this is really interesting. I like this question a lot. Um,

I am not a parent, as I said before, nor am I a stepparent, but I was stepparented on both sides. And I feel like the three different stepparents that I had at different times, all three of them had an innate understanding of the detachment required from a stepparent, at least in my circumstances, because both of my parents were still alive and

and had to, like, sort things out in order to take care of me and my sister. There were also new children being born on one of the sides. So it was a tricky, tricky dance. And I have a lot of respect for my step-parents, two of whom are still living. So what I want to say to you is, this is kind of not your rodeo. You know what I mean? I mean,

I totally understand that you are in a difficult position here. But the players in this drama are the kids and the parents. They're kind of in this primary unit. And I don't mean that you are less important or that the second marriage is less important. If anything, you get the opportunity to grow a whole new healthier thing with your husband. That's great. And something she may resent. But

When it comes to these children, their parents will always be their parents and only their parents will be their parents. And they are neurologically and biologically bound in this unit in a way that you never will be. And that's both a blessing, and I don't want to say a curse because it's not a curse at all. It sort of cuts both ways. Because you are not part of this biological unit,

you can actually play this beautiful role, a sort of detached elder who gets to be a bonus parent, who is value-added. And especially if you remain sort of Switzerland around the weird vibes, they will notice that. I mean, they may not notice it consciously or remark upon it as teenagers, but believe me,

As they continue to get older and they become adults, the energetic role that you play, if it's kind and detached and not reactive to the dramas within their little unit, that will be really appreciated. So don't let any insecurity that you may have suck you in. You're in a very special position and...

All I know is that the older I've gotten, the more I love my step-parents because they didn't get involved in the dramas of the original unit. And they knew how to, and I really hate this saying, so I can't believe I'm going to say it, but they knew how to stay in their lane. But because of that, I consider them such valuable, valuable members of my personal history.

such valuable additions to the richness of my life because they were detached. Believe me, those kids sense the difference between

their mom's possibly manipulative or underhanded stuff or her not behaving kindly to you they can see that they know it they feel it they may not feel like they can remark upon it or change it but they know who's being the good guy or the bad guy here those are extreme statements but you know what i'm saying so i would encourage you to do everything you can to develop your own self-love

and to really honor and work within your own sphere of influence. You have influence over those kids. It's different, possibly, than you think it is, and it is not in any way contingent upon your relationship with their mother. They know you can't control that. They know more than anybody probably what you're dealing with. So just be you.

Be kind, be patient, be gentle, develop your own life, develop your own interests, bring good vibes to the family, and that's it. And then as they get older, they will have you to come to, to lean on, to ask questions of, to appreciate. But if you are pulled too much into worrying about what this woman thinks of you, you lose all that. This is her issue.

within a nuclear unit that she is part of for the rest of her life. She's the one who has lost a marriage and has her children spend time with another woman she doesn't know that well. She's got her emotional stuff. And if anything, you may want to, you know, send her good vibes because probably through her eyes, you're looking like, you know, you have everything.

I don't know. I don't want to like get into people's heads too much, but if I can give you anything at all from someone who is step-parented, tread very lightly, develop your own life, and you are value added to those kids and they'll know it. All right. Thank you for writing. Next question. So many questions about kids. Asking the childless lady about kids. Okay. Here's the question. How do you know if you want a kid?

I'm nearing my late 30s and I'm still not sure at all. I'm feeling the pressure and sometimes I feel really broody for a baby. Then I see the more grown up ones and find them loud and annoying. There's no other kids in my family. My brother's gay and has decided against kids and I never had baby siblings or cousins growing up. Sometimes it's like my body and hormones are telling me that I really want one, but rationally I still don't know. My partner is indifferent and says it's my choice.

What do I do? The clock is ticking. From Anonymous. I feel for you. You know, it occurred to me the other day that this is a thoroughly modern situation. Like, up until about a hundred years ago, now I'm not saying, like, midwives and witches and stuff didn't have, like, forms of birth control with witchy poo plants, I'm sure they did, but...

It was only about a hundred years ago, with like Margaret Sanger and the advent of a real birth control movement, that women had any choice in this matter really at all. But these days we actually can bring our brain to the mix.

And ask ourselves, like, is this what I want? Thoroughly modern question. And what's interesting is I'm not sure that questioning, you know, was part of biology's plan because there's a lot of factors involved in becoming a parent and they're not all in your brain, as you've mentioned. Well, I'll tell you what I did. Around the same age as you, I remember having a really clear moment

And I said to the universe or fate or whatever it was that was, you know, had kind of brought me here and was driving my life to some extent. Because I believe I have lots of choices in my life, but I also think there's a lot of things that I didn't have choice about and that continue to, like patterns that run through me, even through my DNA that I don't have any control over. And so I said to these, the bigger picture,

If you need me to be a mother, I'm good with that. Let's do it. Like, let's do it. Let's make it happen. Because it's not complicated to become a mother. I'm not saying it's easy for every single person, but it's not a complicated process. So if it's in the cards, I design my life to make that happen. But if it's not in the cards, if it's not in the bigger design of things, just keep me interested.

And those were the words I used. Just keep me interested. Just don't make my life be about not having had a child. Keep me involved. Keep me loving. Keep me even mothering. Just possibly not my own baby. Keep me happy. So I don't know if that helps at all. I do know that for the most part,

The people I know who've become parents really wanted to become parents. It wasn't something they kind of just slid into, although that does happen. But most of my friends were like, yeah, I want to get married. I want to have kids. They knew. I never had a wedding fantasy, not once in my life, nor has my older sister who's also not married. Like it just wasn't on our radar as a thing that we knew we needed to do.

And although I too felt broody, as you say, or the baby ache for a number of years, and had life made me a mother during those years, I think I would have happily moved into that chapter. It's not a chapter per se, it's more of a complete transformation.

I wasn't somebody who sat and thought about it and planned about it and thought, I want three kids and I want one boy and two boys. So I would ask yourself, you know, are you that person? Have you had it on your emotional radar, your psychic radar, your whole life to be a mom? That's important. That's really important information. And if you haven't, what are you here to do? And I don't mean that like, what the heck are you here to do if it's not a mother? I mean, for the first time in human history,

There are women who have the freedom, the resources, the education, the leisure time to have lives that aren't entirely organized by their children. And lots of women are choosing to experiment with those lives. I'm not saying it's better or worse.

God bless the mothers. I have a ton, a ton of respect for mothers. And if you've listened to me for a while, I did hypnosis for childbirth for 10 years and worked with mothers in labor and preparing. And I just think motherhood is just the biggest thing there is. But isn't it interesting that we're hitting a generation where we get to see what women bring to the table beyond motherhood?

And maybe some women are meant to express that side of their humanity. I think I'm one of those women. That's why I said, just keep me interested. Just show me what I'm meant to be doing if it's not a primary caregiving of my own children. And now that I don't have my own children, I feel like I play this special role in many, many families, including my sister's families and the families of my friends, where I'm this sort of auntie.

And I love that. I love that. And there have been some women in every generation who haven't had kids and have played those roles. And they're very important roles because we don't have children that we can give this sort of unfettered attention to other people's children. So yeah, I feel for you. It's such a personal thing, such an important thing. But really at the end of the day, I think we need to ask ourselves when we

consider a decision when we think about that decision like do I want to take this job do I want to go on this trip do I want to continue in this relationship with this person to ask ourselves that question and then check in really deeply with am I relaxing into this proposition am I opening into this idea or tensing up and closing off that I think is where the decision

is ultimately made. So yeah, let me know what you decide. Next, I need help with my TikTok addiction. This is from someone named Tina. I'm a very strong woman politically and find myself wanting to challenge people on a daily basis. I know I'm not getting anywhere with them, but I can't seem to put the phone down. I start every day telling myself I'm not going to spend so much time on it, but then I fall right back into it. It's killing my health. Help, please.

Well, this is a very interesting question because I'm sure a lot of people are in this position. I don't like social media. I feel blessed with an allergy to it. Like, it freaks me out. But I love myself some TV. That's my thing. That's the thing where I can, you know, binge on a show and just go on and on and on and really lose a whole evening or whatever. The thing about TikTok and social media is that it's interactive, so...

you are directly connecting with other humans and sometimes ultimately in destructive ways, you know, where you're burning bridges. And what we're getting out of it is some hit, some dopamine connected to the anger, some rush of adrenaline. And ultimately that stuff is hard on your body, hard on your mind and unsustainable. So you say in your question, I start every day telling myself I'm not going to spend so much time on it.

That is where I want to enter this issue. The subconscious mind doesn't understand negation. We can't just negate an idea and expect the subconscious mind to really get that. So if I say, I don't eat chocolate, what comes up in my imagination immediately and in my salivary glands is chocolate. I think about it immediately.

In fact, I've made the suggestion that I eat chocolate. And when you tell yourself every morning, I'm not going to spend so much time on TikTok, you are effectively saying, I am going to spend so much time on TikTok. The negation is like a glass box. You can see right through it.

So what the subconscious mind requires is, especially when it comes to breaking a habit, is the forging of a new habit. So you're proactive. The energy is moving. You can't move into a brick wall of no. You can't move into nothing, like we talked about at the head of the show. We need to move towards something and generally something that feels good. So I would say to yourself,

Don't ask yourself to get off TikTok today, but start to forge the new neural pathways of doing something alternative, something pleasant. And I want to encourage you to set

a boundary around this, a time boundary. I'm really big into doing my life by a timer. I know that like Pomodoro is an app that started several years ago where it encourages you to time 25 minutes at a time and get something done. And I just want to say, for the record, I invented Pomodoro like 20 years before Pomodoro. Don't you hate it when stuff comes along and you're like, I thought of that first. But I kind of did.

The point is, for many, many years, especially around a task that I don't feel great about, I don't enjoy that much or whatever, something that's difficult, I set a time boundary. I set a timer. Now, that doesn't mean I watch the clock. It means I literally set a timer on my phone. So there's an alarm that's going to go off. And when I set that timer,

It's kind of like a hypnotic induction. Something in me relaxes. I get that there's a beginning, middle, and end to this task. And I start functioning more from my subconscious mind than my conscious mind. I sink more into my body. I connect more with my feelings. And I'm not in the stress of, oh God, I don't like doing this. I hate doing this. I don't want to be doing this. I just settle.

So I want to encourage you to think about a thing that you could do that feels good and that involves your senses. When we spend so much time on a screen, we get into sort of this compression of our senses. We stop connecting with our bodies. We start connecting with our sense of touch. We no longer smell. We're just, you know, functioning from this very narrow little highway in our brains.

So set a timer for, say, 10 minutes. Make it short. Something that, a period of time that you won't develop too much resistance to, that doesn't feel too heavy. And the thing you do in this time, like walking outside, taking deep breaths, doing a little yoga, cooking, you're beginning to cook muffins, whatever it is, like something in the real world that's not screen-related. Calling a friend.

You do it according to the timer, and then when the timer goes off, you stop. You don't go, oh, that was 10 minutes, let's do an hour and a half. We're training your mind to develop alternative and more positive neural pathways, and that doesn't happen in a day. But what you're doing is creating a whole other box in your mind that starts to feel good.

And you'll have a comparison to the TikTok box. Now, truth be told, I think our attachment to social media and to our phones is, I don't know, it's so simple because all it takes is just putting down your phone. And yet it's so complicated because your phone is your whole life at this point. I mean, unfortunately, not yours, but all of our lives are in our phones.

But I really think we need to just create these phone-free experiences. So when I said talking to your friend on your phone, you know, make it hands-free and put your phone in the other room and use your AirPods. Be in a conversation with another human being. But although putting down the phone is very simple, and I encourage you, if you can do it, and just be like, I just put down my phone for an hour, yay! And it felt easy. Great, great, great, great, great.

But we have developed so many habits about pulling ourselves back to the phone that sometimes we need to be really proactive about developing alternative sort of real-life embodied sensory experiences. And instead of focusing on not being on TikTok, forget that. You're never going to not be on TikTok if that's the goal. Make the goal a beautiful sensory experience.

lovely embodied experience. Time it, be in it, enjoy it, be in your body and remember what it is to feel connected in the real world. Practice that, practice that and let me know what happens. Do it for 30 days and we'll talk again. Thank you, Tina.

All right, we have time for one more question. And I'm sorry to the people, Angela, Clover, Janet, Hayden, Eddie, Kathy. We got a lot of questions from people and we will hold them in reserve and move to them next month. And please, other people, send new questions, but we can only get to so many. And thank you, thank you, thank you for sending them. It's really great. Final question. My question from Lisa is about dreams and your thoughts about them.

I have vivid dreams and a few recurring ones. Specifically, I have a few where I can't find my high school locker. I don't remember my combination or I realize I'm not graduating because I forgot to attend a class for the year. Usually biology, chemistry, or PE. Do you think these dreams mean anything? In general, what do you think about dream interpretation? Lisa, I love your dream.

I have my own versions of those dreams. Like that there's an exam today and no one told me about the exam. And I forgot to study because I didn't know about the exam. That's the one that I have. Well, first of all, for the most part, I don't take dreams that seriously. I really think that the brain just like needs to take out the garbage at night and I don't get all attached to my dreams. Now, maybe I am missing out on a huge part of my life because of that, but...

I do think that we are biological creatures and a lot of stuff that moves through us is just the body needing to do what the body does. So that's answer number one. Answer number two is I am quite sensitive to my dreams with respect to what I have eaten the day before. Now this is personal to me, but I certainly have made connections between eating sugar or detoxing from sugar, whatever I can have like anxiety dreams a couple days after getting off of sugar, etc.,

So I also think along the lines of we are biological creatures that what we put in can create a certain type of dream. And you might want to look at that. You know, are there, is there anything, are you having a glass of wine before you have your recurring dreams? Are you, you know, doing some other thing? But finally, I too have recurring dreams and I have several of them, like a handful of them. And some of them I've had for years.

And I do think that these dreams are asking us to resolve something or meditate on something or come to peace with something. And I'm kind of fascinated by them. I don't expect anyone else to be fascinated by my recurring dreams, but I do hold them in a different place. I did have the great pleasure of knowing a friend, an older man. His name's Roy Battersby. And Roy...

was a film director and producer in England who recently passed away. Roy was completely into Carl Jung, his form of psychoanalysis, and specifically his dream work. And Roy took his dreams very, very seriously and would sort of come to the table with his feelings about his dreams. And he would encourage me to talk about mine.

What I loved about how Roy approached dreams was that it wasn't analytical. I didn't say, oh, I dreamt about a frog, and he said, frogs mean X, Y, Z. It wasn't like the conscious mind analyzing the stuff of the subconscious mind. He really encouraged me to be in my dream again, to hold it, to learn from it from a feeling place.

to slow down and not be quick to interpret it. And because dreams are so ephemeral and they sort of slip away so quickly anyway, especially when we start to think about them, it was great to ask my body to go back to that place where the dream lived and even sort of imagine it moving further, imagine it developing. Like, what did it mean to me?

I mean, this thing is happening through me. My body and my psyche is asking me to consider material again and again. And maybe I'll never come to some pat, resolved little box with a bow on it about a dream. Maybe that dream is just there for me to sort of hug it and be with it and merge with it. So...

I don't know. I mean, I think the locker dream and me not having studied for the exam, I think that's sort of obviously maybe I'm feeling anxious about something. But I guess what I would say is let your dream sort of move through you and don't judge it. Don't get freaked out by it. Make friends with it. I always think of Roy when I think about my dreams and he took such pleasure in them.

It was like, this is me talking to myself. Like how fantastic. This is the unconscious. Like it's a conversation with the unconscious. Really listen. And although I think that most dreams are kind of like my mind just dumping garbage, you know the ones that are important. You know, the ones that really grip you. That's all we have time for today.

I hope you guys enjoyed my ramblings about narcissists and exes and social media. We're going to aim to do this monthly with extended episodes for our team magic members. Those are subscribers. So please submit your questions in the next few weeks and I can answer them in the next episode.

As I hope it's become clear, you can ask me anything, whether it's about an issue you're having, a question about me, or just a question about life. I will do my best to give you my perspective. You can submit your questions via the Ask Me Anything feature on Supercast. That's the link that's in the show notes of this episode.

Or if you're subscribed on Apple or subscribed through the Sleepiest app, you can send your questions to hello at sleepmagic.fm. That's hello at sleepmagic.fm. I really look forward to hearing your questions. Please let me know in the reviews and Spotify comments what you think of this episode. And again, I'm sorry I couldn't get to all the questions, but please keep sending them in and we will do our best to hit all of them.

Thank you so much for listening and good night.