Why we dream? I think I got it just now.
I've been doing quite of therapy and self analysis in the last months, and actually managed to change some of negative beliefs that were holding me back in my life. I've been comparing this feeling of bending my perception to the feeling of bending the physical alingment of the bones and cartilage that I've experience during my physiotherapy. That feeling was unpleasant and felt like twisting something, as if something was going wrong, but after having done this movement for many enough times it became the new normal, and actually improved the function of the body. Similarly I saw psychotherapy, where the new belief felt uncomfortable and wrong, but after enough time of exercising such possibility it turned out to be the healthy one. Today I woke up from a dream and while trying to remember all the events there I realised that at one moment I did have this feeling of congitive mind bending. I dreamt about being in high school, but not my high school, a new one. For some reason I wanted to get admitted there, in my current age. The school was in France and French is the last language that I ever both could and wanted to learn. The person taking care of the class was my current manager at work. I remember having asked him about the class schedule and he could not answer. Next, after the first class I went to the school secretary to ask about how I'd actually get admitted and she explained that the admission fee is 240€, and the bus tickets for this semester will be 300€. Seeing my surprise they mentioned that I can use the trick or paying for the bus by solutions to French crosswords. And at this point I had the mind bending experience: I asked myself "Is it worth it? Why am I doing this?! Why do I try to put myself where I don't belong? Don't I know that I'm already good enough? I'm not French, I don't have to be French only because I could. I'm me!".
And this is why we dream I think. It was an important realisation that came from the subconsciousness, and I guess it's much easier for the subconsciousness to change the neural connections in the brain while we are asleep and fully relaxed. It would be easy to miss the importance of that moment: "well I dreamed I thought I was worthy, so what". But it was not only that I dreamed about it, I also felt that bending feeling. Which means that it left a permanent physical trace in my brain. And even without changing a belief, sometimes merely expressing an emotion can be profoundly healing too. Visualization and stories are tools that are actually used in psychotherapy. Dreaming is our subconsciousness having a therapy session with us. It's the mind bending that happens in the most susceptible state of mind: during sleep.
That moment in the dream was so important for me as it matches so well the problem I'm facing right now: being scared that I'm not good enough at work. I searched for meaning of "being back in high school" dream, and one of sentences that I found relevant was mentioning: "performance anxiety". Of course, my manager. If course, no documentation. Of course, the language which I don't understand. And the concluding realisation: "I don't have to be anyone just because I could", and "I'm good enough". You see, in both cases (reality and the dream) there's not even an expectation I'm not meeting, there's just a hypothetical possibility to be someone else. The thing is, I don't have to even remember the realisation I had, I didn't have to remember that dream at all, to have the effect there. I know my brain has already been affected by that dream and I expect that next time when the "am I good enough?" thoughts get activated, my brain will react differently.