Last night I had a very disturbing dream that brought back a feeling I hadn't had in years- a feeling I had at a certain time of my life in which I felt unloved, unwanted and completely alone- you could say that I was 'loneliness' personified.
In this dream I was in the same mindspace/emotional place as I was then, and I was reinterpreting things that have happened in my life (and inventing things that didn't actually happen) to justify the way I felt- I was feeling alone and rejected, so I was reexperiencing happy moments in my life (past successes in my professional life, past relationships that ended because I was done with them, and other things that were the exact opposite of what I was now experiencing- as if I were rewriting history in a very negative way, in effect denying the happy moments I have had in my life.
This was very frightening because it felt like it was me, and not 'an aspect' of me- in other people's retrieval accounts, I have always interpreted their retrievals as objectified remains that are experienced as external to yourself, but this was not this- this was as if that part of me had remained in the same train as it was at that moment and as if my life had been different- and it was horrible, something I couldn't live with.
Most of the aspect retrieval techniques I have read about involve treating the aspect as an object you integrate with, while in my case it feels more like an attempt to take over my mind with false memories and very strong, very negative emotions, emotions that threaten to overtake my own, or so it feels like that.
So if anyone has any ideas about how to deal with it, I'm all ears.