It’s the day of the Final Exam and either a) I can’t find the class or b) I suddenly realize that I haven’t attended class since the beginning of the term and don’t have a clue what’s to be on the test. While in real life this would certainly create anxiety, in the dream the knowledge that I’m going to miss or fail this test is of Life v Death importance.
I’m in a public place (grocery store or school most often) when I realize I’m stark out Harry Potter in EQUUS nekkid. (Strangely it’s not really a nightmare- just a realization and somewhat uncomfortable and embarassing.)
I’m the star of a play and about to go onstage, which is bad because I just remember it and I haven’t rehearsed or even memorized my lines.
I’ve had far stranger dreams than the above, of course, but these are the dream templates I’ve had that seem to be shared by the most people in The Waking. (Number 1 is apparently so common that the movie Top Gun got a laugh out of it- Val Kilmer’s character is being tortured when he passes out, dreams he can’t find his class, then is brought back around by a Nazi slapping him and returns to being tortured by saying “Oh thank God, it was just a dream!”)
Have you had either of these three? Have you had another dream that seems to be particularly common that you’d like to share?
Just curious what the most universal nightmare is.
I’m having very good sex with somebody. IRL I’m exclusively gay but in my dreams I’m occasionally heterosexual, so it’s not surprising when I discover that my lover is female. What is repulsive though is when I realize the person I’m having great sex with is ____________. (For the template the _____ can be filled in with the name of anybody it would be highly inappropriate to have sex with: sometimes it’s a 100% platonic friend who you’re not only not attracted to but who’s [not your age, married, involved, uniquely unattractive, etc.], sometimes it’s a member of your immediate family, sometimes it’s a co-worker you see everyday and barely know and who’s not attractive and you’re wondering “Why the hell am I getting it on with this ugly bitter stick woman from the break room whose name I don’t even know?”)
My most common nightmares involve death by tornado. Usually starts with one, but there ends up being four or five and we’ll jump in a car and try to drive away but always manage to be unable to escape–usually I’ll wake up, surprised I’m not dead.
I’ve had the naked in the grocery store one a few times. Mine always starts with me thinking that it is perfectly normal to walk into the store naked. Then, I start to notice that everyone else has clothes on. It happened in church once as well.
I also have a re-ocurring dream where a volcano suddenly appears in my yard and I try to run, but can’t make any progress. This ones weird because it’s not like you could outrun lava anyway.
In rereading the OP I see that I didn’t acknowledge another favorite. That’s the one where you get into at least three levels of dreaming. In the third (or deeper) level some really bad shit starts happening and you finally “awaken” into the second (or something higher) level and wipe the sweat away and feel blessed that you were only dreaming. Then shit starts happening at that level and you’re confused about whether you could still be dreaming.
If/when you eventually waken, your day is shot because you’ll spend it wondering if you’re even awake. True, this doesn’t happen often. But once is too many times!
My most common nightmare is being betrayed or judged and having no one care. For example, someone believes something horrible about me and I’m screaming and thrashing around trying to convince them they’re wrong, but they ignore me. I get angrier and more frustrated and more destructive and out of control. It stems directly from my childhood, when my parents judged me “the bad kid” and I couldn’t do anything right, they never believed me, and blamed me for their marital problems. (Yes I’m in therapy, and yes the dreams have for the most part stopped.)
Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a dream where it was really important to yell “Fuck You” at some people (I forget the circumstances exactly, but it was really important). I tried to yell but nothing came out. I tried again with the same result. Then for the third try I really took a deep breath and put everything I had into it. I only got the “Fu” out before I startled myself awake with adreneline pumping through my body. That was the first time anything like that ever happened to me and it was freaky.
I have had the Final Exam one (also a real life situation, but that was a calculated decesion that didn’t work out very well), the dream where you are falling, the dream where you need to run but don’t go anywhere, and the dream where you are nekkid in public.
Another super common one for me is that I’ve gone back to school (or to a new job) and I’m late, I can’t remember what or where any of my classes are, where I’m supposed to go, or where to get my schedule, or any of my books.
I’ve had multiple variations on this dream–also trying to hit an attacker and having no strength in my arms, etc.
One dream I kept having for a while was that all my teeth were falling out. Anyone else had this? I can still feel that feeling of them working loose and the sort of metallic sucky softness of my gum where the tooth once was…
Just remembered another one. Not all that bad, but it comes around fairly often.
Somehow the house (or apartment) I’m living in is totally strange, nothing like anywhere I can remember even being in in my life, and it’s located on a street in a section of town that’s nothing like where I have ever lived.
During the course of the dream I’ll be taking all sorts of shortcuts through stange parts of town, up and down steep hills, going through strange barriers or hazards (like creeks or thickets) and trying to get back home. Once I get there it’s different from how it was when the dream started.
This particular dream has given me the most ammo for a “past lives” argument of anything I can imagine. Not that I take it all that serious. But still.
I’ve had all three, but your first scenario is the most common. I frequently have variations of that same dream, as does my husband. Though I haven’t been out of school that long, and he’s still in grad school.
However, my FIL is 63 and still has those nightmares, so I’m not holding out much hope for them stopping anytime soon.
I’ve had dreams about real places from my childhood and other times of my life in which the place is nothing like it was in real life. A frequent example is my grandfather’s house: IRL it’s a standard working-class 1930-ish small town bungalow style home one one floor with about 6 or 7 rooms. In dreams it’s massive, there are whole floors I’ve never noticed and a tower, a basement that has a pond and a tower from whose windows I can see other times and places, etc., NOTHING like the real place. (IRL you could see another time and place from the bathroom window, but it was just some woman’s guest bedroom from 1953 Utica, NY, so I don’t really count that.)
I have elevator nightmares, probably 6-12 times a year. Bad ones----- lurching, falling, up and down, trapped, you name it. Bad enough to jump start me awake.
I have no fear of elevators in real life, never have had fears of them, no bad experiences. But. Now that I keep on having these dreams, repeatedly, year in, year out, and no other dreams repeat like this, I’m wondering if perhaps I should be afraid of elevators, you know?
I always have the one where I have to run or hide, because someone’s after me and if they catch me they’ll kill me. It usually goes on a long time, with many and varied subplots. Once I killed the guy that was after me, and I woke really disturbed by that.
Another is having sex with an inappropriate person or stranger. I never ever dream about sex with my SO, which also disturbs me.
I get the finals and never been to class and the naked one alot. Sometimes the naked once actually involves a horrible old nightie, maybe even with some blood from a bad period on it and crazy bedhead. I also the occasional inappropriate sex partner dream which is always disturbing. And I often get dreams where I am married to my husband’s brother. This is a guy I’ve never clicked with and what usually happens is I’m going along thinking I’m married to my husband and the awful truth comes out and we have to think about consummating. Blech.