Either the bathroom is horrible and filthy like that in Trainspotting, or the bathroom is insanely public with no doors on the stalls (or no stalls!) and plenty of people milling about.
I dreamt I was in a large public building in France. It was some kind of display-like building like a Wal-mart, but without aisles so you could see the entire floor space. The “bathroom” was a large area that had several different toilets (and I use that term lightly) lined up side by side. No stalls, no walls, just a bunch of toilets on display as if in a furniture store.
Some were bedpan like, but most were like sinks with seats – my problems were:
a) This area was in plain sight of all the other shoppers.
b) There were two guys, also tourists, who were as confused as I and didn’t realize the “men’s” toilets were ten feet further over and the poor guys were trying no to look at the women who were peeing.
c) I had to do a “number two”, and most of these toilets seemed designed only for “number one” so I had to examine each toilet to find the kind that accepts poo. There were some, but of course most of them were broken or in use.
Oh, I hate the “Awful Bathroom Dream!”
At least this one wasn’t the horrible and filthy AND insanely public version.
[sub]And at least I did NOT wet the bed as a consequence of the dream.[/sub]
I have this dream-- It’s always horrible filthy AND horribly public. In mine I HAVE to go, due to horrible irritable bowel moment, ASAP, but yes things are really filthy and so am I, and I end up going somewhere really inappropriate and horrible mess and no, there are never any doors and you have to look everywhere for a semi-private spot and there are always people from your high school PE class milling about trying to hold discussions with you and your shirttails get involved or something nightmarish.
I’m glad someone else does this. I was starting to wonder if it was just me with a poo complex.
Yeah, those dreams are quite normal, and quite unpleasant—they are your brain’s way of saying to you, “Wake up! Get out of bed and get to the bathroom before it’s too late!” That’s why you never actually “go” in those dreams.
Charmian,
Canthearya is right, it does mean your feeling exposed but with you, it’s means a little more than that. It would seem that maybe you have a problem situation that your trying to work out and a few others are aware of it. Maybe it’s a situation where you need to maybe put distance between you and someone or something. You obviously feel it is a very personal situation and either you don’t want to hurt another, you are trying to be very careful about it.
I don’t know if this is right but … this is what I got out of it.
When I was a kid I used to have a similar scenario. I used to dream that there was one toilet that was insanely huge – there was no way a normal sized human could use this toilet, it was like 50 feet tall or something. Then I’d see a tiny door in the wall that said “toilet” but it was like a foot high and there was no way to fit through it. Sort of the Alice in Wonderland of horrible toilet dreams.
I know this is an aside, Charmian, but your email isn’t listed. Are you still coming to Doperéal with GF? I hope so! In any case, I’ve posted the itinerary.
I have dreams, which I believe are related, in which I forget to wear pants (or trousers for you non-Americans) and underwear (or pants, for you non-Americans) to work. In the dream I think to myself, Just act nonchalant, no one will notice that you’re naked from the waist down… chill out… It works for a minute, then someone notices, I panic and wake up.
The naked from the waist down seems to be a common dream though. I’ve had that too. I usually start freaking out but no one else is and that generally clues me in that I’m dreaming and I have fun with it from there.
I have those dreams! I thought it was just me. But they’re not often very public–usually it’s a basement or bathroom, someplace huge–which is filled with rows of horrible, filthy toilets. Sometimes there are stalls, like a maze, sometimes not. It’s awful, and luckily doesn’t happen very often.
I don’t dream about being naked in inappropriate places, though.
I also have those dreams where the bathrooms are disgusting and the toilets are filled with all things gross, or where the bathrooms are way too public. I never utilize these bathrooms in my dreams.
I don’t know what the recurrence of this dream theme means. I have heard one theory that when you dream of a house it represents the dreamer. The rooms in the house represent different facets of the dreamer’s personality/being. This might back up what ShanalaDee offered about a very personal issue needing to be solved or looked at. Even though these bathrooms do no usually appear to be in my house during the dream, I wonder if the basic premise can apply.
Charmian, please do not tell me that you and the other responders were really kidding and that you made up these dream scenarios to flush out us sick and demented individuals who really do have these dreams . . .
I’m tremendously relieved. I have yucky bathroom dreams all the time and I had absolutely no idea anyone else ever did. I mean, I told my psych-major/officemate/pal about the dream where the dog was having the sex-change operation, and I was too ashamed to ask for his take on these.
(I frequently have house dreams in general, about arranging the furniture or assigning rooms or whatever – usually there are plenty of clean bathrooms in these dreams – make of that what you will.)
(I also have dreams where I’m in a large hotel or similar building and have to work out routes up and down where certain elevators only go to certain combinations of floors, so I have to get off and make my way through some convoluted path to another set of elevators.)
BTW, for whoever’s doing the statistical analysis – I’m female. long, long pause [do I really want to hit submit?]
