Over the past 4 1/2 years (this includes my cancer treatment), I’ve had a lot of dreams where I’m trapped in some kind of maze, with exits clearly marked but somehow, I can’t escape.
This them has been joined, if you will, by dreams that I didn’t really sell the house in my old town. Really, folks, I signed all the papers (and got the check) in 2011. I don’t even think about that place much, except when I see posts from (mostly) old co-workers on Facebook.
This seems to have taken over for another theme I’ve had almost every year at this time since 1995, and that’s that I somehow missed a crucial class, or test, and my professional degree and license are invalid. It’s always been a relief to wake up and realize it’s still just a dream.
If it helps, I also have dreams where I’m trapped in some sort of space designed by Escher, with no way out. I don’t think I’m going insane, it’s just a phase.
When I have these kinds of dreams (not particularly recurring, but sometimes they seem very familiar) I call them anxiety dreams. When I have them, I realize that I’m more anxious about something than I realize, so I try to figure out what that something is, and then deal with it, if only emotionally. The theme of the dream may not have any direct bearing on whatever it is I’m anxious about, so this may take some personal internal digging.
The best dream I ever had was after two years of therapy, when I was around 40. I dreamt I was going into my childhood home, only it was 2 or 3 times bigger than I remembered it, and there was neither furniture nor other people in it, and all the windows and doors were open, and there was a lovely soft fragrant breeze blowing through it.
There’s a theory that dreams mean nothing. I don’t believe it. I’ve had recurring nightmares that only stopped after their meaning became clear to me. Unfortunately, this often took awhile.
The best advice I ever read about dream interpretation was to start with emotions. Does the maze dream make you feel panicked? Confused? Frustrated? Frightened? Use that to help you figure out what the dream tells you about your state of mind. (I don’t believe in symbolism in dreams, e.g., a tornado symbolizes anger, a child lost innocence.)
The missed class, test, etc. is one of the most common anxiety dreams. Once I became a teacher, I stopped dreaming I walked into a class I’d never attended to find the final in progress and started dreaming the tardy bell had rung and I couldn’t find my classroom. The mood of the dream was anxiety and pressure. I was worried my own issues would keep me from meeting my responsibilities.
Your dreams about your license rang a bell with me. After almost 40 yrs I still dream that I have to do additional experiments for my degree. Several other alumnae from my school say they have the same nightmares. Perfectly normal (?!).
I lived on a sailboat in the early 90’s, sold it in 1994. I still wake up in a panic every so often, thinking,
" I haven’t checked on the boat, what if it’s leaking and the pumps failed". Stupid brain, give it a rest.
I’m with you. Some, maybe even most, dreams may be idle neurons firing. But other dreams obviously represent current anxieties.
I’ve yet to speak to a loving parent who hasn’t had one or more dreams about an adored child getting lost or harmed. My own was when I dreamed I was on a rocky beach with rough waves and suddenly realized my 2-year-old was missing, presumably having been swept out to sea while my attention was momentarily diverted. I hopelessly screamed his name over and over while scrambling across the rocks looking for him, feeling desolate.
That was one dream over two decades ago, but it is just as vivid to me now as if I woke up from it moments ago. Did that dream have meaning? Duh, of course it did. It represented my completely normal fear as a parent that I would make a mistake leading to the loss of my fiercely beloved child.
In my moderately humble opinion, there is no reason why dreams can’t serve multiple functions. They can help us express our anxieties, solve problems, provide a sexual outlet (hey, I have had some pretty pornographic dreams from time to time), divert a tired brain … or just wander around idly because they aren’t addressing any particular need.
I dunno. If it were me, and I felt anxious during the dream, I’d ask myself what I’m anxious about that time that the house dream could help me understand. Am I worried that I hadn’t resolved some issue from back then before moving on and that it’ll keep me from that I can’t really move on because I didn’t? Or maybe that I’m compelled to go back to a bad time in my life? Or I wasn’t ready for what lay ahead?
Or maybe that was just an instance when you had a lot of anxiety about details, and whenever life gets complicated, that’s what your brain goes back to. If you figure it out, let us know. I’d be interested.
I repeatedly dream I’m in a white room that is up in the sky.
In the room my Mother is laying in the bed.
She sits up and has a book she’s pointing to.
I go over to see the book and she and the book disappear.
I’m never able to see the words in the book and I’m sure I need to.
When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream of my maternal grandmother wrestling a bear in the basement of our house. It seemed to alternate with a dream about seeing footprints in the sidewalk in our neighborhood - a sidewalk that had been poured and set at least a decade before. No clue what either of those were about.
The closest I come these days seems to be a recurring theme - either being at work, but the building isn’t the same and I can’t figure out where to go (I retired from there 11 years ago…) or being in a house and discovering hidden rooms. I say theme, because the settings change, but the story is the same. My sleeping brain is messing with me.
My gf has a dream she’s at the airport, rushing to her gate, but the gate keeps changing. We’ve actually had that experience IRL, but her dream has even more anxiety (can’t find boarding pass, etc).
During cannabis tolerance breaks I often dream I’m rushing to class (University) to take a final exam I’m totally unprepared for. When I’m smoking I don’t dream/don’t remember.
When I tell people I normally don’t dream, they argue that I do but don’t remember. Like a tree falling in the forest that no one hears.
Dreams are metaphors. At least the ones that keep happening and are disturbing. That’s where we get the whole idea of metaphors, from dreams. They stand for something.
If I was to interpret those dreams I would start with things like: what does a maze you can’t find your way out of, represent in your life? I mean, c’mon, how metaphorical is a maze?
Your house is where you lived i.e. who you were in the past, but you find it isn’t really past, you haven’t finished with it like you thought. What wasn’t finished?
It’s quite possible to directly ask your dream what it means. This is best done while it is still vividly present, just after you wake up, with your eyes closed. A helpful technique is to ask each piece what it is – the house, the maze, any people who are in the dream, etc. Just let the answer float up into your consciousness, and take what you get.
I had that dream after my folks died. Previously it was a recurring dream of my childhood home where I was alone at night and couldn’t get the doors to latch and lock. After they both passed within two weeks of each other I had the dream again this time empty house with breeze blowing through all the windows and doors were banging open and shut. I remained outside of the house that time. I don’t think I’ll have that dream again.
Everyone has that dream, or appropriate variants on it.
The worst dream I ever had, I was walking from my mom’s house to church, to attend my uncle’s funeral. It was just perfectly detailed: I was walking over the same bridge I’d walk over on that route, looking out at the exact same scenery, with none of the usual dreamscape weirdness-we-take-for-granted. That uncle (who is still alive and well) is like a father to me, and one day, I probably will walk that exact route for that exact reason… but not yet, and hopefully not for a long time yet.
Dreams are the visual parts of your brain tidying up, sorting through imagery and events of the day, while the logical part of the brain tries to form it into a narrative. Sometimes the emotional element that threads through (often independent of the images, creating a sometimes incongruous juxtaposition) may have some metaphorical influence, but mostly it’s just a bunch of stuff jammed into a vaguely logical order of events.
For many years, most of my nightmares have taken the same form: Someone is chasing me and I can’t escape no matter how hard I try. I am trying my best to run ahead of them but no matter where I duck, how many obstacles I throw in their way, whatever ruse I try, they are always just 1-2 seconds behind.
Back in my piano-ing days, I also used to have nightmares that I was scheduled to perform some arcane work of classical music (“Mozart’s No. 12 Concerto in A minor!” or whatever nonsense) in front of a huge crowd at a concert hall, that I had no clue how to play, and only hours remaining before performance time.
Every once in a while, I go through a period where I have very vivid but very mundane dreams. I’ll remember all the details when I wake up and, often, I don’t feel all that well rested.
Last night, I dreamt that I had gotten milk on my glasses. I took them off and used my shirt to clean them. That didn’t work. So I went and got a lens cloth. That worked so I put my glasses back on.
And that was it. Sometimes, I’ll have dreams where I’m doing regular house work like the dishes or laundry. Sometimes, it’ll be something like driving to work or completing a routine task. They are so vivid that, sometimes, I have to check whether or not it actually happened.
I think the OP needs to consider the possibility that the maze dreams are actually reality, and what they take to be waking reality is just the Matrix that the alien researchers plug them into between running the maze experiments.
