Share your stress dreams!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Work has been a little stressful lately - annoying coworkers, deadline, you get the idea. Coincidentally, I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately that involve driving my car up vertical surfaces, or watching other people drive cars up vertical surfaces. The most recent one was watching deliveries being made to a 5 story building whose only door was on the roof. The deliver trucks drove up to the building, and had to painstakingly try to get up the vertical wall to the top. Some fell, some made it. I didn’t even get the connection until SO pointed out that I was feeling like I had insurmountable tasks at work, and this is the 3rd or 4th “driving up vertical walls” dream that I’ve had since the project got stressful.

So how 'bout the rest of you? What do you dream about when you’re stressed?

2

Fish and scuba diving, even though I cant swim. Always relaxes me. Its probably my subconcious telling me to slow down.

J
“We should have as high a regard for the church so as to keep it out of as many things as possible”

Fluther Good -the Shadow of a Gunman.
Sean O’Casey

3

Athena,

Seems to me that your SO is right. Either that or you’ve seen too many Jeep Grand Cherokee commercials.

Mine aren’t stress related, but I keep dreaming about moving from my old house in Denver to the one I currently live in. For some reason I had this dream again last night with some significant variations. For some reason I had to take a part of the wall with me and had to leave the “house” open with just a tarp overnight. (It was a townhouse.)

4

Yep Athena, your SO is on el dinero.

When I’m stressed, I dream that I have to climb up rickety stairs or ladders tied together. Scares the crap out of me. I wake up sweating.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.

5

When I get stressed out, I don’t sleep. Period. It’s hell. But when I was a little kid, my biggest nightmare was getting caught in a moving car with no one to drive. I’d have to drive the car, constantly afraid I’d pilot it off a cliff, or hit someone or something, or hit the wrong button and the car would explode. This is as an 8 year old. My father, the shrink, instantly identified it as a “loss of control,” dream. Whoever said kids don’t have anything to worry about don’t know kids.

Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth

6

At my last job I had a co-worker who was always going out of her way to try and make my life difficult and a boss who wouldn’t do anything about it (rumor was the co-worker was sleeping with the department chairman). I kept having dreams about attacking her, and I am not a violent person by nature. Haven’t had a violent dream since I changed jobs, although every so often I will dream about being back at the old job.

7

My stress dreams are brutal. Little background here, when I went through my little “episode” (see What’s the strangest thing that ever happened to you? thread) I started gettin super-bad, super-violent dreams.Think Quentin Tarantino crossed with Martin Scorcese crossed with Stephen King crossed with John Saul. Not cool. It’s actually when I started writing horror stories/novels, hey the dreams had to be good for something. Now, unfotunately, the dreams did not go away, so two or three times a week I wake up in a cold sweat terrified beyond belief, but with a good story idea. When I’m stressed it’s more frequent.

8

batgirlfriend, been there done that!

I worked with a woman who can only be described as psychotic. Once she was so angry with me that she deliberately put a door ding on my car. A nasty one. She actually came up to me and sweetly asked if she could speak to me in private. In the most venemous tone she told me that she’d left a present in my car door. I went out to the parking lot, saw it and reported it to my supervisor. The psycho denied ever saying anything. My word against hers. They took hers. I found another job as soon as possible.

I’m a non-violent person. If someone pisses me off, I just tell someone else about it, whine, and feel better. But this woman caused me to have the same type of dreams. Ripping her face off with my nails was my favorite.

9

When I was little I used to have recurring nightmares with these kinds of themes:

  • filling a washing machine one shirt at a time and suddenly I look down and it’s overflowing and making awful noises and I’m going to get in trouble for breaking it!

  • playing a game of catch with a ball of yarn/rubber-bands that gets bigger everytime. I lose track and then suddenly it’s so big it’s going to crush me.

Ugh. I think I was an anxious little kid.

10

My stress dreams are also impossible tasks. Usually I’m lost in some industrial wasteland and have to find something. Usually I don’t even know what I’m looking for. There’s this constant, nagging, but barely noticeable subcurrent of terror that flares up every time I want to give up. Whatever it is I’m trying to do it’s very important and every wrong move takes me further away.

Last week my mother happened to mention, in passing, something about one of my cousins. He’s a nice enough guy and I only see him once in a blue moon, but for the next two nights he was an important figure in my scary dreams. Not directly, but in one he was the cause of my being lost and in the other I was lost in his house. (Not his real house, of course, but some bizarre maze-like place with trap doors and hidden passages.)

The good news is that when I actually remember these dreams it means the problem is close enough to the surface that I can deal with it to some extent while awake. If I can figure out what it is, of course.

Tomorrow I have to take some time off and go kill my cousin.

Pleasant dreams!

11

Just last night, I dreamt about having to scale up several ledges (Laura Croft style)which were covered with snakes of every color and size. I was making a conscious effort to use only my arms and not pull myself up with anything resembling a rope, as it could be a snake. Hmmm, what could this mean?

I also have recurring dreams my teeth breaking and falling out. I’ve kept dreaming about this for as long as I can remember.

12

I have the tooth dream too, where, I’ve lost a tooth and there’s a gaping hole where it had been.

Some of my stress dreams have been fairly scary, at least for me.

One involved being hunted down by the federal government for being a dissident. My husband (I’m not married) sent me down the trap door with the kids (I don’t have any) while he rigged the booby traps for when the SWAT team stormed in. shudder

In another dream, I was at the home I’d grown up in, out in the backyard, and my father came out to tell me that my ex-husband (I’m not divorced) had murdered my children and then committed suicide.

So, you know, I try not to get stressed.

13

SeaDiver, I have that one too. I’ll be merrily chewing along and suddenly realize that my teeth are breaking apart like chalk.

I wonder what is the significance of that one? Fear of aging?

14

Canth - if you ever figure it out let me know. I have lost my teeth in dreams more times than I can count.

15

Here’s what I found, but I’m not sure it applies to me:

teeth Found: tooth, teeth
Teeth represent the very roots of the self, and the values and personal priorities that are involved in our decisions. Dreams of tooth loss often occur when a compromise is made (even for good reasons) which undermines the self in an ongoing way. The very “you” of you becomes eroded. Frequently something taken on as a temporary measure becomes more permanent and is not a good fit. Then we “forget” that we never intended to live this way permanently. We focus on making the self accommodate the situation. The friction between the arrangement and the self threatens to crumble the irreplaceable parts of the self. The compromise isn’t necessarily wrong, but the harmful aspects of it need to be evaluated with clear understanding, and long-term options reviewed.

Hmmm, maybe I’m not as assertive as I’d like to believe.

16

I don’t know if this counts as a dream, but every once in a while, I’ll wake up with the worst writer’s cramp imaginable!

No, I was not doing anything else with my hand at the time.

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.”
Kipling

17

If I am really stressed, I dream I am smoking cigarettes again. Constantly, as in one right after another and I always seem to have an endless supply of the rotten, stinking, delicious tasting, pleasant smelling things.

18

The most common dream I have during stressful times (if the stress is work-related) is this: I’m running late, hopelessly, helplessly late, and I am powerless to contact the school to let them know I won’t make it on time. Horror of horrors (when really, it wouldn’t be too terrible), my students are left waiting for me at the bell, and I never show. The administrators run amuck trying to figure out what to do with my class, and I am going mad trying to get there. These dreams suck–I wake up exhausted because I was so frantic in the dream.

In these dreams, they usually follow this pattern: I’m getting ready for work, and something stalls my leaving (a phone call, important paperwork forgotten at home). I leave, and countless other problems continue to stall me (traffic, someone intercepting me on the street, etc.) and I am in a place where I have no access to a phone and I’ve forgotten my cell phone at home, or its batteries are dead.

Stress dream last night: I stayed home yesterday from work because I was (still am) very sick. Shouldn’t have gone today, for that matter. Anyway, in the dream I arrived at school today to find the sub had left scathing commentary on my class, saying I had forgotten various necessarily preparation papers for her, the kids were brats, and that I was essentially a horrible teacher. In the dream, my principal was seriously pissed with me and saying ominously that I would be “under review.” Also in the dream, I arrived to find my sub had not been canceled (you must call by 1pm to release a sub so they are not rehired for the following day), my message to the secretary had never gotten through, and the office was pissed at me because the sub was there (district $$), and I couldn’t leave because there were no plans available for the sub.

Reality was soooo much better. The sub left a glowing report saying how organized my classroom was, how well behaved and focused my students were, and that all work was successfully completed. And of course, there was no sub waiting to take my place there today.

Although (oof) I kinda wish there were. I am a sick Ruffian. :frowning: And dammit, I have to go tomorrow because of an important meeting and another important classroom event. Damn.

Teaching: The ultimate birth control method.

Laura’s Stuff and Things

19

Shooting carp with a bow.

20

Also, to this day, I still have those awful college exam nightmares.

Last night, I dreamed that it was exam week and I didn’t know when they were because I had never even attended some of the classes. I discovered that I was a day late for one of them and had to beg the professor (who had never seen me before) for a retest. I also had a pile of books to read and no idea what would be on the tests.

:frowning: