It’s a double-edged sword. This morning I had such an ugly, disturbing dream that I actually woke up sad and angry, and had to give myself a little reassuring talk in bed. It’s OK. None of that actually happened. It’s a new day and you’re fine. This often happens if I’ve been worrying about something. 
Most of my dreams in the past have been pretty bizarre, with a fair mixture of typical ones interspersed.
I used to have the “late for a test and can’t find my class” dream with regularity, but they’ve dwindled over the years. Flying dreams were also quite common, but mine came with a twist. I never had the cool “fly like superman” flights. With mine, I had to strenuously flap my arms to get any altitude at all. There I’d be flapping away, trying to impress the gathered crowd of onlookers, but the best I could do was get over the telephone line before dropping to the ground exhausted. I also had the “falling” dream quite often, but oddly, I was always falling off of a speeding train and I seemed to fall for an incredibly long time, never hitting the ground before waking up.
In recent months, I’ve been having rather upsetting dreams, involving my family. Let me preface by saying I always had an excellent relationship with each and every member of my family: parents, siblings, kids, nieces, nephews…all down the line (all but my former spouse, a certified sociopath). I almost feel guilty having such good rapport with my family. I’m not ashamed to say my parents were my best friends. They even lived next door to my kids I and we visited each other daily until the days they died.
In recent month’s dreams, my entire family hates me and they’re just awful to me. Their loathing of me is quite palpable and I wake up disturbed. Then, I realize it was just a dream and I feel better. Then I remember my parents are dead and I get sad again.
I had a really weird dream a couple months ago. I came home with my daughters and looked in our guinea pig cage and my ex-wife was in there with her boyfriend, naked. They were the size of guinea pigs and were really going to town sex-wise. My youngest daughter said, “hey, is that mom!?!” I pulled both girls back and said, “you don’t want to see what’s going on in there, girls!”
I had a bittersweet dream also a few months ago. In real life, I haven’t been intimate with a woman for a very long time. I’ve had a couple opportunities, but I just don’t have a desire to date anyone after coming off a miserable marriage.
In my dream, I was in a strange house with lots of odd people walking about. I sat down on a large futon and a woman plopped down next to me who I was instantly attracted to. Let’s call her Suzi (not her real name). She was a complete fabrication of my mind, not resembling anyone I know.
She wasn’t model hot, but she was cute. Very, very cute, and a great conversationalist. We had a great deal in common. We did a lot of snuggling and engaged in a little foreplay, nothing more. It was understood that we’d wait till a few more dates before going any further. I fell in love with her, endorphins and all. It felt very real. Then I woke up. Upon realizing Suzi was just a dream, I felt absolutely miserable. It was one of those dreams you just hate to wake up from.
But, I figured if I can’t have Suzi in real life, at least we could be together in my dreams. But, alas, that wasn’t to be, either. I went to sleep for weeks afterward hoping for Suzi to join me for that second date. She never came back. I fear she’s gone off to be in some other man’s dreams. I’m jealous. That slut.
The last time I had a dream that I was so sad to wake up from was when I was a child and I dreamed I had a whole house full of pets, mostly hamsters. I loved hamsters when I was a kid.
Me, too. It is strangely comforting to know that I’m not alone.
I don’t ever get those - I get the naked-in-public dreams.
I knew a guy, a college friend, who - about two weeks before graduation - dreamed that the registrar reviewed his transcript and realized that he’d missed a class back in first grade. So he had to go back to an elementary school to make it up before he could graduate from college.
I think the recurring dream about going to a campfire and having forgotten the marshmallows, however, is unique to me.
I actually had the “day of the final that counts for the whole grade and I can’t find the classroom” experience, and the entire time racing around the campus I had a completely surreal feeling that it HAD to be a dream. Fortunately it was a 4-hour exam and I found it after about 45 minutes.
I don’t think I ever dreamed about marshmallows specifically, EmilyG, but many many of my dreams involve me arriving somewhere without some essential thing that I was supposed to bring. Much like the school dreams, of course it’s just another variety of FAILURE. I wonder how old you have to get before you stop dreaming of FAILURE. ((I’m 68, and about to be 69, and I’m damned tired of failing in my dreams. Letting People Down. Yuck.
I’m imagining a prehistoric hunter, 25,000 years ago, dreaming that he’s face-to-face with the mighty aurochs, and suddenly he realizes he forgot to put a head on his spear! The aurochs starts laughing, and all the gods join in.
Yes, I’ve been there! I hate it. It’s midterms and I don’t even know where the classroom is. I don’t know who the teacher is, and my fellow students are all strangers. Dear Og, just let me pass this midterm and I will never again cut a class.
That dream where you’ve got a major final that you somehow completely forgot about, and are completely unprepared for?
Turns out, if that happens to you in real life, you stop having that dream.
It, ah… may have to happen to you twice for them to totally stop, though.
This may be why mine tend to be about assignments that I haven’t handed in. I did very well in exams but not so well at assignments, particularly at college level, which is where my bad dreams are set. As I think I’ve said on these boards before, even fully awake, sitting here right now, nearly 30 years post-college, I can’t completely escape this feeling that there is a paper that I have never handed in and which I absolutely have to get done ASAP to have any hope of passing.
The other dream I have is missing flights. Which is weird because I really don’t think of that as being something I’m very anxious about.
That’s really nice.
My dream director believes in stereotypes my subconscious doesn’t care about. Every once in a while in a dream I am in the middle of something in public, when I realize I am naked, or at least without pants or drawers.
However the dream me doesn’t give a shit. “Oh, naked, hmm that doesn’t seem right, I should get some pants on when I get a chance” The I go right back to the presentation, or eating dinner or whatever. The dream continues to remind me, but it never becomes a priority to get any clothes on.
I used to have the standard naked in school dreams but now I don’t. It could be something to do with the fact that I guess when I was younger I had that ordinary self-consciousness but now as a middle aged male I don’t really give a rats about people seeing me naked, though of course no one actually wants to see me naked.
I never have the final exam dream. My school related dreams are all about the first day of class. Once I was sent to kindergarten even though I was twenty plus years too old, because to everyone else, I was only five. The other times, I’m back in college because I forgot to take a prerequisite and have been stripped of my degree until it’s completed.
I recently had a strange dream about a sorcerer who got rid of his enemies by drawing pictures of them, which trapped them in a book. The people would forget their lives and become characters in a fantasy world of castles and dragons. Eventually, the people began to remember bits and pieces their old lives, and they banded together, escaped and defeated the sorcerer. I’ve wondered if this is a real story, or if my subconscious decided to show me a movie.
Well, IIRC there are studies pointing at Sleep as a way to not only clear our brain of the refuse from the neurons, but sleep also allows the neurons time to clear bad connections or things that we want to dispose of.
When we dream we somehow do catch not only anxieties or bad thoughts or illogical ideas that are constantly being flushed out. We are mostly successful on that but some neurons still try to be contrarian.
What I’m trying to say is that I think that many are looking at dreams backwards, they are not complete reflexions of what we are but they are items that we are getting rid of and when we dream we many times encounter items that are not in the majority (what you are when conscious), it is like if we are stuck watching a minority report. A filibuster of the mind.
There’s an XKCD for everything
My version of it usually involves having to go back to high school. And let me tell you, actually going back to my old high school for teaching field experience did not abate the dream one bit. Funny thing is, I quite liked my high school experience (well, 10th-12th grade, at least, but I never dream about the school I went to for 9th grade).
For dreams that I wept to leave on waking, the ones that come closest to mind are a couple involving time travel, and one where I found a black hole in my living room (and yeah, I know that that would be a nightmare for a lot of people, but not for me). Oh, and one of the times I dreamt I was flying, I devised experiments in my dream to try to figure out how I was flying. That was pretty cool, too.
The only dream I have ever remembered - yes, in all 60-some years, exactly ONE dream I can remember:
Not School - Paper Route. (google it!)
I suddenly remember that I haven’t delivered my papers for Years and Years and YEARS! and panic.
Yes, I did take my route very seriously - got an Inland Press Award for my care and feeding of my route.
Then the web came along, and I looked up my old route. Gawd, what a pathetic loser of a neighborhood.
After that realization, the dream stopped.
I finished my nursing training in 1978. Long enough ago, I would have thought, to stop having the ‘oh no, it’s finals and I forgot to go and now I have a major panic’ dream. I still dream it, however.
I have a few family related dreams but my boys (now 33 and 31) are always children aged between 3 and 8 years, never the ages they are now.
My anxiety dream has switched to The Calculus Test For The Class You Didn’t Attend All Semester to having to re-take a gym class in high school…or they’d take away my high school diploma.
One of these days, I’ll laugh hysterically in the dream and tell the person that at this point in my life, no one would care if I had a high school diploma.
I also have a dream where I am in high school, but don’t care about my grades because I’ve already been to college and got a degree. I just had to go back to high school because of my age.
This is the best thing I’ve read today. 