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Irrational Dreams You Keep Having

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    Irrational Dreams You Keep Having

    This is actually a serious one - despite in reality having a PhD and a teaching position I enjoy, I keep having regular dreams about not having passed my A-Levels and being unemployable. This seems to be playing out fears I had at age 18 that are still there in the unconscious.

    I am not in any way depressed* but it takes an hour or so after waking to shrug off that shitty pre-waking feeling.

    *Depression is relative but I can measure my current mental state by comparison to when I was truly depressed as a teen, and can say this is not depression. Mid-life syndrome, maybe.
    Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 18-07-2018, 12:58.

    #2
    I recently dreamt that during a lunch break, all offices on my floor had been converted into a paperless hotdesking environment. When I went to threaten my resignation to the dean, he was nowhere to be found.

    I hope that the dream was irrational.

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      #3
      Imposter syndrome might be common in academia, but it's not exclusive. I spent the first month at my new job expecting that at any moment someone would charge into the office and loudly lay into me about my inability to do the job.

      Hasn't happened. Yet.

      Anyway. I have irrational dreams all the time. Like the one about the giant pet insect, or the one where I manage to inexplicably drive a car off a very high bridge, and wake up panicky and gasping for breath. I'll take either of them over the recurring nightmare I had in my childhood.

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        #4
        My irrational, recurring dream* is of me at university, and exams start next week, and I've not been going to the lectures and haven't read the novels. The dread is of the 'what have I been doing these past 3 months' kind.

        It might have larger philosophical implications, but dreams don't mean owt....so...yeah....



        *maybe once every two years
        **I can't believe I'm posting about dreams
        ***Yes, I understand irony

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          #5
          I don't believe mine mean owt other than I have a deeply weird imagination, even in sleep.

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            #6
            Recurring theme: I'm naked with other people around. I'm not panicked by it, nor particularly embarrassed, though it's naturally a little awkward. I'm more like: "Oh, FFS, G-Man, couldn't you put some trousers on?" I have no idea what it's meant to signify.

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              #7
              Yeah, that’s a great one. Often crossed with the exam hall/job interview hell dreams

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                #8
                One recurring dream last night was my daughter walking to the edge of tall atriums and - more than once - falling through the gaps in the bars. It was a miserable night, one capped by the suspicion that then pain in my neck that arrived yesterday is shingles.

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                  #9
                  I have the same dream. Not about A-Levels, since we don't have those, but about high school. Usually it's that I don't know my schedule and I realize that I haven't been to math - it's almost always math, because they was the subject that gave me the most anxiety - in weeks and am doomed to fail if I haven't already.

                  I haven't had that dream in a while, though, so maybe that's a sign that my mental health is getting better. I can't remember any recent dreams. Perhaps that's a sign I've been sleeping better? I certainly feel like I have been.

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                    #10
                    I can't remember them for longer than a minute or so after waking, but I very frequently have dreams I don't want to wake up from, and (because I don't have an office job or indeed any sort of job that requires me to be up and about at a set time) end up dozing for ages as a result.

                    There are a few recurring motifs. When I was younger I used to quite frequently dream that I was running to catch up with a family member or friend across the main road in my village, and as soon as I stepped into the road I'd either fall over and be unable to get up, or would suddenly feel as if my legs were incredibly heavy and running became the hardest thing in the world. Another was walking or running through what started out as my grandad's house and quickly turned into something akin to Escher's picture of the room with all the staircases going off at odd angles. I don't get either of those any more. One that I do still get semi-frequently is that I'll be having a really nice wank and suddenly realise that I'm doing so in public. I'll be very embarrassed by this but unable to stop wanking, and everyone else will just be walking past going about their lives without noticing that I'm wanking in public. But I'll be terrified that at any moment someone might notice. Can't really explain that one.

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                      #11
                      A recurring one is being on the run from people who are planning to kill me in a very gruesome way. Usually wake up at the point I realize there is no escape route.

                      I avoid violent thrillers because they always bring on this dream.

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                        #12
                        Doesn't sound to me as though watching violent thrillers is making much difference either way...

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                          #13
                          Gah! The one in the opening post. Again! Assignments/essays not completed; lessons/lectures extensively skipped.

                          The first year of my A-levels were a disaster and I suspect that it's that period of my life that these dreams hark back to. Bloody frustrating to have to keep on re-living the stress, fear and anxiety of that time again and again!

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                            #14
                            I've not had the exam/assignment one for a few years (my rational brain usually interrupted those to remind me that I was a long time removed from university).

                            Nowadays when I have an irrational dream it's some vague thing about not being able to run fast enough - there's no real threat like in Sachmo's version, just a feeling that I'm moving too slowly for whatever the crisis is.

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                              #15
                              I often have a sport-related one where I have either been selected to play in a big game (it's always football, rugby or cricket, the sports I played as a kid), either at professional level or as part of a school reunion. I always feel the sense of honour and pride in the dream, but then procrastinate in the build-up to the game, say by delaying leaving my house or taking ages getting ready. I then come onto the pitch to find the game has already started with my team a player short, or I find out I wasn't supposed to be playing at all.

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                                #16
                                (Pretty much everyone I've ever met [of a certain age] still has that 'school/college exams'-nightmare. I certainly do.)

                                I had a dream the other night in which I was watching a documentary that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the London Marathon was fixed every year. (Given that I have very negligible interest in either the Marathon or distance-running per se, I have absolutely zero idea what prompted this.)
                                Last edited by Jah Womble; 18-06-2020, 09:29.

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                                  #17
                                  I don't have the school exams nightmare, and that may be because I experienced the reality. One weekday morning in early June 1986, I was enjoying a lie-in when the phone rang. Next thing, my Dad is running up the stairs to tell me it was the school deputy head, wondering where the hell I was because my German O'level was about to start. Thankfully, it was only a 10-minute walk to school. I sprinted round there, and entered the exam room perhaps a quarter of an hour late.

                                  I'm thankful to this day that my dad was at home and my mum at work. He just thought it was funny, whereas there's a chance I wouldn't be here now to reflect on the experience if my mum had been at home. She was a wonderful mother, but found it hard to forgive things like not making sure you know exactly when to be somewhere for an important event. I remember my dad saying he wouldn't tell her about this lapse if I didn't. We did tell her eventually, but it might not have been till the day the letter arrived telling me I'd scraped the all-important Grade C.

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                                    #18
                                    Aren’t these all anxiety dreams? When I used to temp the old fashioned way - getting sent into a new office job knowing nothing but the name and address of the organisation, couldn’t Google them - I dreamt every Sunday night that I went in late, with no clothes on my bottom half.

                                    I have tooth-crumbling dreams, but not as much as I did when I was younger and in better nick.

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                                      #19
                                      Apparently for the last few nights my dreams have been hilarious.

                                      I can't vouch for that, but the poor bastard having to put up with me giggling in my sleep can.

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                                        #20
                                        Travelling. Late. Don't know which platform. Luggage left behinď on train. In Paris with 20 euros to get to Australia. Etc.

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                                          #21
                                          I'm quite often on the run from the police in my dreams.

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                                            #22
                                            Teeth falling out and exams I haven't studied for

                                            A very specific one - in my dream I "remember" I bought a flat 20 years ago which I had forgotten about - I manage to find it and it is completely untouched since the day I bought it. I have this dream maybe once a year and it's always the same flat

                                            Another one where my old chap has fallen off. I really don't want to think about what that means..

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by colchestersid View Post
                                              Teeth falling outand exams I haven't studied for

                                              A very specific one - in my dream I "remember" I bought a flat 20 years ago which I had forgotten about - I manage to find it and it is completely untouched since the day I bought it. I have this dream maybe once a year and it's always the same flat

                                              Another one where my old chap has fallen off. I really don't want to think about what that means..

                                              Freud links the two.

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                                                #24
                                                I’ve had a lot of dreams about being back in school and needing to take a test or be in class and not knowing the material or which classroom it’s in, etc.

                                                That’s a pretty common manifestation of anxiety.

                                                I can’t recall any dreams I’ve had in years.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Just had one of those really annoying dreams where I was trying to find a toilet and couldn't find a suitable one. It obviously just means I need to wake up and use an actual physical toilet, but why do they have to be so long, drawn-out and frustrating? I was in a hospital and my mother was there and she kept trying to tell me I didn't need the toilet and should just get in the car and drive home, so I kept running off and trying to give her the slip. I'd ask various staff members for directions but they were all unhelpful, or directed me to somewhere where there weren't any toilets. When I eventually found the toilets, they were all missing seats or flooded, or flushing endlessly, and the doors were too short to give you any privacy so I still couldn't use them. Fortunately I then woke up. You then get the light bulb moment of "ah, that's why I was having that deeply annoying dream", but some of the residual frustration seeps through into the day.

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