Anxiety Dreams - Most People Have Them

[canyonwalker]

I had a weird dream the other night. I was back in graduate school. Except it wasn't, "Hey, I'm 22 again and working toward my degree," it was, "Hey, I'm today years old and I've gone back to grad school to earn another degree." Today-me in grad school was miserable. I hated it. And I didn't even know why I was there! I even poured out my heart in a phone call to my wife, "I don't know why I ever chose to go back to graduate school. It's ridiculous. I had a successful career and could have retired early in a few more years. Now I've thrown that away and am spending money instead of earning it!"

Dreams like this are called anxiety dreams. I've had them occasionally since high school. Common themes in them are being late, being unprepared, not knowing where you are, and not knowing what/why you're doing something or being forced against your will to do it. For years nobody I talked to about them told me they're normal— not my parents, not my close friends. "You're just an anxious person," people I trusted told me. Then I learned a year or so ago I'm normal.

I learned that in a radio interview on NPR. They were interviewing a psychologist who specializes in dreams. She acknowledged, with the authority of her broad research, what I'd suspected all along: that having anxiety dreams, on occasion, is normal. And she noted that for people who attended college and especially graduate school, the dreams frequently revolve around being unprepared for classes. That's been a theme of several of my anxiety dreams. I'm in school, there's a class with a major assignment due or an exam today, and I haven't attended the class in so long that I don't even remember where the classroom is. 😱

BTW it's not just college stress that haunts highly educated people years later. In another interview on NPR, neuroscientist Robert Strickgold explained that Olympic athletes have anxiety dreams about being unprepared for their sport. They're getting into a crouch at the starting line when they realize they've forgotten to put on their uniform or forgotten to bring their equipment.

Unfortunately I don't have a link for the interview I heard months ago. I've searched several times but can't find a transcript or even the name of the scientist interviewed. I know it's not Strickgold as given in the second example above (transcripts of a few of his NPR interviews came up in the search) because he's a dude and the other person I heard is a gal. Maybe struggling to find that citation so I don't fail a class will be the subject of a future anxiety dream. 😂

Comments

[some_other_dave]

I didn't go to grad school, but I have had several dreams of being back in college where I was an undergrad. I had gone back for a second degree, and was an older guy (not as old as I actually am, but 30s or 40s) living in the dorms.

It didn't provoke feelings of anxiety, though, more confusion and annoyance.

[canyonwalker]

Don't get too hung up on parsing the word "anxiety". Confusion in not knowing where you are, what you're doing, or why you're there, is a common theme of anxiety dreams.

[sorcyress]

I have anxiety dreams fairly frequently --several times a year! This past year was, I think, a bad year for them. I always have a few in mid-late August as the school year ramps up, and a very frequent theme is being unprepared for teaching, which is honestly less anxiety provoking and more funny these days. It doesn't actually happen that I would be forced to teach a third grade art classroom on zero notice (I'm a high school math teacher) so when I wake, it's mostly just funny.

And honestly, of late I've noticed that even the anxiety dreams have me doing my fiercely competent best to keep things humming along even when the circumstances are unideal. This might be because I'm decent at fighting back in dreams --not full lucid dreaming, but maybe my unconscious self thinks highly of what I can do.

I've noticed a similar path in the sexual assault dreams I used to get regularly, starting when I was fifteen or so. Somewhere in my early twenties (after my real life abusive relationship at age 17/18), I began to consistently fight back in those dreams. Run away, look for safety, avoid the people hurting me. I would wake up feeling empowered instead of scared! My dream!self is pretty badass, honestly.

~Sor

[canyonwalker]

I'm fascinated that you seem to have gained some level of conscious control in your dreams. A big part of what makes anxiety dreams anxious is finding oneself in an ordinarily avoidable situation, or one where there's a relatively feasible way out but we don't take it. The loss of agency makes it scary— and frustrating.

In the back-to-grad-school example I gave, dream-me was stuck in school, stuck in a program in which I saw no value and was miserable every day. Getting out wasn't anywhere in the frame of the dream. Real-me would not only leave such a program; real-me wouldn't even enter such a program without carefully considering its value and appeal.