April 23, 2010

• stress dreams

  I’m sure you all know what stress dreams are. It’s those typical manifestations of an over stressed out or tired subconscious. Typical ones involve like endlessly digging a hole, shovel full after shovel full,  or constantly being forced to run a race that never seems to end. They are probably the easiest dreams of all to interpret. They’re pretty straight forward indications that some aspect of you feels you need a break.

  I don’t usually have a lot of dreams at all. But last night weirdly I had my first real stress dream that I can remember.  Weirdly I don’t think I’m all THAT stressed in life right now. At least not nearly as stressed as I’ve been in the past. I can honestly say I’ve been in much worse situations. Right now things are mostly just in boring equilibrium with only some slight risks. Though having my tax return money come in would certainly help alleviate my stress considerably. The only other stress I feel comes from the need to meet minor obligations and promises I’ve made that really shouldn’t matter that much.

  Nevertheless I had my stress dream and it was quite interesting how it manifested in me. I didn’t dream of running or digging,  I dreamed of moving.

  In fact, I was back in College and I was trying to move out of my dorm room on like the third or fourth floor. No elevator. I was just grabbing boxes and junk hauling it downstairs and trying to fit it into my car or van. Then back up the stairs. Grab more. Back down the stairs. Back up the stairs. Back down the stairs. And so on and so forth. Over and over and over again.  Weirdly I had a lot more really heavy furniture and massive boxes of books in my dream world than I ever owned in real life. I was doing it all by myself too.

  A lot of the stress was playing like a Tetris game of trying to fit everything in while I was packing so I wouldn’t have to make too many extra trips. And I kept worrying that I might accidentally crush the Fish. That’s right the fish. Apparently in my dream I had a pet fish of some kind that might get crushed if I packed incorrectly.  I also had to make sure the cat was safe and the cat had to be nowhere near the fish so he wouldn’t eat it. It was really REALLY important. My dream self was sweating bullets and overwhelmed by fear. Of course irl I had neither cat nor fish while I was in college.

  I also felt super rushed during this dream. It was like the OTHER class was going to move in soon and so I had to get all my junk moved before they came on Monday. And it was Saturday when I was moving. And then I’d have to drive a whole car load or van load of stuff all the way home to Delaware, unload it and then drive all the way back and fill up my car with more stuff.

  In my dream my college roommate who was the same person who was my college roommate in real life was nowhere to be found and so I had to move all HIS stuff too. And I had to make sure not to damage any of his stuff too adding to the stress.

  And then it got kinda funny cuz I wasn’t done by the end of Saturday but I was really close so I came back on Sunday to finish the job only to find my roommate had returned with LOTS MORE STUFF!!! I don’t know where all his extra stuff came from but I was super exhausted and so I had to start moving stuff again. Up and down the stairs. Drive back and forth. Up and down. Back and forth. And I kept finding more stuff I’d missed or forgotten whenever it looked like I was getting close to done. My dream self never got mad. He was just resigned. Resigned and exhausted and feeling a desperate need to finish.

  I woke up soon after that, still having not finished moving everything and it left me with this overwhelming sense of incompleteness and failure.  It was not a pleasant feeling. Really made me not want to go to work today.

  I don’t know what it means that I associate moving, driving, college and my old college roommate with being under stress. And I have even less of a clue what a fish and a cat have to do with anything. Probably nothing.

  Anyway do you have any recurring stress dreams that plague you? Feel free to share!

  • 1:59 pm
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