This week I was on the phone with one of my Platinum Coaching clients. (I’ll call her Sylvia.)
Sylvia was facing down some old rigid mindsets and patterns. No big deal. We all go through these moments when we step into a bigger version of ourselves.
In the midst of her story, she said that she’d had her dream again. Her recurring nightmare. Always the same one. Always about her college astronomy class. She described it as if she were some kind of freak.
Without stopping to analyze the dream or make it into a big deal I said, “Know what mine is?” And I told her.
I’m a senior in college. It’s the end of the semester. And I’m sitting in Advanced Calculus, and the teacher is handing out the exam. Only problem is that I didn’t go to class the entire semester, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing there or how I’m going to make it through the exam.
There are variations on this dream, of course. Sometimes my entire diploma rests on this class. Sometimes I simply obsess about how to explain to the professor that I blew the class off all semester long. Sometimes I’m in high school. (That, in and of itself is the nightmare. Coming all this way only to find out I’m back in high school! Damn!)
Sylvia cracked up. Suddenly she wasn’t a freak anymore. We continued her session with our attention in the present moment.
So, I’m curious.
Does everyone have their own private recurring dream? Kind of a cross between nightmare and just plain weird dream? And mostly laughable once you think about it in broad daylight? (Hey, when I was a waitress, I used to have “waitressing naked” dreams. I’ve met lots of other former waitresses who admit to having the same exact dream!)
Let us know. Sylvia might like to have a good laugh.
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My redurring dream occurs in different locations, but is a variation on the same theme. I am trying to get somewhere, and I have all these un-godly obstacles–like the stiarwell disappears and I have to rappel to the interview/class/job whatever. I am sure it has something to do with my propensity to be late.
I had a recurring dream this weekend, several times during the night I woke up and in the half haze realized I was thinking/sayign in my head the words to the Star Spangled Banner. Cool, huhn?
Has anyone ever had this experience…once you tell a recurring dream, out loud to a real person…you stop having the dream?
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I’m at a hotel with my family trying frantically to pack suitcases before check-out time. In the meanwhile, friends and extended family are crowding the room.
My brother has the same dream, except his deadline is a cruise ship leaving port.
It’s interesting that my brother and I have the same recurring dream.
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i had two real life experiences like this:
* i walk in, late, to a college math final exam. i take my copy of the test from the scowling teacher and take a seat in the back of the class. i go through the test, quickly, to get an idea of what the questions are and i quickly realize that i am SO screwed. so screwed, in fact, that i sit back in my chair and laugh out loud. and then received scowls from the entire class.
* i walk in, late, to a theater history class only to find that the huge classroom is empty. “oops,” i said. “i guess today is exam day.” i walk to the building where i know the exams are given in and am met at the door by a friend who is TA’ing for the exam. “I’ll see if I can get you a few extra minutes with the test since you’re coming in late,” he says, helpfully. “Don’t bother,” I reply. “I’m screwed on this one and a few extra minutes aren’t going to make any difference one way or the other. But thanks!”
i’ve had a few dreams of the Final Exam But Never Been to the Class variety over the years. however, when i wake up and remember them i always think back to my two real life experiences and realize that not only did i survive them, but my life has turned out pretty danged well even without those fine grades.
…
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My recurring dream — since childhood — is that I’m a tiny person being carried in the hand of a giant. I’m in the clouds, looking around as I ride in his hand. Then he stumbles and drops me … as I fall I’m boucing from cloud to cloud on my way down. I always wake up before I hit the earth, but I’m always terrified and paralyzed with fear when I wake up. I know it’s a silly dream when I say it out loud, but that doesn’t change the fear I feel during the nightmare.
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wow. our education system can REALLY mess up our heads, huh?!!
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i had a recurring dream that finally stopped, but at the time couldn’t see the forest for the trees kinda thing. Several years ago i had found some information about my dad (he was killed in a plane crash in vietnam when i was 5) this information had to do with someone finding his dog tag and handing it over to the govt. So i was in the midst of contacting the govt as well as the individual who found it etc.. For about 2 years my dreams were of plane crashes – either seeing them happen or coming across a wreckage and I was either seeing personal items falling from the sky – shoes, bags cloths or I was rumbling through the wreckage going through all this stuff…. I would wake up exhausted and at one point thought that i was going to either be in a plane crash or see one happen. I just didn’t connect the two (duh!) Anyway after we received his dog tag… the dreams stopped.
A funny one that i do have sometimes – is running naked. Or I am running in a race that never seems to end!
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I have also had:
1) the loose teeth dreams,
2) the didn’t-realize-I-was-signed-up-for-calculus dreams, and
3) the I’m-supposed-to-dance-onstage-without-practice dreams.
It’s very normalizing to see how many others have had these dreams, too!
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Like many above, I’ve had the teeth falling out dreams, the not having my school schedule dreams, the sitting in an exam and not having been to classes dreams.
Other variations:
– Being somewhere that is supposed to be familiar but is not, without my glasses and almost totally blind, and trying to read a map.
– Mysterious growing chewing gum in my mouth that fills my mouth and throat. I unhinge my jaw and claw the gum out, trying to get it all. I miss one little piece and it begins again.
– I am in high school but can’t find my locker, or when I do I don’t remember the combination.
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My recurring dream is similar to yours, about facing an exam (although usually it’s still a week or so before the exam) in a course I haven’t been attending all semester. The interesting thing is that in recent years it’s gotten less stressful; I’m usually still strategizing about how I might just possibly make it work and pass the course at about the time I wake up.
The biggest recurring theme in my dreams, though, is an inability to make phone calls. Whenever something terrible is happening in the dream — being chased by bad people, having some tragedy befall someone I love, you name it — I cannot make a phone call. And the ways in which I can’t vary from dream to dream (and often there are several different versions in the same dream) — things like not having the money for a pay phone, the phone not having all the right keys, not knowing the number, knowing it but somehow always misdialing . . . (I could go on; I suspect there have been 50 different ways I haven’t been able to use the phone.)
And I used to dream about my teeth falling out, but I just realized that I haven’t had that dream in at least 8 years.
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YES! Now that I am a professor the dream goes like this….I watching students make presentations in my class…I am supposed to grade them but I don’t recognize any of them…I don’t know the subject they are presenting….How am I supposed to grade them? Where have I been that I don’t know them?
I wake up and laugh at the change of sides!!!
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Thank you for prodding me to recall the recurring dreams I have had about each of my children. Each child had a signature nightmare that on reflection symbolized the deep unique bond I have with each one. With my son, we were always drowning together and with my daughter, subway or train doors were closing on her with me on the platform and her on the deaprting train as an itty bitty kid. Parenting anxiety has a unique flavor for each kid and all dreams.
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Through my life I’ve had a series of recurring dreams .. each one has special meaning to me .. usually awakening me to something going on that I need to pay more attention to.
1) when I was in college, I had the same dream before the start of every semester .. that my schedule was messed up, and I didn’t go to class when I should have .. that one sounds pretty common among our commenters here!
2) Any time I’m going to do public speaking or tape a commercial or go on TV (the last two are past activities) I’ll have the dream where I’m either in the shower or on the toilet and it suddenly becomes very public, though no one else is concerned about my embarrassment.
3) During seasons of stress, my teeth fall out (I think I grind them in my sleep) in my dreams .. always molars, and always very very realistic to me, so I look for them on awakening.
4) I used to have constant nightmares that I couldn’t dial a phone .. I’d always misdial and so couldn’t call for help. Touch tone button phones helped, but they’ve figured too. .. these also came during seasons of stress.
5) Being in an old house (often one that I actually lived in, that needed repairs) that was falling in, had odd stairs, leaking roof, hidden rooms and was closing in on me in some way.
6) For years I dreamed of rubbery roads .. driving over bridges that moved up and down and around, nearly falling off of mountains and precipes. All of these roads were over water where there were poisonous snakes and alligators that I had to beware of or fight off. Then I went through a painful divorce. The dreams in the last four categories stopped, with this last one slowing until one final dream: I was in a very small but neat house, perfectly square, white and clean, surrounded by water. There was one very small alligator left. I picked it up, told it I was no longer afraid, broke its back and made it into a belt .. true! (I’m from Texas, we do such things!) .. it was the dream that told me I’d made it through. Today, if I have a road/water/reptile dream or a house dream, I know it’s time to take stock of what the stress is, and to deal with it before it becomes such a problem. Joseph’s story taught us so in the Bible, and I believe strongly that our dreams have much to tell us, if we’ll listen.
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My recurring dream ususally involves going to France (I’ve never been and have no plans on going there in the near future.) The dreams usually revolve around missing passports, missing the plane, and then sometimes I actually get there and realize I don’t know how to speak French. lol!
Other recurring dreams are similar to yours, usually some class that I forgot to go to and so I might not be able to graduate high school or I’m about to go on stage for a play and I know none of the lines. Fun stuff these anxiety dreams, eh?
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Interesting. I’ve had MOST of these dreams (the school one, since I’m an adult has been that I have to go back to high school because I really didn’t graduate, weird). Andi is the only one who mention recurring dreamscapes- which I have. There’s a house, a beach town, a series of islands (lots of beaches)….I end up back in these places on and off.
I’ve also had recurring haunted house dreams. In all of these dreams I’d find a home (apartment, house, etc…) that was just perfect. I’d move in and feel so good and happy, then I’d realize there was a presence there that wanted me gone NOW. And there is a feeling of real danger in staying. These were really bothering me for a while when I realized that they could be about my own feelings of inadequacy- like I don’t deserve a life that makes me truly happy. They stopped after I realized that.
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The dream I remember the most, although I have not had it in a long time;
was my grandmother’s house. I would be walking through it and new bedrooms kept appearing. They were beautiful, and were differrent from fream to dream. I always loved those dreams!
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My reacurring dream and I have it all the time, is that I am flying a plane and I don’t know how to land it So I just fly in circles all night. I don’t seem to care that I can’t land it.
What could this mean?
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