"Missed the final" dream

DonnaL
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:38:11 +0000

I believe I read somewhere that among mothers living near the Grand Canyon, dreams of their children falling in are common (or, at least, were common once upon a time). I’m sure that although anxiety dreams are universal, the particular manifestations of that anxiety largely depend on your geographical location, your culture, and your own experience (as with academic anxiety dreams). The worst nightmares I’ve ever had have been about my son falling through bridges into the water beneath, and my not being able to reach him in time and jumping in after him. It makes my heart beat faster just to think about them. But I’m sure that living my entire life in a region with many bridges has something to do with the form such nightmares have taken.

When I was a very small child (4 and younger), I used to have nightmares about falling down hills (like the ones in the parks we used to visit), and, for a time after I stopped sleeping in a crib, about falling out of bed during the night. With those, I usually woke up on the floor! (I must have been pretty late in moving into a bed, since I remember my crib rather well, although I know it happened before I was 3, since I remember my mother waking me up in my bed the morning of my third birthday.)