<p>My husband once punched me IRL during a dream. (His dream, not mine.) Upon questioning, he acknowledged that he was dreaming he was in a fight. Thankfully I was on my stomach, so he only hit me in the back of my head.</p>
<p>#:-S </p>
<p>I’ve had some variation of the academic dream from time to time, although usually that dream occurs in people who were conscientious students, which I was not. There was a long discussion of those dreams in an alumni magazine years ago and I had to laugh about one of them where the dreamer had dreamed that they couldn’t find the room for the final because they hadn’t been to class and the location of the exam had been changed. I said “Heck, that actually happened to me, but I haven’t dreamed about it”. (I did find it in time.)</p>
<p>One unusual one is that I have a dream that for some reason I’m in the neighborhood of the first home we owned, and somehow I have the keys to my old house, and no one is home. For some reason I go in, and the new owners eventually come home and I have to try to escape so the they won’t find me in their home. I have no idea why I have such a dream. </p>
<p>I was a conscientious student but I never had a dream of missing class because I went to every single one of them. My subconscious obviously knows that. However, I have never had a dream of falling teeth either. I wonder what does that mean.</p>
<p>I haven’t had the teeth falling out dream ever. Tornado dreams were my biggest ones. They started when I was very young- probably 5 or 6. In them, I would run to the basement but my family would not come down with me because they wanted to watch the storm. The house would be destroyed and I would be all alone. I had a very controlling father and my first husband was also very controlling. After I left my first husband, I had my last tornado dream ever. In that one, the tornado passed us by and everything was fine. I really believe it was my long term feelings of having no control over anything and when I finally took control over my own life, the tornado dreams stopped. </p>
<p>Forgetting to put on certain articles of clothing and going out in public, not being able to get away from frightening things- those are dreams I used to have a lot also. </p>
<p>I had night terrors as a child- wildly horrific dreams that are still terrifying if I think about them now. I don’t have them now, thank goodness. </p>
<p>For the past few years, I have a stressful dream only about once or twice a year.
I used to have them much more often, mostly when I was on antidepressants.
Its as if the medication took the dark thoughts away during the day, and sprang them onto me at night.
Which was often terrifying and one reason why I don’t take them anymore.</p>
<p>I had so many dreams where I forgot something. My locker combination, my school books or my pants!
I often had a dream where I was trying to contact someone on the phone, but they couldn’t hear me, or the phone wouldn’t connect.
That one is pretty obvious to interpret.
Iv’e also used the Dream app from this company to help me figure out other dreams.
Once I figured out what I was trying to tell myself, I tried to change my behavior in the dream and it eventually went away.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kismetech.com/pages/mobile-apps.php”>http://www.kismetech.com/pages/mobile-apps.php</a></p>
<p>It has some solid feeling insights.</p>
<p>I am not able to share a bed with anyone because I used to bruise my husband, and one night we woke up when I was trying to strangle him. My cats curl up with me when I’m reading in bed but run off the minute I turn out my light - I guess they’ve learned to flee for safety.</p>
<p>When we went camping, I’d try to dismantle the tent in my sleep until we bought a much larger tent that has no inside supports or ties.</p>
<p>A number of years ago my doctor wrote out a letter of necessity for me to have a seat to myself when traveling Amtrak. The conductor gave me a rough time when we boarded about “unnecessary privilege”, but apologized in the morning after watching me act out a dream or two while passing through the train car.</p>
<p>Not an anxiety dream, but one that bugs me, is dreaming about having a child, and then not wanting to wake up because I don’t want to lose the child that is so special to me in the dream.</p>
<p>OK, I’m kind of late to this thread — but I also routinely have had the teeth-falling-out dream, the extra-rooms-in-house dream (usually found within my own house where I’ve lived for years). the final exam for a class I didn’t attend dream, the can’t find the bathroom dream (always accompanies by urgency IRL- eventually I wake up and use my real bathroom), and the brakes-not-working in the careening car dream. </p>
<p>Here are some others:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Forgot to go pick up my kids at daycare. This continued well past the time my kids were grown, though I don’t think I have had the dream very much since my grandson was born. I suppose I will eventually start dreaming that I have forgotten to pick up grandson. </p></li>
<li><p>The lawyer dream – a variant of the final exam dream. Even though it is now almost 20 years since I last practiced law, it will turn out that I have been called back to defend a client and the trial is right now, and of course I have not had any time to prepare. Also, I usually am either naked from the waist up or wearing a nightie. But usually I do a terrific job of arguing the case! (I also tend to be half-naked when I have the final exam dream too)</p></li>
<li><p>The mom-is-not-dead dream – I actually cherish these. IRL, my mom died when I was in my early 20’s, she was late 40’s. In these dreams, it turns out that my mom never had died after all, but had gone off or been sent away somewhere, and now she is back. Of course I am glad to see her. She never ages, so now when we have the dreams, we are essentially the same age – this is not perceived as weird at all. These dreams have kind of morphed over time, I think because I like them – so now it is kind of ok for my mom to be both dead and not-dead at the same time. That is, I think I’ve just gotten very comfortable with the notion that she is dead in my daytime waking hours and lives on in dream-land. </p></li>
<li><p>The stage dream: I never was personally involved in performing arts, but sometimes I have dreams where I am about to go on stage for a performance that I didn’t know I was in and hadn’t rehearsed for. Another situation where I tend to be unclothed. Sometimes they are dance performances, which is interesting because my daughter danced IRL, and I seem to have taken her place in those dreams.</p></li>
<li><p>The missed appointment / missed flight dream – this one tends to occur right before I have an important event scheduled in real life-- so is obviously a result of anxiety leading up to the real event. </p></li>
<li><p>The kids are still small dream. These involve mostly my daughter – sometimes her brother is in the dream as an adult, but daughter is still around age 5. Recently there was a dream where we were in the car, and my d. was a little kid in the carseat in the back - and we were stuck in traffic trying to get to downtown SF where my daughter was going to start a new internship, and I was having a conversation with my d. asking her why she had given up her paying job in NYC to take an unpaid internship anyway. </p></li>
<li><p>The talking dogs dream – this is also fun. Sometimes, in dreams, my dogs can talk and we have conversations. Also when my grandson was a baby there would be talking-baby dreams, but of course he really did learn to speak IRL, so those dreams have stopped. </p></li>
<li><p>The I-can-fly dream. Which is cool, and very simple. Rather than walking about, I just fly from place to place, kind of like superman, except that my flying is more like floating from place to place. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>^^I’ve had the I can fly dream, but it’s more like swimming than floating.</p>
<p>I’ve also had the dream where you find extra rooms you didn’t know about or had forgotten. I don’t consider either of those to be anxiety dreams, though. I wonder what the house with extra rooms dream signifies?</p>
<p>For me, the house with extra rooms signified parts of me that I needed to explore, and the fact that I was stretching in new directions. They were very good, happy dreams. I haven’t had them in a long time. :(</p>
<p>I think the houses symbolize ourselves, and the extra rooms dream means that we have aspects of ourselves that we are discovering or about to discover. I have those dream occasionally and always wake up happy. </p>
<p>As opposed to the teeth dream. For some reason, those seem extra real to me. In fact, when I first saw those dreams mentioned on the thread, my thought was that I had lost some teeth too, IRL. I actually was carrying the belief with me that some teeth had fallen out!!! I literally had to remind myself that I still have all my teeth.</p>
<p>Sleep associated behaviors are called “parasomnias”. Hallucinations are common, and IIRC, are called hypnogogicI when you are falling asleep, and hypnopompic when you are waking up. addition to sleepwalking there can be combative and ritualized behaviors. They increase on some medications, notably psychotropics like “antidepressants” and sleeping pills. I recently read, also before more flagrant symptoms of dementia.</p>
<p>DrGoogle I have never heard anything suggesting the missed class dream was related to actually having missed a class, lack of concientousness. I wouldn’t be surprised if the opposite was true. </p>
<p>Ah – I have also had the “forgot to go to class” dream. Or, “forgot to finish an assignment or multiple assignments…” dream.</p>
<p>I think the final exam or the naked-in-public dreams are simply the extension of a fear of making mistakes & failure that we all carry pretty much all of the time. I mean, we all have a load of responsibilities and things we need to keep track of, and I think that deep down there is always a a fear of “what if I forget” or “what if I mess up.” I think the exam dreams are common simply because school + testing is a common experience for all of us, and something which occurred repeatedly while we were young and impressionable. </p>
<p>My recurring nightmare is a variant of the “forgot about class until the final exam”. It is the FIRST day of college and I’m wandering around campus but I don’t know my schedule - I don’t know the time or location of any of my classes and I don’t know where to go to find out my schedule. I had this dream frequently in the month leading up to my daughter going off to college. My bathroom dream is a huge, creepy, deserted public washroom where every stall either contains a toilet filled with filth, a toilet that is too high to reach, or a stall without a door. I didn’t realize the bathroom dream was common. Cool recurring dreams are where I can fly except it’s more like hovering just a few inches above the ground, where I can swim under water but still breathe, and where I can run without getting out of breath. I too would find it very interesting to learn about common dreams in other cultures or other times.</p>
<p>The flying dream is my most recurrent. But it’s short distances at a time, like a series of hops. Or more recently, that I hop up and can hover, like treading water. Funny thing is, every time, I think," Oh, I really can do it, it wasn’t a dream before, of course! It’s easy."</p>
<p>There’s another one about blurry vision and not knowing my way, but that’s happened enough that I just know it’s a dream and it goes away. Hope no one is analyzing us.</p>
<p>My brother and I did once have a similar dream image, when young. And, I also can’t read the whole thread or may likely get those dreams.</p>
<p>The parasomnia information is interesting to me. I frequently have “dreams” as I am falling asleep but I’m really still kind of half away. I haven’t called them dreams because I know I’m not in that phase of sleep to be dreaming. Almost always, they involve me being on the freeway and not paying attention, looking up to realize I’m about to rear-end someone and I’m slamming on the brakes when I think “just wake up and this won’t happen” so I become fully alert again. I can always fall right back to sleep. This happens when I’m not on any medications. </p>
<p>The other odd thing I experience is that when I’ve had a bad dream, I will wake up from it and if I fall right back to sleep, I go back into it. I hate that. </p>
<p>Most of my dreams are intricate murder mysteries where I feel like I’m actually watching a full length movie. I sometimes wish I could capture them in all their detail because they would make great screenplays. </p>
<p>I mentioned several pages earlier the dream of being pursued by the Nazis. And I have to rely on being more clever than they are in order to survive. It’s quite scary. </p>
<p>No one else? </p>
<p>@VeryHappy, I think that you and 2016BarnardMom get credit for having much more sophisticated nightmares than the rest of us. Your minds are concocting ways to outsmart Nazi pursuers and intricate murder mysteries,while the rest of us are obsessed with finding a toilet. </p>
<p>^^^LOL. No, I have the toilet dream too. Until this thread, I thought I was the only one who did!</p>
<p>Okay…just read the whole thread…have the can’t find my locker dream…waitress nightmares…can’t make the car stop…someone trying to “get” me, usually with a gun…and I’m trying to hide and there isn’t really anywhere that they won’t be able to find me. But about halfway through, I realized that there is another one I have sometimes that no one has mentioned…and I hope I’m not the only one who has this one.</p>
<p>I kiss someone or even have sex with someone…and in the aftermath, all of a sudden I remember that I’m married…and I shouldn’t have done that. Or I get paranoid about an STD, because I didn’t remember to use protection (because in the “good old days”, I really didn’t do that). Please share…if I’m the only one I’m going to be worried…LOL!</p>