I will often fall into a dream that I can’t escape. It’s often a stressful dream although rarely related to a stress I’m dealing with. Essentially, I get stuck in the dream dealing with a ridiculous scenario, and even after I wake up I can’t help but to go back into the dream.

I end up in a loop where I go right back into the stressful situation in my dream, can’t come to a resolution, wake up again, realize it’s just a dumb dream, then still go back into it again.

It’s 5am and I left my bedroom half an hour ago because I couldn’t break the loop and was waking up again and again in the same stressful situation. Now I can’t even remember the dream; Don’t know what was so stressful, and can’t think of any stresses I’m currently dealing with. But I think I’d still be in the loop if I didn’t physically get out of bed.

I wonder what underlying stresses cause these kinds of dreams? What unresolved concerns do I carry around to make these dream loops reoccur for me? Because I’m feeling like I’m in a pretty low stress environment, enjoying my holidays, and still I end up in one of these loops. What brings these on? And what strategies do people have to be able to jump out of theses loops without having to physically get out of bed?