Tag Archives: symbolism

Revisiting a Dream

I have a bad sleep habit. When I wake up after having a stressful dream, I close my eyes and go right back into it. Despite waking up, relieved that it was just a dream, I close my eyes and somehow permit myself to re-enter the dream state and jump back into the stress.

Unlike lucid dreams, where I feel like I’m in control, I just succumb to the stressful circumstances and let the dream take me over again. This is frustrating.

Today I went back in to a dream where I spent a lot of money on a frivolous purchase of hundreds of dollars on gourmet coffee beans, and was trying to get a refund. A Betty White-like old lady was smiling and acting like she wanted to help me, but wouldn’t give me what I wanted. I woke up thinking how stupid this was, told myself that I was glad it was just a dream. Then I went back into the dream and tried to deal with an Anthony Robbins-like salesman, who was trying to convince me that I still wanted the purchase.

I only do this with stressful dreams, like I’m a glutton for punishment. I wonder what part of my psyche thinks I deserve this? I wonder what I can do to break this pattern? I don’t think of myself as someone that dwells on the negative, but this seems to be a negative behavior that I consistently repeat.

If it was a recurring dream, I’d try to figure out if there was some sort of message in it, but it’s usually a totally different dream, with a topic that wouldn’t actually stress me out nearly as much in my waking state as it does in my dream. The simple message could be ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’, but then why do I pop back into the stress? It could be telling me something about stress in my waking state, but I get this dream pattern even when I don’t feel like I’m dealing with a lot of stress in real life. Maybe there’s nothing to figure out, but if that’s the case, then I’d sure like to break this pattern, and reduce the unnecessary stress. I’d much prefer to jump out of the dream when I have the chance… or maybe make it a lucid dream where I have some control. But I’d also just settle for switching over to some sweet dreams!

Weird dreams

I have this weird thing about my dreams that I don’t think I’ve known to be true for anyone else. I almost never dream of people that I see on a regular basis in my waking hours. It is very rare for my wife, or kids, or my current coworkers to be in any of my dreams that I remember having.

That’s kind of weird. I often dream of friends and family members I have not seen in years. But if I have a rare dream of someone close to me, it’s usually a shallow, not quite awake dream about something I’m thinking/worried about. Beyond these rare occasions, the people that are usually in my dreams are almost always from my past, or strangers.

The other thing about my dreams is that when I wake up in the middle of the night, I tend to go back to my dream even if I don’t like the situation I’m in. I might feel relief that it was only a dream, and think that I’m glad I’m up and can forget the dream, but then I go back to it anyway. Last night was one of those nights.

I was dreaming that this man and woman were spying on me. I knew they were spies, and that they had guns, and I spent most of the dream trying to lose them. At least three times last night I woke up from within this dream and the stress of being (slowly) chased by armed spies was something that made me feel relieved that I could stop. But each time I went back to sleep I was thrust into this same dream again. The spies followed me, they pretended they were not, I tried to lose them. At one point I double backed and spied on them. At another point I booby trapped their weapons stash to blow up if they tried to get to their weapons, but they never triggered my trap. Even after waking up with resolve to end the dream, I’d go back into it again,

Those are my silly stress dreams. Dumb plots, unrelated to any real stresses, with people I don’t know, or people who visit me from my distant past.

I know dreams are supposed to be weird. But does anyone else dream void of people regularly in their lives? Does anyone else keep going back to dreams even after they wake up relieved that they were only dreaming? Or maybe it’s just me and my dreams that are this weird?