The dream is, in a nutshell, this:
I’m in my-house-but-it’s-not-my-house (or, as last night, my-office-at-school-but-it’s-not-my-office). This space is “mine” but it turns out there are entrances I wasn’t aware existed (sometimes an additional door, sometimes a weird hole in the wall or window that I can’t close), and there are all of these people who are in my space (typically partying, or using the phone, or just hanging out when I need to get stuff done). I try to get them out (with escalating language and levels of force), but as soon as I shuttle them out of one entrance, they find their way in through another. When I try to appeal to some authority (the police, my department chair, whatever) to get the people out, they basically look at me like I’m talking gibberish and do nothing. And it goes ON and ON and ON, and often, because this is a dream I’ve been having for like 15 YEARS, I actually know it’s a dream, and I think I wake up, but then I’m still in the dream, until, ultimately, I finally wake up with my heart racing and totally freaked out that maybe there are actually intruders in my real-life house.
What it means is pretty transparent: I feel like I’m being pulled in too many directions, like I’m not in control, like too many people/things are interfering with whatever it is that I want to be doing, like I don’t have support or protection from people who are supposed to be there for support or protection, blah blAH BLAH.
The only good thing I can say for this dream is that it does seem to have entirely replaced the dream where I would be driving a car where I had no control over speed or steering (I had that dream for the first time when I was like three years old and I had it periodically up through college), and the one that I had during college and grad school where I would be in a house-but-not-my-house and the floor would suddenly become the ocean and I would be drowning.
So, yay, I guess, that I’m no longer in danger of grave injury or death in my control-freak-stress-dream, but still, I would prefer it if my subconscious would change things up again. Especially since I typically now know I’m dreaming and yet still can’t wake up from it. Seriously: Bored now.
I suppose I should finish up that chapter I’m working on, if only as a preventative measure against having this stupid-ass dream again tonight.
Man, if you substitute “cats” for “people” in the first paragraph, this is my actual real LIFE.
Wow, I have that dream! In mine, the other key recurring element is that I can’t get to my computer, because all the people are in the way doing whatever and talking at me.
It’s the least scary of the stress dreams, at least.
They are ALWAYS in the way of the computer! Or they broke it! Or they are surfing the internet or something! And they JUST. WON’T. MOVE.
But yes, on the bright side, it’s more frustrating and exhausting than scary.
Usually my out of control dream is that my teeth are coming out and this weird chewing gum-like substance is everywhere in my mouth and I can’t pull it out. I can’t really communicate with anyone. Other times it’s a classroom setting and there is nothing I can do to gain control of the class. They are talking, talking, non-stop rude and nothing works to get them to shut up so I can start. Either I scream but have no voice or it’s not loud enough for anyone to hear or they just don’t care.
Funnily enough, I recently realized I feel like I don’t have a say/voice in my own life. I’m sure it’s all connected, so will realizing this make the dreams stop?
Ooh! the weird teeth dreams! I have those, but it feels like my mouth keeps filling up with glass or something, and so I just keep spitting out teeth/glass but they keep coming and coming no matter how much I spew. Strangely, the thing that bothers me when I have this dream isn’t that I can’t talk… it’s just the practical problem of where to spit out the crazy proliferating teeth, because apparently I’m embarrassed that it’s happening and I don’t want anybody to know about it. (I’m sure this surprises nobody who reads this blog, as I am clearly a person who has a lot of things to say and I’m not always sure where to put those things
) For whatever reason, this dream doesn’t freak me out. It just feels like an inconvenient dream-problem, and usually happens in dreams where I’m happily going about my business and then – Doh! where am I going to spit out the proliferating teeth? – and then I wake up and happily go back to sleep.
Frankly, I don’t feel like “getting” what a dream is about makes it stop, at least in my case. Instead it’s like my brain is a broken record and it has some “go-to” things that it uses to process certain crap. So probably the only way to change the dream is to change the things that make the dream pop up. (Example: I don’t have the drowning dreams anymore because I don’t, actually, feel like I’m drowning emotionally/intellectually).
That’s a pretty freaky dream series, Dr. Crazy. You apparently fear that you have problems establishing and maintaining boundaries.
I periodically have a dream in which I’m trying to make an urgent phone call, and I keep misdialing and whatever problem I’m trying to solve continues to worsen. This dream has been updated from rotary to push-button telephones and from land lines to cell phones, interestingly.
I clearly fear that not enough people are listening to me and/or obeying my commands! Which is pretty funny, because at this point in my life, I’m large & in charge at work and at home. I wonder if this dream will get worse when I’m no longer the boss anywhere (retirement, old age, infirmity, etc.)
Yes! I have to keep spitting out the gummy stuff…well I can’t spit it out, I lock myself in a bathroom and try pulling it out. Makes me think of big league chew for some reason. I’m not sure if getting the dream will make it stop, I just “got it” recently.
The only way the dreams about me being a cop/FBI agent who kept getting shot or needed to use her gun, was to stop watching Numb3rs.
Wouldn’t it be fucken awesome if we could trade our stress dreams with other people?