As a child, I would retell my dreams to my mother and she would remark on how vivid there were. Now when I share my dreams with my Sweetie he comments on the intense details of my dreams.
I don’t put too much stock in the meaning of dreams. I usually figure it’s just my brain processing things that have occurred during my day. I will admit that sometimes I wake up from a dream with a very strong emotional feeling that stays with me all day.
The majority of my dreams take place in my childhood home in Pines Lake. I’m not really sure why Pines Lake is the setting of so many dreams but I find it fascinating and comforting. Good and bad dreams take place there. It doesn’t matter if the players in my dream have been there in real life or not. I never find that odd or out-of-place. My dreams aren’t memories or re-enactments of my childhood but rather current events taking place in a location from my past.
One interesting fact about the Pines Lake house as the backdrop… the kitchen always looks as it did BEFORE my parents remodeled it in the mid-1980’s. Can you say groovy avocado appliances and wallpaper?
Several years ago I shared this innocent, little secret of my dreams with my sister. She looked at me horrified and told me that I had serious issues and that I needed professional help. Whatever. To this day, I still don’t understand her over-the-top reaction.
But not all of my dreams take place in Pines Lake. My dreams have an entire geography and architecture outside my childhood home. All of the other locales in my dreams are fictional but they are always the same dream after dream. At one point, my brain designed these places and continues to go back to them.
I have come to realize that all of my “anxiety” dreams take place in my self-created places. Yes, anxiety dreams. You know the ones…
Ever dream that you’re in back in high school and you can’t remember your locker combination or your class schedule? When you do make it to class you find out that you never wrote your term paper or studied for the Algebra exam? Those are my high school anxiety dreams. I think I’m in my high school that I attended but the school is actually the one created by my brain. I usually wake up when I realize that I DID graduate high school (oh, so many years ago).
I have a similar dream on a college campus. It’s an urban campus like the one I attended but once again it’s one of my own creation. My anxiety once again is not knowing my class schedule. Or sometimes it's moving into the dorm and stressing about who my roommate will be. I find that last bit humorous because I went the route of the roommate lottery twice in real life and came out just fine.
I’m not sure how many people have this dream… I have a shopping mall anxiety dream. The stressor in my dream is that I’m supposed to be meeting someone and I can’t find the person. Once again, it’s a shopping mall that’s unique to my dreams.
How about the “I gotta pee” dream? Ever find yourself in a dream and really need to use the restroom but all of the toilets are occupied or out-of-order? For me, this dream always takes place in a locker room of a college natatorium. I’ve been in a few hundred swimming pool locker rooms in my lifetime. The one in my dreams must be a mosaic of all of them.
Honestly, I don’t I don’t have anxiety dreams that often (anymore). I just see them as my brain working out the stress that might be going on in my life at the time. But somehow it’s always reassuring to be in a familiar setting… especially one of my own creation.
Go ahead and leave a comment if you think I’m crazy. Or you could be kind and let me know that your brain creates dream locations too and uses them again and again.
For more spins on dreams, visit Gretchen at Second Blooming.
10 comments:
Wow, I don't want to think you're crazy at all, because your dreams sound so much like MINE. I used to dream about my parents house ALL the time. Sometimes they were there, sometimes not, and usually if they were there, I was aware that in reality they were dead, and I was glad to see them there. Strange. When I finally sold my parents house in Texas, the dreams tapered off considerably. I also have the high school dream and the college dream, but the problem is usually that I can't find the classroom, and keep looking for it. I like to think it's all perfectly healthy!
Thanks SO much for joining in! You're all linked up!
I still have those anxiety dreams ALL the time. Makes me nuts.
Last night I dreamt I was at a resort and some Contagion-like disease was going around. It turned me into a giant bug with compound eyes. WTF?
Made up dream locations are the best. I think dreaming of your childhood is fabulous. By the way I think your roommate situation turned out great.
The more surreal and intense my dream, the better. Even if its filled with anxiety and It overflows into my day...thats better than the occasional dream I have where its something supremely boring and reptitive. Like sanding a box over and over or counting items in the fridge over and over. These kind of dreams annoy the heck out of me.
I don't think you're crazy. My mind makes up places I don't think I've ever been or sometimes it combines places. Sometimes I'll dream about a specific place but in my dream it won't look anything like it does in real life but I still know it's that place...I know... weird.
I think it is very interesting that your dreams happen in the same places. I think most of my dreams mostly don't have a definite place I can describe. I have had the anxious college dream--forgetting to go to class all semester and realizing at the end that I'm going to fail. My most common anxious dreams though always involve trying to get somewhere by car and then running out of road or having to stop and walk. It's weird.
I've had similar anxiety dreams. When I taught high school I had a dream every single semester about being totally unprepared/naked/completely late for the first day of classes. Didn't matter how long I had been teaching, I always had one before a semester started.
Definitely not crazy. Not one bit. I've had dreams about specific places before, too - and sometimes it's been triggered by something I watched, or from seeing pictures of something - I usually chalk it up to my brain processing too much information, or information overload. ;)
Once Upon a Time I Had a Dream...
I always have dreams involving my parents' house, too. Not the house they live in, the one I grew up in. And sometimes I know it's the house I grew up in, but it looks nothing like it.
You reminded me of another dream I forgot to blog about - I have a "being chased" anxiety dream as well. It usually involves me having to run like crazy, and possibly beat the snot out of somebody. I don't think I ever know the person.
I usually have a recurring college dream where I am going to grad school and know that I am a lot older than the other graduates. I don't know why I have those, but I do find it rather interesting that I typically am summing up my coursework to see if I can graduate.
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