I find it interesting that anxiety dreams tends to manifest themselves in recurring situations that never actually happened to me.
For example, there’s that classic “having to take a test you haven’t studied for” dreams which, like probably just about everyone else on the planet, I used to have. (Usually I did really well on tests, even if I hadn’t studied for them.) Frequently I was vaguely aware that I hadn’t attended the class for the entire semester and finals were coming up. I even had anxiety dreams about high school long after I graduated college. I haven’t had those for a while, and the last few I had I remembered thinking “Wait, I’ve graduated college. I don’t need to take a high school class.”
Speaking of high school, there’s the one where I’m at a high school reunion or function, and I can’t find someone.
There’s that old chestnut, “I’m naked/in my underwear in public” dream.
There’s the usual “I have to pee but the toilet is broken/missing/something else” dream, which is your body telling you, yes, you do need to wake up just long enough to go pee.
Recently I’ve had another recurring favorite, anxiety over possibly missing a flight. (OK, that did happen to me once, back in 1987. Lesson: Never trust New York subway schedules.) You find yourself thinking “Wait, what time is it? Shouldn’t I already be at the airport? Why haven’t I packed anything?”
Another favorite: I’m supposed to be driving my car, but for some reason I’m in the back seat, or facing the wrong way, and the car starts slipping and sliding away and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Another auto-related favorite: I’m on a high bridge or overpass, and the freeway just ends (somehow, this never actually results in a crash).
Also automotive-related: Going back outside to find that your car has been stolen.
Another one: My apartment has been robbed. (And I’ve owned my house for just shy of five years now.) Or I catch someone breaking into my house and shoot at them, but the bullet comes out with such pitifully weak velocity that it just bounces off them.
I suspect many of the above are fairly common. But I have a few that are probably narrowly shared. I did a lot of plays in high school and was a Drama major in college, so frequently I’ll have a dream where I’m supposed to to be in a play and I haven’t learned any lines. (Strangely, these never seem to bother me particularly, as I usually end up trying to find a copy of the script to do a quick read before I go on, but I’ve never had the dream actually continue to the point I get on stage.)
Dreams, of course, are your brains garbage collection system, filing away the memories collected while you’re awake. And Sigmund Freud was full of it.
(And how’s a description of your dreams for the ultimate in self-indulgent blog posts?)