every day this week

[kate_nepveu]

my alarm has gone off during REM sleep, and I could have done without knowing how anxiety-filled my dreams are!

To wit:

Monday: I was back in law school, taking a final exam in biology (!), but I hadn't done anything for the class all year and also it included questions like "write a poem with this rhyme scheme" (!!), so I just left the whole thing blank and then went to the registrar to try and retake the class in the summer.

I don't remember Tuesday's or yesterday's because I didn't rant about them to anyone, though I think one of them may have involved looking for a lost dog.

Today was endless walking through a resort looking for my room where nothing was consecutively numbered and I was in everyone's way.

I'd like to go back to the dreams in which I can push off from the ground while walking and naturally rise up in a long low arc, like I was walking on the moon but less bouncy and much further, just skim-floating along. (Fun fact: this is the only time I've ever had anything even close to lucid dreaming. I used to have dreams in which I was walking or driving and I would lose contact with the ground uncontrollably and then have my stomach do the roller-coaster drop as I came back down—I don't remember ever actually crashing, just the loss of control and the plummet. Then one day, during my intense Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild phase, my dream-self realized, hey, I can target and control my landing just as though I were playing a video game; and since then, it's only the good kind of disconnection from gravity.

If you also have anxiety dreams, I sympathize but do not want the details in my inbox; also, please recall that I neither give nor receive unsolicited advice. Please feel free to commiserate over the long wait for the BotW sequel or share any other (semi-)lucid dream experiences, video game related or not, however.

Poll #28388

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

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Comments

[yhlee]

I have semi/lucid dreams from time to time (not consistently) and remember a time I decided to get a character to talk to me to tell me what to write next in my book. Instead of showing up in person, I got a very staticky, hard-to-hear voice on the radio, which I think was the character's "sorry, you're on your own." I woke up and had a laugh. XD

[kate_nepveu]

That's amazing!

[minoanmiss]

I sympathize and recognize patterns without contributing details of my own dreams.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you!

[canyonwalker]

Many of my dreams are anxiety dreams, too, and set in the context of school. For years I wondered, "Am I an anxious person?" I felt better after hearing a interview on NPR with a sleep psychologist several months ago who explained that anxiety dreams are common, and for people who've completed higher education— even when we've earned our degrees decades ago— it's common for dreams to be centered on school.

I'm having trouble finding the link to share. Maybe that will be the gist of a subsequent dream. 😨

[kate_nepveu]

The thing is, I know I'm an anxious person, I don't need my dreams reminding me of it!

[mkozlows]

"write a poem in this rhyme scheme about biology" is 100% a ChatGPT prompt.

[kate_nepveu]

It didn't even have to be about biology, which maybe made it harder because there just wasn't anywhere to start!