Anxiety Dreams - We All Have Them

Capt MJ

Capt MJ

Serviam.
15-Year Member
Joined
Sep 27, 2008
Messages
24,113
What’s your worst?

Usually mine fall into two categories:
I am back in college and I walk into class (pre-COVID!), and I have either a paper due or a major exam, of which I was unaware and completely unprepared for.

Or, I am at the Pentagon and walk into a briefing room full of admirals, and apparently I am the briefer expected to show up with a PowerPoint deck, both of which are completely unexpected.

Last night was a doozy, a new one, and what toggled it, I don’t know. I was back in uniform, wash khakis, at some week-long licensing boot camp aboard a commercial ship and in a classroom to sit for my unlimited tonnage commercial license. Chef Robert Irvine was the instructor assigned to me, and I could not make him happy, as I didn’t know why I was there, who had signed me up for this, and I had no clue how to do anything. Oddly, I knew everyone in the class, people I hadn’t thought about for years. I thought about quitting the class, but decided to gut it out. And then I woke up, enormously relieved it was a dream. No doubt there is meaning there.

Yours?
 
Me flying at 300 feet taking invisible small arms fire through the jungle canopy in Central America.
Getting my turn in line at a Jewish Deli in Brooklyn when the guy in the paper hat says "were outta corned beef, what else ya want?".

Both equally terrifying.
 
My stress dreams are usually along the lines of me being late for school/practice/work. Sometimes I "wake up" in my dream and look at my clock and start panicking, only to actually wake up and realize it's a Sunday morning and I don't have anywhere to be. Most of the time they're very realistic in terms of the people, setting, and plotline, but every now and then something bizarre like talking dogs makes an appearance.
 
I have several re-occurring dreams.

1. I am back in college and it's time for final exam. I have cut every single class (which I never did) and I am afraid the prof. will fail me and not take the final, and then I won't graduate.

2. I am back in my college town ready to start an MBA program and I keep asking myself "why do I want to do this?" (Actually, I never seriously even considered an MBA. I have a different post-graduate degree.)

3. Most common: I am out of town somewhere and racing to make it to the airport to catch a flight home and know I have very little chance of making it on time.
 
Capt MJ said:
What’s your worst?

Usually mine fall into two categories:
I am back in college and I walk into class (pre-COVID!), and I have either a paper due or a major exam, of which I was unaware and completely unprepared for.

Or, I am at the Pentagon and walk into a briefing room full of admirals, and apparently I am the briefer expected to show up with a PowerPoint deck, both of which are completely unexpected.

Last night was a doozy, a new one, and what toggled it, I don’t know. I was back in uniform, wash khakis, at some week-long licensing boot camp aboard a commercial ship and in a classroom to sit for my unlimited tonnage commercial license. Chef Robert Irvine was the instructor assigned to me, and I could not make him happy, as I didn’t know why I was there, who had signed me up for this, and I had no clue how to do anything. Oddly, I knew everyone in the class, people I hadn’t thought about for years. I thought about quitting the class, but decided to gut it out. And then I woke up, enormously relieved it was a dream. No doubt there is meaning there.

Yours?
Click to expand...

I think that perhaps you are suffering from lack of bacon?
 
Mine are also high school related. Forgetting locker combo. Forgetting to study for a test. Forgetting my schedule and there fire missing classes. Forgetting my gym clothes.

I’m probably forgetting some other pieces (see what I did there 😂)
 
As if 26 years in plus giving away my son to the Marines, I have a lot of navy dreams. Often times I dream I am reporting in to a new command and as happened at three of four operational commands after graduating IDC school, I walk into a mess. The most recent dream I was at a hospital (yuk) and my clinic or whatever they put me in had supplies piled up and files laying around and MIA worker bees. One dream I walked into a CPO Mess and was standing there as if invisible. At least I was in uniform. It wouldn't matter on second thought as I was I guess, invisible.

I should have led off with this as it is a doozy. I dream fairly often about plane crashes. I can see or sense that the plane is about to crash and I actually see the impact. My instinct is to go and try to help but I can never get there. I don't know how common plane crash dreams are but I've actually seen a plane crash. My DDG was doing ASW stuff off Kauai in June of 1983 and I had been in sick bay sewing up a forehead on a snipe. He was attacked by a valve wheel or something. Anyway, after I finished I went in the galley for a few freshly baked sticky buns and took them to the bridge. The watch standers were duly grateful. I took two and went to the starboard bridge wing.

My good buddy the QM2 had just assumed the 4-8 QMOW and was shooting stars or something like that. I had to hold his pastry which was fine with me when we heard and then noticed a P-3 flying low and close. It went straight into the mountain. We saw it disappear and I still don't remember if there was a fire ball but when I replay the scene in my mind there is fire. QM2 went to the door of the bridge and hollered, "Officer of the Deck, I just saw a plane crash." The OOD was already confirming from CIC that they had indeed dropped a plane from their radar.

Here's the crazy part of the story. I had leave a few days later and got on the plane back to the mainland. I've met some characters and some prominent people on planes and in airports and sitting next to me was a medical officer captain from AFIP, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. He told me he was investigating a plane crash. I almost stopped breathing. I said, the plane isn't by some chance a P-3 is it? When I told him I saw the plane crash he almost stopped breathing. I told him what I saw and he gave me his card. He wrote down my name and ship's name in case he needed to get in touch with me. I never heard from him again. I wish I had never seen the crash as it haunts me like many other visitors in the night.
 
I don’t classify my 9/11 Pentagon dreams in the odd & funny anxiety category; they are more like @Devil Doc ’s P-3 into the mountain, your eyes saw the image but the brain experiences it on different levels. They are vivid replays that fall tidily into the nightmare drawer. I guess my brain is still working on those files.

I think it’s interesting there is a pattern of school-related dreams.
 
These days I have two sorts of anxious dreams

1. I'm in some strange city with the wife. She goes off somewhere and I go to do my thing with either our DS as an infant, or Simpson, our wonderful Scotty pup. So I got someone helpless with me and... I can't find my way back. I never do before I awake terrified because the wife is gonna kill me.

2. This was a strange one last night. Apparently I hang out on these forums too much. I was preparing to enlist in the Marine Corps at my ripe old age, when I got drafted into some Army unit. Evidently I had some special skill because the Col had me in all his meetings, but he never told me why nor what I was to do. I was thinking of forgetting about the Corps and remaining in this Army unit because I was afraid I couldn't pass the Marine PFT. (Ha! Ya' think?). Anyway I woke up when I had trouble getting Simpson down the stairs so I missed some assembly... i was anticipating the dressing down. All this from a guy who never served!
 
Capt MJ said:
View attachment 6985
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Off topic, but you triggered me. This one's a classic.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly-greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry
Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Cap'n Crunch.

The grave site was piled high with flours as long- time friend, Aunt Jemima, delivered the eulogy, describing Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very "smart" cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he was still known as a crusty old man, and was considered a roll model for millions.

Toward the end, it was thought he would rise again, but alas, he was no tart.

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough; two children, John Dough and Jane Dough; plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about twenty minutes.
 
Easy.

I'm back at Parris Island. Sometimes I'm 17 years old again, sometimes my current age.

'nuff said.

I get this dream (nightmare?) about once or twice a year.
 
For several years after graduating from college, a dream of forgetting my schedule and being lost on campus would haunt me.
FINALLY in one of versions of this dream, I “remembered” that my schedule was in my PalmPilot (this will date me!). Relief flooded over me and I never had that dream again!! **PalmPilot was a precursor to a SmartPhone but without the phone and no color!
 
DE-7 said:
PalmPilot was a precursor to a SmartPhone but without the phone and no color!
Click to expand...
A helluva device. I was an early adopter and heavily relied on mine. It was years before phones caught up with what it provided.
 
DE-7 said:
For several years after graduating from college, a dream of forgetting my schedule and being lost on campus would haunt me.
FINALLY in one of versions of this dream, I “remembered” that my schedule was in my PalmPilot (this will date me!). Relief flooded over me and I never had that dream again!! **PalmPilot was a precursor to a SmartPhone but without the phone and no color!
Click to expand...

I still have my last one. New condition, still in the original box along with the folding keyboard accessory. Maybe they’ll become collectors items and I can cash in.

88F3655E-4651-45FA-93D2-D737F0BB0C23.jpeg

Stealth_81
 
Don't know if this counts as an anxiety dream but I had it last month and I remembered this forum. In my dream, I met Sting from The Police in the park, and I told him I thought Stewart Copeland was cuter than him. I don't remember much, but I do know that Sting was pretty angry. Perhaps the stress was from having someone from a band I like mad at me.
 
1. I have to get to class, but lost my schedule and don't know where to go (or which class it is).

2. There was some mix up and I never technically graduated HS, and have to go do it again.
 
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