(Content warning: discussion of death and dreams of bullying and violent behavior)
I don’t understand my sleeping mind. I can’t remember the last time I had a true nightmare. But for a number of years now, the kinds of dreams I have feature situations and scenarios that are either very troubling or extremely upsetting, or both at the same time. They aren’t scary, though, so I don’t categorize them under the umbrella of “nightmare.”
Instead, they seem to be manifestations of my anxiety disorders and of the ever-present stress they create in my mind and body. Such is their intensity that they frequently disrupt my sleep and have me waking up in the dead of night drenched in sweat. Many times I struggle to shake off the emotions associated with those dreams, and they can sometimes negatively set the tone for my day, leaving me wrapped in an aura of uneasiness and even dissociation.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the types of dreams I have, and I think I’ve boiled them down into three main categories. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
The Malicious Id
The Malicious Id generally takes the shape of me as the bully (which is ironic, considering I was bullied for years through elementary and middle schools). I live in these dreams as someone of indeterminate age, but generally felt to be somewhere between a teenager to young adult. I’m often around other people, usually children, almost always younger than I am. I can never tell if I’m with them in some kind of supervisory role or just present with them, but regardless, one or more of the children will do something that I find annoying. It’s always something small and trivial, barely worth even a second glance, but that minute behavior will send me into an irate tailspin, and I will flip the fuck out. My reaction will always be some sort of overreaction, and I will take out my irritation on that child. I never strike or beat the child, but most commonly I will yell and shout and push the child around, usually hard enough to knock them to the ground. Then I’ll turn on the other children and at least threaten the same treatment on them.
It’s usually at that point that I wake up, feeling frustrated and upset with myself and confused as to why I would dream myself behaving in such a way — again — when that kind of overreaction is something I would never do in reality. The children are always nameless and faceless, complete and utter strangers so far as I can tell, but that doesn’t prevent me from feeling terrible about these types of dreams and about myself for having them.
This, the Malicious Id, is the least common of the three types.
The Infinite Stress Loop
The Infinite Stress Loop is basically just what it sounds like. It is typically centered around whatever job I’m working at the time and involves a repetitive looping of performing the same action or task over, and over, and over, and over again, ad infinitum. For instance, a few months ago when I was working fast food, I dreamed about watching the order monitors and seeing new orders pop up on-screen. I would fill those orders, bump them off the monitors, only for new ones to take their place. This is, admittedly, how the process actually works in real life, but in the dream, there is never any hope of breaking or ending the cycle. There is no shift end to hope for, no expectation of any kind of lulls to catch your breath, no relief that ever arrives to help you. It is just the process, and you in the process, and it never ends.
At least until you wake up, feeling stressed to the max, every muscle in your body tense, jaw clenched so tight you could crush diamonds between your teeth, anxiety ratcheted up to the nth degree.
I do know what generally causes these dreams — becoming so hyper-fixated on my job that day that it follows me into sleep, and I end up not getting much actual rest that night to recover for the next working day. It happens, too, when I do web design (something I love to do, so it’s not just stressful jobs where this occurs), getting caught in a loop of working on a block of code over and over again.
It doesn’t matter if I enjoy the particular job I’m doing at the time or not. The job follows me, becoming an affliction in my sleep, and I wake up feeling like I got no rest at all.
This is the second most common type of dream I have.
The Conflict Scenario
Both of my parents passed away a little over three years ago, mom three months after dad. For nearly two years after that, they would visit me in my dreams on an almost nightly basis. Many of these dreams were benign, ruminations of events with them that never happened, visitations that were frequently peaceful and nondescript.
But more commonly than not, most of these dreams about my parents would spin into strife and conflict, though never with my mom. It was always a fight of some kind with my dad. There would be arguments and yelled “discussions,” and nearly every time, the verbal fights would turn into physical ones where I would beat the living shit out of him. I would always wake up from these dreams upset and frustrated and covered in sweat, but the anger from my dream would never follow me into wakefulness — I would just be shocked and confused as to why I would dream such violence so relentlessly. Yes, my dad and I were never particularly close, especially as I became an adult and my mental illnesses began to worsen and require daily maintenance and self-advocacy and self-care. But never in all that time did it ever occur to me to take violence to him in any way. That somehow came to be a thing for after he died and only then while I slept.
I talked about these conflict dreams about my dad with my therapist, and we both agreed that I probably had/have some unresolved anger toward him that manifests these dreams. Some of that anger comes from various things growing up in his household and from some religious trauma growing up as a pastor’s kid that I continue to work through even now. But I think there’s more anger from the way he died, from the reason, the choice he made, that helped facilitate his death. I won’t go into any of that here. None of it is important. But the fact remains that there has been some anger I’ve had to work through, that I am still working through, that created the underpinnings for these conflict scenarios with my dad.
These dreams about my dad have lessened quite a bit this last year, but they do still occur from time to time. And sometimes they have started to include other members of my family. But as more time passes, the more affable these nighttime visitations with my parents have become, the more convivial and familial.
These conflict dreams have far and away been the most common stressful dreams I’ve had the last few years and by far the most intense and traumatic. I look forward to the day when I banish them completely.
