I have this recurring nightmare. I’ve had it since high school.<\/p>\n
I’m somebody who rarely is late or misses an appointment. I once forgot a lunch with a friend back in 2001. I don’t think I’ve done that since. I do not react well when I suffer from other people’s carelessness. I have never borrowed a book or other object without returning it. <\/p>\n
UPDATE: After writing this blog post, I had a nightmare that I showed up to a bar mitzvah on Shabbos morning wearing old shorts and a ratty t-shirt and had to say stay outside and look stupid the whole time. <\/p>\n
Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cI think those who have it tend to be professional and were successful students,\u201d says Judy Willis, a neurologist and teacher who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., and who wrote about the dream in a 2009 Psychology Today blog post. \u201cThese are people who have demanded a high performance from themselves. The recurrence of the dream correlates with times of stress and pressure, when people feel they have a challenge to achieve.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Gemma Marangoni Ainslie, an Austin psychoanalyst, agrees. The final exam, she says, \u201cis likely representative of an occasion when the dreamer feels he or she will be tested or measured, and the anxiety is about not measuring up. The dreamer\u2019s task in \u2018awake life\u2019 is to translate the final exam to a situation he or she is facing that stirs up concerns about potential failure.\u201d <\/p>\n But why school? Why don\u2019t we dream about current pressures \u2014 grant proposals that are due, impending legal briefs or oral arguments, or newspaper deadlines? <\/p>\n \u201cEmotional memories and impressions made during high-stress experiences are particularly strong, and are further strengthened each time they are recalled and become the place the brain goes when the emotion is evoked,\u201d Willis wrote in an email. \u201cSince each new stress in the current day is \u2018new,\u2019 there is not a strong memory circuit that would hook to it in a dream. But there is that strong neural network of previous, similar \u2018achievement\u2019 stress. Since tests are the highest stressors.\u2009.\u2009. [it] makes sense as the \u2018go-to\u2019 memory when stressed about something equally high stakes in the \u2018now.\u2019\u2009\u2019\u2019 <\/p>\n Ainslie theorizes that most of us have these dreams \u201cas an attempt to disguise what it\u2019s really about,\u201d she says. \u201cThe part of yourself that is distressed wants to disguise it, and the easiest way to disguise it is to move backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n Ainslie says the school dream is a common one, although it\u2019s not the only one that reflects anxiety. \u201cAnother common one is being in a car and not being able to put the brakes on,\u201d she says. \u201cThis one isn\u2019t about not measuring up. It\u2019s about not being in control, a matter of not being the driver in your life.\u201d <\/p>\n Alma Bond, a retired New York psychoanalyst and writer, describes the school dream as a response to \u201can unconscious memory of an experience for which we were totally unprepared,\u201d adding that it\u2019s possible \u201cwe unconsciously remember a time when we did fail some test or other, and are afraid we will repeat the failure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have this recurring nightmare. I’ve had it since high school. I’m somebody who rarely is late or misses an appointment. I once forgot a lunch with a friend back in 2001. I don’t think I’ve done that since. I … Continue reading