Unsweet Dreams

I haven’t been sleeping well. I know I’ve already explained how sometimes I have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, but that’s not all. For a while now I have also been having a seemingly unending stream of anxiety dreams. Here’s a nerve-wracking sample:

~I dreamt that I had to drive from the house I grew up in to my high school, a drive I have done at least a million times. But in the dream there was something wrong with my eyes and I couldn’t see properly. So I had to do the drive by memory and sound, just hoping I didn’t run into anyone or hurt my sister, who was also in the car.

~I dreamt that my mom had done a huge and expensive remodel of her house, but it looked absolutely horrible. She asked me what I thought about it and I found my tongue totally tied – it was so horrible that I couldn’t lie to her about it, but I was too worried about hurting her feelings to tell her the truth.

~I dreamt that I had a baby but it was sickly and I didn’t know how to take care of it. Then I found out that APL’s parents were coming over and I was panicking because we hadn’t told them about the baby and the baby didn’t even have a name yet.

~I dreamt that I needed to be somewhere – somewhere important – and I knew that whatever it was it was starting without me. But no matter how hard I tried in the dream, I just couldn’t wake up and I couldn’t remember where I was supposed to be.

~I dreamt that I was a teacher, in charge of a class of fifteen five-year-olds who were all totally out of control. But I couldn’t get them under control or do a real lesson because their parents kept coming into the classroom to yell at me about what a bad teacher I was.

~I dreamt that the windshield in our brand new car had been completely shattered. There was glass all over the street and it was snowing and the car wouldn’t start.

Sometimes, I can’t even remember the story from the dream, I just wake up feeling anxious. Maybe one of the drugs I am taking is causing the dreams? I guess I should probably ask the rheumatologist about that.

But maybe it’s just that I’m not doing as good of a job staying calm and finding outlets for my stress as I thought I was. I also find it interesting that these dreams are basically fantasy anxiety dreams – they are all sort of off-the-wall and pretty unrelated to what is actually going on in my life. The things I am really worried about – falling behind in school, impending exams, being able to do the things I want to do in my life, getting depressed about feeling so physically icky all the time – don’t seem to show up directly in my dreams. Maybe I am too anxious about the things I am anxious about to even have anxiety dreams about them?

In any event, I’m not really sure what to do about the anxiety dreams. All I know is that I’m exhausted.