Dream Themes

 I have sweeping, cinematic dreams with large casts and complex plots, but many dreams contain within them common themes that give voice to daytime fears and anxieties. These themes repeat themselves over and over in dreams with very different casts and plots. 

At the top of the list of themes, is the car that won't stay stopped. I'll be driving and come to a stop, even to park, but regardless of how hard I hold down the brake the car eventually starts to drift and roll very very slowly but inexorably into trouble. This theme happens so often when I am sleeping, that I sometimes have to remind myself that I have never actually had this problem in the waking world. IRL when I stop a car and put on the parking break it stays put. But in my dreams it's a different matter, it almost never stays put, and nothing I can do will stop it. So it drifts into people, other cars, buildings, streams and lakes.  I stopped having this dream for a few years after I retired, until Trump came into office then it came back. It disappeared again during the Biden years, only to reappear this year. In other words, this dream theme has clear connections to external situations, whether job related or political that cause feelings of loss of control and panic or anxiety. I had one of these dreams last night after learning what the new CDC guidelines for COVID vaccines were and realizing that we might have difficulty getting my husband vaccinated (I'm over 65, he is not). 

Another common dream theme is a house with too many doors to the outside and none of them will shut or lock properly. Commonly the door will be smaller than the doorway by an inch or two, so that the deadbolt or other locking mechanism does not connect with anything solid, just sits in the air gap. Or sometimes door frames are rotting and will not hold, or the doors or frames are severely warped and the hardware for locking does not connect. In the dreams I expend oodles of energy trying to jury rig some means of securing a door, but when I am successful, I suddenly discover that there is yet another door with outside access that will not shut or lock properly. I have never experienced this in real life, as far as I can remember. Every place I've ever stayed has had good solid doors and working locks.  Unlike the slowly drifting car theme, I have not been able to identify what events or conditions in real life are a trigger for this theme, although it clear seems to concern fears about boundaries and safety. 

There have been times when real life experiences have been transformed into dream themes of anxiety, fear, dread, worry, etc. In 1982-83 during my first full-time academic teaching position I lived in a rental house that turned out to have a leaky roof. Some months after I moved in, I had the occasion to go up to the attic to put some stuff in storage and noticed several big buckets placed around to collect drips. There was no standing water in them, so I didn't think much about it. However, that spring when we got very heavy rains for several days in a row, I was awakened one night by the sound of water. There not only were the buckets full, but they had overflowed and a literal waterfall was cascading down the attic steps into my the second story of my apartment. When called the landlords emptied the buckets, put them back and assured me that they would repair the roof "soon". After four more months of issues, I found a new rental, but for many years to come my dreams were haunted by the theme of water dripping from the ceilings. Nearly 20 years later my husband and I rented a double wide trailer whose roof also began to leak after we'd been there a few years. Needless to say anxiety still sometimes appears in my dreams as a leaking ceiling. 

So what about you? Do your anxieties, fears, or worries manifest in your dreams in predictable or regular ways? Share your experiences in the comments.