View Full Version : Recurring anxiety dreams
I'm sure many on here must have them at least every now and then.
My one last night was about being lost in a multi-storey car park just on the edge of Birmingham city centre while my dad was actually in the city centre himself and I was fending for myself running the gauntlet of vagrants and dodgy people of whom I feared were out to mug or attack me for no reason throughout said car park, plus I dreamt I needed the toilet at the same time but the car park's public toilets (Gents and Ladies) were locked due to vandalism and persistent drug dealing, but a nice bloke who was actually a worker in said car park opened the disabled/accessible toilet especially for me to use and managed to track down my dad who eventually came to my rescue.
I've experienced this exact same dream before a few months ago, but I'm not aware this particular multi-storey car park in these two dreams actually exists in Birmingham IRL, nor would such a place really be allowed to descend into such a hellhole in the first place.
This particular dream (on both occasions) really shook me up, despite being totally fictitious.
Possibly underlying anxieties about the thought of visiting major cities in general, and their often being renowned for crime and various related 'hazards', plus the fear of being caught up in something untoward happening.
They're awful, Lenco, aren't they?
For about the past week I've had dreams where my parents or close colleagues were angry with me, telling me I was useless and that they hated me.
They're awful, Lenco, aren't they?
For about the past week I've had dreams where my parents or close colleagues were angry with me, telling me I was useless and that they hated me.
Yes, I've been there myself.
I remember once when I was about 12 (circa 1989) when I was refusing to attend my hellhole of a school the one morning, my mom just snapped, went into our garage, grabbed one of my dad's hammers and smashed up my record player, though luckily it was only the perspex dust cover on the top that was smashed to smithereens while the rest of the unit escaped relatively unscathed.
It was a relatively inexpensive audio system but it was definitely an awful thing to do by my mom, and most certainly amounted to double standards, especially in the context of her bringing me up to know that vandalism is very wrong, but was perfectly OK for her to do as a 'punishment'.
Ditto for being told that violence and aggression is very wrong but still being on the receiving end of smacks and being screamed at, sometimes over the most trivial of things, especially when my mom was in a bit of a bad mood in general, though that was more when I was much younger than that.
I think I'm generally going through a bit of a rough patch ATM, especially as our dog sadly died last week, but unfortunately a lot of my other existing niggles seem to be coming out en masse right now, such as the dream about getting stranded in a Birmingham multi-storey car park last night where I was having to dodge various vagrants and junkies and initially having to contend with out-of-order toilets when I was bursting for a a wee in the dream, plus the painful memories of my mom acting like a raving psychopath by smashing up the lid on my record player with one of my dad's hammers in 1989 for refusing to go to school that day, but luckily she wasn't crazy enough to whack me with the hammer instead, which of course doesn't even bear thinking about.
I think she was going through a bit of a bad patch herself with depression/stress and irrationality in general around 1989-91 especially as she used to row with my dad a lot back then as well; sometimes over seemingly trivial issues from what I can remember.
But then again, I don't think MH issues were quite as well understood by wider society at large nor as widely discussed back then like they are now in these supposedly more enlightened times.
I've felt a little better yesterday and so far today, plus the dreams I had both last night an the night before must have been relatively inconsequential, as I can't really remember any of them.
I think I've been feeling a bit too emotionally embroiled in the Covid Inquiry on occasions during the past couple of days, especially as many of the revelations truly beggar belief.
Though I did admit in my dedicated thread on this very topic that dodgy pursuits among politicians, the police, etc, have probably always gone on behind closed doors in some form or another, but were usually unknown about by the average Joe Public as both those involved themselves and the media probably tended to keep schtum about such matters and those on the receiving end of or witnesses to such things often not believed nor taken seriously.
Ditto for cases involving corrupt school teachers, doctors, social workers, etc, and of course not forgetting celebrities a la Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, etc.
Last night's dream was about me and my dad returning to our previous house that I grew up in between the age of 1 1/2 and 7 3/4 that we moved away from in April 1985, and nearly everything was frozen in time since the day we departed, but in said dream I insisted in setting up my own hi-fi equipment in the living room in the exact location and at roughly the same height as what my dad's hi-fi equipment was installed during the earlier period of our tenure at said address, from late 1978-up until circa early 1981 when the living room was redecorated and my dad's hi-fi gear was moved to a different spot in the room and into a rack with each speaker positioned either side, which remained in that very same spot right until April 1985 when we vacated the property and moved to where we live now.
The original setup of my dad's hi-fi gear in our previous house between late 1978 and early 1981 was on shelves at a high-level, with the lower shelf holding my dad's hi-fi gear being approximately 1.25m above floor level and the shallower upper shelf above it holding ornaments IIRC. The speakers were also mounted to the wall up at high level at the far end of the living room pointing back down the room, but the second 'rack' setup with the speakers on the floor each side had the speakers at the opposite end of the room (at low level on the floor) facing in the opposite direction to the original speaker setup.
While I never actually gave the relocation of my dad's hi-fi gear in said living room as much as a second thought at the time, it's only really now that I seem to have a soft spot for the original orientation as it was between late 1978 and early 1981 as I can now just picture the system sounding much bigger and fuller than in the latter orientation (spring 1981-spring 1985).
I'm not quite sure as to whether or not this constitutes an anxiety dream per se, especially as I don't recall being distressed in any way about that particular change at the time (my dad's hi-fi gear being moved to another spot in the living room), especially as change of basically any sort can be debilitating for people like me with ASD.
It was just an extremely vivid dream that was highly emotive, neither good nor bad.
Last night's was about our downstairs toilet; that the toilet bowl had collapsed right into the floor (not while anyone was sitting on it, thankfully).
In fact, I've actually had strange dreams in the past about oddball toilet installations, including toilet bowls sunken into the floor, that I found rather disconcerting.
My latest anxiety-related dream that I had last night was about doing nasty things to this one other male client at my day centre who has always been very domineering; not just to me but most other fellow clients too, and the staff there have seemingly almost always turned a blind eye to his 'bossy' foibles.
He's the client who made personal remarks about my toilet visits not long after I started there (in 2017) and I was severely reprimanded by this one power-mad staff member there for assertively raising my voice at this client (the staff member concerned left there a few months after said incident) and threatened to report me to the police if he ever found me being abusive to other clients again, which I'm sure I wasn't intentionally doing. Obviously just some power-mad former employee of Staffs CC with some kind of bee in his bonnet, and also stuck in a bit of a timewarp.
Although I've only had just a handful of carry-ons with said client since then; the most recent one earlier this year during an indoor team game session where where he was barking out orders at me despite being in the opposite team and I lost it with him verbally (but not lectured about 'zero tolerance' and the like by staff this time round, unlike in 2017).
In the dream last night I was screaming into his face that 'he wanted arresting' and I was calling him horrible insulting things like 'pig face', and still in said dream my dad was saying to me 'how dare you make false accusations against people who haven't done anything bad to you' and that I could be the one arrested and prosecuted for such things.
I have actually felt very tempted to say such things to that particular client in the heat of the moment in the past but never actually have, as I don't really have the bottle to do so and it's not really within my general nature to insult people face-to-face either, justified or not.
But that client is the kind of person who will always gleefully deny any wrongdoing and he has always seemed untouchable for some strange reason, plus I've always perceived the staff there, oddly, have always seemed to side more with him too, proclaiming that he has 'issues' like everyone else who attends there.
Though not necessarily an anxiety dream per se, the one dream I had last night was about finding a copy of Susan Boyle's 2009 debut album 'I Dreamed A Dream' on vinyl, on which format I don't think has ever been released, nor any of SB's other albums AFAIK, though I'm not necessarily gagging to find nor own any of SB's efforts on vinyl ATM, especially as I don't really listen to her that much anyway these days.
The other dream I had was about visiting a pub on what was once upon a time one of my town's worst estates, and in that particular dream said pub had become all respectable and far removed from the notorious heavily stigmatised venue it was once perceived as by many a local.
Mind you, I haven't (touch wood) heard of nor read about any incidents within nor near said pub IRL for donkeys years now.
Though not necessarily an anxiety dream per se, the one dream I had last night was about finding a copy of Susan Boyle's 2009 debut album 'I Dreamed A Dream' on vinyl, on which format I don't think has ever been released, nor any of SB's other albums AFAIK, though I'm not necessarily gagging to find nor own any of SB's efforts on vinyl ATM, especially as I don't really listen to her that much anyway these days.
The other dream I had was about visiting a pub on what was once upon a time one of my town's worst estates, and in that particular dream said pub had become all respectable and far removed from the notorious heavily stigmatised venue it was once perceived as by many a local.
Mind you, I haven't (touch wood) heard of nor read about any incidents within nor near said pub IRL for donkeys years now.
I think those 2 dreams I had the night before last were more about some kind of unthinkable (in positive ways, and especially in the latter case).
Though in the first case I bet SB's 2009 debut album probably would have be released on vinyl by default had it been released as a brand new album today in 2023-24, plus of course back then in 2009 and still into the early 2010s (which was SB's heyday as an artist) the vinyl revival was still yet to really take off properly.
BTW, I can't really remember what I dreamt about last night, which might not be a bad thing.
My dream last night was about seeing a couple of old photos of my parents' old duvet cover being defaced with graffiti tags, which was not only dead bizarre but never actually happened IRL.
Also in said dream my mom was telling me I was being really irrational about not liking said photos.
I've also been having a lot of recurring dreams just lately about us returning to our previous house and the estate it's on, plus others about my second respite unit that I attended between summer 1991 and early spring 2006 that eventually closed around 2007 IIRC, but I had already stopped going by then as I basically didn't like it there anymore, plus my dad thought it was rather pointless me going there towards the end, plus of course he believed that someone else far more needy than myself might have benefitted more from it at the time.
During said respite unit's last few years in existence, it was no longer the friendlier 'home-from-home' environment it once was during the most part of its first decade, what with 'zero tolerance' posters and policies, many of the best staff members there having been replaced by increasingly irate ones who seemed to come across as power-mad amateurs, and finally the place becoming increasingly unkempt together with a general sense of apathy and hostility, all of which I think reflected the general atmosphere and culture of the time particularly within Health and Social Care settings, also including many aspects of my previous day centre as the decade of the 2000s wore on.
So apart from the absence of staff members smoking inside the building, that second respite unit eventually ended up being not that much better than the first one I attended during the very early 90s that I thought was god-awful in its own right at the time.
I had another 2 anxiety dreams last night.
The first one was about me and my dad returning to our previous estate as he went to pick up some second-hand chairs or something (this was from a part of the estate where the houses front onto pedestrian footpaths and the rear of the properties back onto a vehicular access road, known as 'Radburn' layout). In that dream I waited in my dad's van, and when he finally returned and was loading the items into the back of the van, I suddenly heard choruses of hooligan/yob-like shouting coming from somewhere in the vicinity, and I said to my dad 'Let's get the hell out of here pronto'!
That dream could have possibly been triggered in part by me innocuously looking at old photos last night taken both inside and in the back garden of our previous house that conversely didn't represent anything negative.
The second one was about me staying at this 'fictional' respite unit in Burton, and I attempted to play one of my favourite vinyl records on their record player, and then ended up erasing the contents, 'taped over' with sounds from the immediate environment instead, then the proper musical contents having resumed from the point where I lifted the stylus.
I know IRL it's physically impossible to actually erase/record over the content of vinyl records, as they're a purely mechanical read-only medium (unlike cassette tapes, for instance) but many dreams, especially like this one, are most certainly bizarre!
Do you find your dreams are connected to things that you talk about during the day?
Do you find your dreams are connected to things that you talk about during the day?
I think they probably can be.
My dad reckons that dreams usually have some kind of logic to them, even if the actual dream itself seems bizarre or downright nonsensical; e.g, one location/scenario morphing into two or more sometimes otherwise unrelated ones.
I think my first dream last night about revisiting the estate we used to live on as a child and hearing the sound of yobs shouting there (albeit within earshot only and out of visual view) could have partly been triggered by me looking at old photos from our previous house there that we moved away from in 1985 when I was nearly 8 years old, no doubt coupled with my current obsession with graffiti and litter/fly tipping, though that never actually figured in said dream, nor did any adverse events (e.g, serious crimes or disturbances) knowingly occur during our time living on said estate.
As for the second anxiety dream about music on vinyl records getting 'erased', which I know it's not actually possible to erase them or record over them (as on say, cassettes), it's probably anxiety about the thought of playing them on a 'strange' record player whose stylus and/or tonearm might not be in satisfactory working condition or may be 'maladjusted' (especially as many people who are unfamiliar with such devices unfortunately don't really understand or often can't comprehend how such things are meant to function), and the records end up becoming damaged or contaminated.
Also some people unfortunately have never cared about handling and caring for records the proper way either, especially as I've come across some shockers in charity shops and the like over the years, especially 'sleeveless' records that were badly scratched and/or their centre labels defaced.
I think they probably can be.
My dad reckons that dreams usually have some kind of logic to them, even if the actual dream itself seems bizarre or downright nonsensical; e.g, one location/scenario morphing into two or more sometimes otherwise unrelated ones.
I think my first dream last night about revisiting the estate we used to live on as a child and hearing the sound of yobs shouting there (albeit within earshot only and out of visual view) could have partly been triggered by me looking at old photos from our previous house there that we moved away from in 1985 when I was nearly 8 years old, no doubt coupled with my current obsession with graffiti and litter/fly tipping, though that never actually figured in said dream, nor did any adverse events (e.g, serious crimes or disturbances) knowingly occur during our time living on said estate.
Strangely I still have a lot of affection for that particular area I lived in as a young child, in spite of its various ups and downs since our departure.
True enough that estate did go through a bit of a bad patch during the 90s with car crime, burglary and bouts of ASB, which I reckon the 'Radburn' design/layout of said estate partly contributed to it being an easy picking for such things.
But I haven't been aware of anything nasty/out of the ordinary happening there over recent years though, at least nothing of any major significance.
Although I had this particular dream over a week or so ago, it's still been haunting my thoughts a lot of the time almost every day ever since.
The dream in question was about the previous flat my maternal grandmother lived in (in West Brom) before she moved to the one about half a mile from where we currently live (in Tamworth), and that previous flat suddenly extended into further rooms with a second living room at the front (the actual living room was at the rear of the property), and a second bathroom/toilet.
That fictitious 'second' living room in the dream really creeped me out as it looked like it had been abandoned for several years and there were old Christmas lights and decorations left up in there (ironically as my grandma didn't celebrate Christmas as she was a JW), and the basic decor and furnishings in that 'shadow' living room were of vary vivid colours (red, orange, yellow, brown, dark blue, etc).
IRL my grandma had a big wall unit with loads of books stored on it, many of whose title spines were in very vivid colours.
For some strange reason I can't shake off the intrusive thoughts about said dream, so it's clear it's had a major impact on me.
Sometimes even something as innocuous as light levels (both indoors and outdoors) triggers me in respect to said dream.
Utterly bizarre.
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