34 ms·

Why adults still dream about school

• smm11 4y ago
  I'm late for class and can't remember my locker combination, every night going on 50 years.
• norwalkbear 4y ago
  Because modern American public schools are basically prisons and traumatized kids.
  • dTal 4y ago
    Yep. PTSD. Future generations will look back in horror, if we're lucky.
    • wincy 4y ago
      6.7% of US kids are home schooled now, and it increased 10% year over year from 2016-2021. One can hope. We’re homeschooling which paradoxically ends up with our kids thinking school is some magical place where everything is great and you get to hang out with friends all day.
      • bentaber 4y ago
        Not everything is great. But you do get to hang out with friends all day.
  • ardit33 4y ago
    Oh, yeah because students from other countries don’t have them at all…. Anxiety is just an American thing, /s I went to an American high school and a former commie one (Albania), and I can tell you the American HS was a walk in the park in comparison to the one back home. My take is that this is a pretty universal occurrence.
    • Bakary 4y ago
      What made Albanian education so harsh?
      • lupire 4y ago
        Academically more intensive, but that's not really what upsets people in USA about school.
  • barry-cotter 4y ago
    Modern American and public do no useful conceptual work in that sentence. It’s exactly as true without them. On the other hand, many children are born into circumstances so bad school is a welcome relief. Warmth, regular food, some intellectual stimulation, people who don’t hit them, ever. It’s not what you’d want for your child but it beats what lots of children get at home.
  • moonchrome 4y ago
    I'm not American and didn't go to American public school but still had the same kind of dreams way out of school. And article author mentions his is about college. So yeah sorry this doesn't fit your narrative.
    • ttymck 4y ago
      Sure, in a way, it's the same narrative.
  • yamtaddle 4y ago
    Bingo, it's the trauma. High school in particular was by far the most stressful sustained period of time in my life—I've had the odd day or week that might measure up, here and there, but never months in a row (at least you get Summers off). I've very quickly quit jobs that turned out to be a small fraction as stressful as high school was—they're vastly worse than a decent work environment, but still not as bad as high school. It's that bad. And I had a pretty easy high school experience! No intense bullying, no gang violence happening at/around school, none of that stuff. 9-10 hours a day of work (if you're doing all your homework, anyway), plus more if you actually want to be earning any money. Rushed minutes-long passing periods several times every single day. Having to ask to go take a shit if you didn't manage to fit that in to your few moments of semi-free time. About 6 hours per day comprising ~50-minute stretches that are about as draining as sitting in that many meetings of that length in a day (which is quite the fuck draining). Super-early mornings in most places, in the time of the life that's the very worst for that kind of thing, physiologically and psychologically. The sheer weirdness of spending almost all your time with a whole bunch of people about the same age as you. The number of people you are around and interact with in a day, navigating their emotions and demeanors and all that, teachers and students and administrators, exceeds what I've ever seen at any job by a long shot. That you may at any moment be subject to behavior that would get someone arrested or at least fired from a job in the adult world, but you'll still have to be around the perpetrator for potentially years with no real way to leave yourself. Immovable extremely short deadlines and unchangeable scope—hope you don't have the odd day where you just don't feel up to it, because the thing they assigned you today is due tomorrow, period. All your work literally thrown in the trash soon after you finish it. Near-zero tolerance for real life getting in the way of the work. Sick? LOL, no, there's not someone to take on a little extra work so you're not doubling up when you get back—it's all on you, have fun with the pile of inane tasks to complete while you still feel kinda shitty. Personal days? "Mental health" days? LOL no. It's very, very bad. Strict rules and enforcement, weird and toxic social environment, tight and short deadlines completing assignments that serve no external purpose whatsoever covering things you don't care about (sure, that's kinda just how education has to be, at least to some extent, but that doesn't make it not-demoralizing). I don't love the comparison to prison but it really is one of the closer analogs from the "real world", or maybe notoriously-bad careers/jobs (Amazon warehouses?) that employ people with few other options, though in my experience even most low-wage, low-skill jobs aren't anywhere near as bad as high school (but I've also not worked in the notoriously-bad ones). My high school dreams (well, nightmares) finally mostly stopped... in my early 30s. Mostly. That's a hell of an effect. And again, my experience was surely in the top half, at least, as high school experiences go.
  • jaqalopes 4y ago
    I sympathize with this take but as someone who was fortunate enough to attend private schools throughout my education let me just say, I also have stress dreams about school. I finished college 8 years ago.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    If it wasn't school, it'd be something else. It's hard wired evolved response to surviving life-threatening experiences, such as being attacked by a predator. The brain processes those experiences over and over to help avoid them in real life in the future. We don't get attacked by predators anymore, but we have the same brains circuits as animals who did. So the process just plays out on whatever unpleasant life experience it can grab onto.
• adamnemecek 4y ago
  It's because school is a shitty, shitty place no matter if you go to a good one or a bad one. No, there are no good schools. High schools went downhill when teachers stopped spinning homespun silk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
  • winphone1974 4y ago
    It's terrible that something that should have been wonderful was so painful for you. I've completed 11 years of post secondary spread pretty evenly over 30+ years of adulthood and loved it more and more as I've continued. Thinking about starting a PhD in year 50!
    • bigyikes 4y ago
      Did you enjoy school while growing up? I occasionally feel the calling to go back to school for the sheer joy of learning and mastery. It’s an odd feeling though, because I always hated school, from elementary to undergrad.
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      College was a vacation after high school. It's famously a place some people try to stick around after they could leave. Loving higher ed is pretty common. Loving high school, way, way less so.
  • kleene_op 4y ago
    > No, there are no good schools. Wew. I find this remarkable that someone has been in every school of the world and is now posting here to report back on his experience.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• snapetom 4y ago
  That is so fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I was pretty traumatized with parental expectations in school. Starting from high school, to college, to graduate school, I always had the same dream at the start of semesters - I'm incredibly late to the first class to the point I basically miss it. It has a cascading effect where in the dream, I basically feel doomed to be behind all semester. I've never had this dream outside of when I was a student, and that includes a very long hiatus in finishing college. This is story is one of those things where you read it and the explanation is so obvious, but it never hit you until you see it written out.
• CalChris 4y ago
  This is quite real. I did EECS at Berkeley Engineering and I still have nightmares about not finishing something and this is close to 20 years later. I’m going to a BBQ next week with some of my classmates and I’m going going to ask them. A buddy went to West Point and he had similar nightmares. My guess is that it’s more prevalent in the very demanding and competitive STEM majors and probably architecture. I remember humanities classes as being a lot of work, nothing at Berkeley was easy, but manageable and nothing like the STEM load. For my EE120 review session when we staggered in, the GSI consoled us saying if it meant anything, we’d done as much in one semester as he’d done in two and a half at his school and he was a Berkeley grad student which is insanely competitive to get into in its own right.
  • chromeunagi 4y ago
    Funny, I did EECS at Berkeley nearly a decade ago and also still have the occasional nightmare about forgetting to finish something, but remembering at the last minute. Something something about evolution rewarding anxiety and neuroticism.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • saalweachter 4y ago
    I used to have the exam nightmares, for years after graduation, but they were replaced by nightmares where I have a pen of livestock somewhere I've just totally forgotten to feed for like, a month. For awhile after my daughter was born those were replaced by one where I had another infant I was supposed to be caring for that I had totally forgotten about, but thankfully, those didn't persist as she grew and my brain went back to the livestock version.
  • reidjs 4y ago
    Is EECS at Berkeley significantly harder than other majors?
    • ip26 4y ago
      gpa in nationally ranked engineering schools is usually quite a bit lower than other departments, and a 4.0 is often unheard of. Varies with school.
• x3n0ph3n3 4y ago
  I'm reminded of that amazing scene from Top Secret! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDFJVUaXUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDFJVUaXUI
  • mwidell 4y ago
    And this amazing scene from Futurama :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoxjh0Ckfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoxjh0Ckfs
    • soylentcola 4y ago
      Not sure if it's true, but I like to think "Lightspeed Briefs" is a joke based on Fruit of the Loom (at least for a while, stylized as "FTL" in their branding). FTL is also used as an abbreviation for "faster than light" in sci/scifi discussions of exotic methods of fast travel.
  • Maursault 4y ago
    Bizarrely, I remember there was more to this dream sequence. After he runs through the hallway towards the camera, shot switches to Rivers running in dark mist saying "I need to find the exam!" The mist evaporates revealing students in stadium seating in an auditorium, and Nick asks if this was the physics exam, and the response is "where have you been all semester?" and someone else asks, "where are your clothes?" before the mist returns to white out, and then Nick wakes up relieved he's only being tortured by Nazis.
• streblo 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/a5PXU https://archive.ph/a5PXU
  • snvzz 4y ago
    Much appreciated. As for the OP site, it is not even possible to scroll down... it's stuck in the top. Shitty JS.
• groffee 4y ago
  Is this another American thing? I don't know anyone who ever dreams about school (non-US obviously)
  • Johnythree 4y ago
    Australia here. I'm in my late 70's but still have dreams where I'm stressed about a coming exam, although in the dream I'm well aware that I'm no longer working and am long since retired.
  • dmoy 4y ago
    Do you have any Chinese (i.e. went through mainland china middle school entrance exams / high school entrance exams / college entrance exams) friends who will share their dreams with you?
    • HeavenFox 4y ago
      Chinese here. Dream of high school constantly - most recently last night.
      • snapetom 4y ago
        Show me a Chinese kid, especially immigrant to Western countries, that don't have anxiety about school and I'll show you a unicorn.
    • jimt1234 4y ago
      My Chinese friends tell me when they were kids, all students' grades were made public, so everyone knew exactly how each student was performing. Also, a student's grades were a direct reflection of the family. So, if a student was doing poorly, everyone knew about it, people generally looked down on the parents, like the poor performance was all their fault. I've heard stories about managers at work talking to employees about their child's performance in 3rd grade. My friends are all in their 50s, and they all tell me they still have nightmares about school back in China. Not sure if school in China is still like that, though.
  • 4y ago
• jdougan 4y ago
  I've been told that people who actually do fail out of school tend to not have these kinds of dreams, or at least at a reduced rate. I've asked some aquaintences over the years and their experiences didn't contradict that assertion. Could be an interesting research topic.
  • sidvit 4y ago
    I pretty much flunked outta college my first time around and "Failing and having to repeat grade X" and "Slept through the final" are two of my most common reoccurring nightmares
    • tayo42 4y ago
      Same, I was kicked out of my first try at college for low grades and have had variations of the school dreams in the article
  • jacooper 4y ago
    I think its because its something they faced, and dealt with, it didn't destroy their life, the way your parents told you it would.
    • lupire 4y ago
      There are lots of ways your life hasn't been ruined, but you don't dream about them.
  • Woeps 4y ago
    I just stop going halfway my Bachelor and basically only have "cool" dreams about school (if at all). So you might be on to something.
  • karencarits 4y ago
    The early psychoanalysts made this observation and Freud mentions it as well. They did not have large sample sizes though; see e.g. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1961.11023281 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1961.110...
• brundolf 4y ago
  Weirdly I have more nostalgia dreams about school (especially college) than anxiety dreams. Though I've certainly had those too
  • bratsche 4y ago
    Me too. Overall I had a pretty good experience in college and grad school and I kind of miss those days. It was easier to make friends, it was easier to get exercise without even trying just from all the walking I did everywhere, and I guess I just always had this optimistic view of the future back then. :)
• Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
  I remember being ~23 and telling someone a generation older, "Yeah, it's crazy; I've been out of college for 2 years but I still have awful dreams about being late for class and showing up for a test I forgot about." I was taken aback as they said, "Oh, I still get those." Sure enough, 20 years later, and so I do.
  • christophilus 4y ago
    I once forgot that I’d registered for a course. Got an F in it, and had to contest the grade. Another time, I had a two hour course, but I thought it was a one hour course, and always came an hour late. One day, the teacher finally snapped: “Are you EVER going to get here on time!?!” The answer was no. No way I was sitting through two hours of that. It was my easiest class in university. Most of my school-related nightmares have stopped at this point in my life, but they generally weren’t much worse than reality.
    • jakeinspace 4y ago
      I’ve had both of those scenarios as nightmares several times, although I don’t believe I experienced either in waking life.
• karaterobot 4y ago
  > The reason school dominates as a go-to anxiety setting, Anderson said, is because school is where we build our understanding of how life works. This was more or less my theory already. Our first, foundational experiences of anxiety, or at least specific kinds of anxiety. I'm curious: was anyone here home schooled during high school and then didn't attend college? Where does your mind go to for the equivalent of the "institutional anxiety" dream scenario?
  • Heyso 4y ago
    School is quite wrong on teaching "how life works", school push us to be competitive and individualist. While real life is much more abput cooperation. School (at least in France) tell us beeing wrong is bad. But making mistakes is essential part of learning.
• pram 4y ago
  I have dreams of still being in the military. I always think “I couldn’t have been stupid enough to reenlist, this isn’t possible” while it’s happening.
  • retr0nerd 4y ago
    I have these often as well. Had one the other night where I was headed back to bootcamp at 50. Somehow convinced myself in my dream that I could totally do it. I always wake up with severe anxiety and have to look around to make sure I'm not living in the barracks.
  • PKop 4y ago
    Same here, with this exact reaction. "Why did I reenlist, I can't believe I would do that?" And I'm either deployed overseas back in combat or getting ready to leave. And I can't find my weapon or parts of my uniform or equipment.
  • YZF 4y ago
    I served in Israel, mandatory service, and I used to dream for the longest while that my discharge papers got lost and I just stayed there forever ;) Since I'm making one random reply I might as well mention I used to dream about going to school and not being able to find my class. I think the dream had me skipping all classes (which I did, to go write code instead) for so long that I didn't even know what classes I was supposed to be in or where they were. Part of my school PTSD is why we (mostly) home schooled our kids.
• paxys 4y ago
  There's an acronym for it – PTSD. We put children and young adults through trauma in their formative years and are surprised when that stays with them forever.
  • TakeBlaster16 4y ago
    Yeah I came here to say this too, though I don't think it'll be popular. Schools are like prisons your parents send you to every day so they have time to work. A couple games have riffed on this: https://www.maristane.com/school-or-prison/ https://www.maristane.com/school-or-prison/ https://schoolprisons.com/ https://schoolprisons.com/
    • matheusmoreira 4y ago
      Indeed. Glorified daycare. All those kids are there just to enable their parents to work during the day. At some point they figured they should do something useful with all that time so they started teaching stuff in classes which has the added benefit of structuring the children and making it easier for one teacher to manage them.
  • matheusmoreira 4y ago
    I remember friends and colleagues having literal panic attacks and numerous other symptoms immediately prior to exams followed by depression and binge drinking immediately after. In my school's history there are several suicide attempts, one of them in my class.
    • christophilus 4y ago
      For me, exams were half of it. The awful kids and staff were the other half. It was sheer misery. I don’t miss anything from that time of my life.
      • matheusmoreira 4y ago
        I don't miss it either. The day I graduated was the best day of my life. Felt like I was waiting for my life to begin.
• trasz 4y ago
  Had the same problem, until one night I’ve realized - in my dream - that I’ve already graduated and I while I could still do all those things, like taking exams, their result won’t ever matter again. It happened once or twice again, with the same result, and it’s been gone ever since.
  • xen2xen1 4y ago
    Sounds like directed dreaming, which is a possible cure for these dreams.
    • trasz 4y ago
      Perhaps, except I didn’t do it on purpose - I can’t control my dreams.
• seper8 4y ago
  Absolutely hated school, but I rarely ever remember my dreams or have nightmares. Is that even normal, seemingly never dreaming or having nightmares?
  • andirk 4y ago
    I find myself gifted in being able to have wild lucid dreams and remembering details, and even learning! I also have nightmares that I can't wake up from and they're terrifying. I often know it's a dream (or is it?) and can't wake up. You're missing out on a lot of fun, but you're also not tormented. If you want to remember your dreams, smoke less weed and concentrate on that blurry moment of going from awake to asleep. Our dreams are in the REM barely-asleep part of the sine wave.
    • hellotomyrars 4y ago
      I don’t do much lucid dreaming but agree with the last point. It’s why I find it hard to get up early in the morning sometimes. I know if I keep sleeping and waking up in short chunks that I’m going to get a lot more dream time in and I enjoy most of them.
• oneoff786 4y ago
  I breezed through high school but I still have high school dreams maybe once a month. It’s not that surprising that a situation you dealt with frequently in your teenage years is still there. I usually bluff my way through high school dream situations successfully. Feels good.
• chasd00 4y ago
  I’m 46 and still occasionally have dreams about college. I’m in my last semester and almost failing it’s finals and i cant find the building/roomn the exam is in. They’re always some variation of that.
  • unzadunza 4y ago
    For me: time for finals and, oops, I didn’t attend a single class and I have no idea what the final will be about. Maybe this dream is due to the fact that I missed at least half of all my classes because of basketball at the rec center.
  • rufus_foreman 4y ago
    Over 50. Walking into class for the last course I need to graduate. Oh, didn't remember the final exam was today. I didn't even study for it. In fact, I don't think I even ever picked up the textbook. I get handed the test and I don't understand a single question. I'm going to fail and have to stay in school for another semester. Plus, apparently, I forgot to put on clothes when I left the house. I'm in class completely naked. Not again! One of my regular dreams, along with the one where I get fired and go back to the manual labor job.
  • crispyambulance 4y ago
    I'm 54 and have had the same high school nightmare several times. I find myself in my old high school and stuff has changed and is really confusing. I end up being compelled to go to classes and somehow have a schedule foisted on me that's too complex to be readable. I feel anxiety that the other students will notice my graying hair!
  • adamsbriscoe 4y ago
    Late 30s I'm always in the middle of a test that I didn't study for. There's a nebulous higher stakes component to it beyond just failing. I can't read the questions for some reason, but I feel the topic of the test, and it's different every time. Some nights it's high school, others college, but now mostly licensure-related since I guess that was the last time I actually took a test.
• tosser0001 4y ago
  For years after graduating I would have this sense of undirected foreboding every Sunday. I finally realized it was just a carry over from years of being a real procrastinator when it came to getting my school work done and the gnawing panic I would get knowing I had a lot of work and little time to do it. It was weird that after recognizing the source that feeling dissipated pretty quickly and I really embraced being free of it all
• progman32 4y ago
  My big problem with schools (and likely a contributor to my own nightmares) is how they treat themselves as arbiters of what is good and right, above parent's wishes, and especially above the people sitting in the classrooms. High schools should be treating their students as equals to their teachers at the very least. They're adults at this point, but the inhumane regimentation and arbitrary expectations continue. The odd power dynamic boils my blood. It pounded the agency out of me until more than ten years after graduating high school. Students are customers of the school and therefore should hold vastly more power, yet they're treated as cattle. Yes there are amazing teachers who do everything they can, but they're swimming against a strong current.
  • Bakary 4y ago
    Isn't there a contradiction between wanting that freedom but then taking a decade to redevelop agency?
    • pseudoramble 4y ago
      I don't see how, but perhaps I'm missing your point. If you interpret what they said as "I want freedom but explicitly chose not to find it until 10 years later" then sure, that might be a contradiction. If you interpret it as "I really freedom because it took me 10 years to fully realize what happened to me and want others to avoid the same thing" then it's more clear it's not a contradiction. It wasn't a choice, but rather a path they were sent down unknowingly. That's different than thinking it doesn't matter until then. This was my interpretation of it at least.
      • Bakary 4y ago
        The GP was framing the school as particularly toxic because it constrains people who really ought to be considered adults as if they were cattle. In my view, an adult ought to be able to leap at the chance for agency as soon as they emerge from these constraints. Maybe not immediately, but in a year or two at least. Otherwise, it circularily casts doubt on the premise. The argument is that the definition of an adult has to meet a certain standard. School can be traumatic, and people are allowed to feel bad even if others have it worse, but unless you are severely bullied I see many of the descriptions in this thread as being overly dramatic compared to the crap that people have to deal with in other parts of the world. Hundreds of millions of kids would kill for the chance to be stressed at an American or European school. Granted, this is not a generous point of view. The only reason I'm making these comments is because I recognize myself so much in the GP's experiences.
• sriku 4y ago
  While the "Dream analyst" said plausible things about the author's dream, I have no idea how they (the analysts) know it. So I tend not to believe that easy explanation. The only consistent thing I can say is that if the dream situation occurs in real life, then my feelings and emotional response to the situation will likely be the same. That's been the sole valid anchor for me. Anxiety about "authority figure" is a little odd, for example, relating to my school dream of having to vacate my hostel room and realising I lost the key..a friend comes up with "I think I have it" and upon checking the keybunch, it doesn't have my room's key. I'm not panicking but don't want the room door to be smashed down when I'm not around. I have something old and precious inside I need to grab.
• ryandrake 4y ago
  I feel like this is because school, especially college, and particularly exams, is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get, so they look back at that time as peak-anxiety. Think about it: you're being evaluated and the result of that evaluation shapes the next step in the pipeline, and ultimately the trajectory of the rest of your life! Well, at least that's what the university officials, professors, your peers and parents all tell you. You pretty much have a series of "one chance" events that you must pass or you're done for. Failure of any step is permanent, and affects your average (seemingly) forever. The whole path from elementary school through to college graduation feels like a career development game where the stakes are raised every year. Fail once off the path, and it's Walmart Greeter for you, forever! It's no wonder I still wake up in a cold sweat over it, 30 years on.
  • hackitup7 4y ago
    I've found that it also sets some really bad habits for the real world, particularly for the types of higher upside / capped downside scenarios that you often see in startups or some of the arts (eg trying to make it big as an actress).
  • paxys 4y ago
    > is about as high-stakes as most people's lives ever get I don't think that's the case, but more that kids are being put in these "high stakes" situations without the mental capacity to handle them. Turning in an assignment late, underpreparing or waking up late for an exam, getting a B+ instead of an A, fumbling during a presentation – these are all insignificant and completely artificial problems in the grand scheme of life. However when you are a student going through them it feels like the end of the world, and that memory sticks.
    • izzydata 4y ago
      I think a lot more people are struggling between passing and failing than getting a B instead of an A.
      • mlsu 4y ago
• coldtea 4y ago
  Obligatory related movie link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDFJVUaXUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDFJVUaXUI
• hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
  I used to dream about school/college, but stopped after my 30s – nowadays it's such a distant memory that it feels like a previous / someone else's life.
• khendron 4y ago
  I always did best at the exams I had nightmares about. To the point where having an exam nightmare would make me feel better about an upcoming exam, I would actually start to worry if I had a big exam coming up and I hadn't had a nightmare about it yet. Still today, 30 years later, I get these dreams. Usually when I have a big work or life challenge coming up. And the nightmares still boost my confidence (though the nightmares themselves suck).
  • chasil 4y ago
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  There isn't a week when I don't have a day where I feel like a total monster at 7:15am trying like crazy to motivate my frustrated and anxious teenager off to high school and asking her about her homework and the like... And then promptly waltz upstairs with my coffee, sit in front my computer, read the news and (mostly) happily write program on computers all day, while playing with my border collies and walking through my hobby vineyard in my spare time. School sucked for me, and I kinda... turned out despite it... but I somehow have to get my kids through it.
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Passing off your anxieties to your kid sounds like a great plan. Kinda glad now my parents left me to my own devices regarding school after like, 6th grade.
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      Except legally you can’t simply not take tour kids to school. Doing it in a “non anxious” way is a challenge
      • lupire 4y ago
        I most areas you can homeschool, which is whatever you and your kid want as long as they pass some tests and file some paperwork.
        • actionfromafar 4y ago
          In Europe you mostly can’t homeschool.
          • CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_status_and_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_... Apart from a few countries you can.
• mackman 4y ago
  This seems correlated to symptoms of imposter syndrome. I stopped having the dreams around the same time I started to get over imposter syndrome. Only took 18 years.
• krick 4y ago
  Because school is horrifying! Why would anyone even wonder about that? Being tortured for 10-14 years, and all of this while being young and full of hopes too!
• jprd 4y ago
  I had undiagnosed ADHD, Anxiety and Depression in college. Didn't end up in class a lot. The dreams I have are from the same age range, but are about making sure I get all those entitled Moms their Furbies before Christmas Eve while working at Toys R Us. It isn't about school.
• kgbcia 4y ago
  ptsd
• kstenerud 4y ago
  Is it weird that I've never had a dream about school or meeting expectations? I do have anxiety dreams, but they're always about realizing that I'm missing some piece of equipment that I spend the dream looking for while the thing I wanted to do is now not getting done.
  • kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I don’t dream about school. I barely think about my childhood at all. (For which I am eternally thankful.) By all rights, I should have nightmares from those years but all of mine come from more recent events or entirely fictional ones. The good dreams are usually out of the stories I write.
• Ishmaeli 4y ago
  I have the college dreams fairly regularly. Usually they are about forgetting to attend class for a whole semester. But my other recurring dream is about being an LDS missionary again. I think that experience in real life was even more stressful than college—definitely more guilt-inducing. In the dream I'm my current self—mid-40s, married, kids, career, atheist—and yet somehow the church has managed to coerce me back into the mission field alongside the 19-year-old true believers. Almost every other former Mormon missionary I've asked about it reports having similar recurring dreams.
  • 1270018080 4y ago
    What were the stakes? What did failure look like? Did you get punished if you didn't indoctrinate enough people?
    • weberer 4y ago
      Eternal hellfire, presumably.
      • sethammons 4y ago
        For mormons, you'd presume incorrectly. Talking with missionaries, they believe in a three tier system, the lowest "hell" being darkness, cut away from the light of God
    • Ishmaeli 4y ago
  • wj 4y ago
    I also have the forgetting to attend class all semester dream. It is incredibly vivid and I wake up super stressed and sometimes, because college was so long ago, wonder if that actually happened to me.
• flashgordon 4y ago
  They do? I never actually was especially studious so had not much pressure to do well. Though I didn't party either and sat at the computer labs (in the physical library at high school) coding or learning new things to code. Quite enjoyed it actually. Lucked out that back down under engineering was a low demand course back in the day soon entry into college was easy (kids for some reason at the time dreamt of being accountants and actuaries!!)
• rtatay 4y ago
  Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/557/ https://xkcd.com/557/
  • ptidhomme 4y ago
    It's this XKCD that actually made me realise I was not alone, that it's a general phenomenon. I'd say I dream about this twice a year, being out of college for 11 years now.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  This is odd. I grew up and went to school in the Netherlands, and while I’m often still annoyed with the arbitrary scoring of academic affairs, it’s never been a source of anxiety. All the dreams I have about high school and university (and it’s not so many) involve having fun with the friends I made there. I kind of have to wonder what other people go through.
  • rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    It's just the nature of being anything lower middle class, or above in the US. Preschool is required to get a leg up on elementary school, which is required to get into a good middle school, required to get into a good high school, and finally, required to get into a good university. If at any point in that chain you fail, you've been led to believe your life will be a failure, there are no social programs to save you. You will work minimum wage for life. And if you do succeed and get a degree, your reward is $100k in student debt. Which you will have to pay down over the course of 20 years working corpo jobs and barely scraping by, since you need to enrich landlords in the process.
  • stackbutterflow 4y ago
    Another data point. European. Never dreamed about school. Never felt anxious while at school. I also went to an average school and was an average student so maybe that helps. The period from high school to the end of university was probably the most intellectually interesting part of my life. It was like discovering how the world works, finally being free, going some places, meeting some people, experimenting socially, reading books.
• theGnuMe 4y ago
  These dreams usually connect to something you are currently anxious about so your brain is pattern matching the anxiety to recorded memories. You can reduce the intensity of the trauma by revisualizing the event/dream while following some rapid visual stimulus. This is the emdr stuff for ptsd etc…
• Decabytes 4y ago
  I haven’t had one in a long time, but I would get Nightmares about forgetting to take a grad class, not finding out until the last day, and not being able to get my diploma because of it. So similar to the stories in the article
• Eleison23 4y ago
  I turned 50 this year, and I'm finally done with college for good. I will never earn a degree. I tried at least 5 times to finish college. I honestly gave it "the old college try" over, and over, and over again. I really wanted to please my father with that piece of paper in my hand. But that path just wasn't for me. Elementary school and high school were marvelous, formative experiences for me. The schools were truly safe, secure environments where the Catholic faculty and staff respected me and upheld my human dignity, no matter what. I was never hurt or mistreated by the Irish sisters, nor by the priests and religious, or lay teachers. Now contrast that with my home life where I was subjected to endless shame, emotional trauma, and humiliation. I basically wanted to escape to school and stay there forever. Unfortunately this came apart at the seams in college, because guess what? My parents had always been the ones pushing and cajoling me through homework and projects and tests and perfect attendance. Without my dual-helicopter parents doing all the work for me, I was doomed to failure, over and over in college. So I dropped out again and again. It wasn't for lack of trying. Years ago, I did have "school flashback" dreams. I was naked in class. I forgot to study for a final exam. I was being teased or bullied by classmates. Yeah, it was all on replay for years, but I worked past that. I took a final swing at earning a degree and I got halfway to an Associate's. But truthfully, I did finish what I started, because I earned three professional certifications and landed a fantastic steady job. So in the end, my college days weren't wasted, despite all the credits I'll leave on the table. I'm grateful for the faculty, staff, and admins who always treated me with utmost respect, kindness, and reminded me of my innate human dignity, and through them I was able to discern a vocation as an educator in my own right.
• dsalzman 4y ago
  It really says something about western education that these PTSD like dreams are so widespread.
  • cowtools 4y ago
    I think there is an important difference between having stress and having a traumatic stress disorder.
  • kwhitefoot 4y ago
    Not western but US.
• ihateniggas 4y ago
• hypersoar 4y ago
  Funnily enough, I have the inverse of this dream. Exam-taking was never very stressful for me, so I never had the classic dream. But when I was a graduate student and started teaching my own classes, things changed. I, an inveterate procrastinator, started dreaming that that I'd shown up to the final without writing it. This, to me, is much more humiliating that blanking on a test. And I still have those dreams today, as well as a few variations (e.g., it's final grades time and I haven't graded any of the homework, or I've been supposed to teach a class but haven't remembered to show up for weeks).
• de6u99er 4y ago
  I don't dream ever a out school. I had a great time at school. Never learned for tests or exams, always good (enough) grades, never got bullied, lots of parties and girls and later on drugs.
• aaron695 4y ago
• balls187 4y ago
  My first job was contingent on graduating. I would have nightmares that my school would notified me that I failed some required course, or didn't have enough credits to graduate. I would wake up and count the credits on my transcript. After my 3rd job out of school, I stopped having those dreams.
• cgrealy 4y ago
  I wonder if age matters. School and high school are the formative years of your life where you are essentially building who you will be as a person. College is generally your first taste of independence. Do people who go to college as mature students have the same dreams?
• blobbers 4y ago
  ... because I went back to grad school as a 40 year old.
• seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  I have weird dreams about never having graduated high school even after I got my PhD. No anxiety about university or grad school, but high school keeps popping into dreams I can remember.
• garren 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/a5PXU https://archive.ph/a5PXU
• graycat 4y ago
  Here "Why adults still dream about school", The Atlantic and many of the comments in this thread touch on some serious points about life and education. Here I hope to give some examples for some lessons that might help others. Some of what I give are opinions where some people might differ. I consider the US system of formal education K-12, college, and graduate school through Master's based on classes, tests, and grades. Ph.D. is related but often quite different. I can't comment on schools of law or medicine. (1) Racket? This formal education does a lot of good in the sense that the US would be a lot worse off if the whole system were abolished. Still, a lot about this system is too close to being a racket, a lot of misleading the students, a lot of serious harm done to some of the students, and good for the schools. (2) Remember? Yes, I remember school! I don't have bad dreams but can't forget. Some that I can't forget are the girls! Uh, maybe these days it is politically incorrect to mention, but I was a boy, now am a man, there has been no ambiguity, and I very much do remember the girls. Often they tried hard to be be pretty and otherwise feminine and were very successful. E.g., in 9th grade algebra class, I looked over to the right along the wall and saw some of the girls, perfect posture, very well dressed, immaculate, perfect decorum, etc. They struggled with the course, but I found it easy; so at times I tried to help them, but they didn't want my help! When I was 14, I met a girl of 12, and we tried to be boyfriend/girlfriend. About 18 months later we had a misunderstanding, that we handled poorly, and broke up. But she was the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. I downloaded her high school graduation picture from Facebook and keep it in the UR corner of my computer screen. Can't forget her. A few years ago, a women explained to me, at that age, 12 and early teens, girls are the prettiest they ever get -- seems true for the girls I in was in class with in grades 6-12. Can't forget. But there is a lot I'd prefer to forget: From nearly all the teachers nearly all the time, I got a lot of contempt. In math and science, occasionally I would fight back, take a problem others were struggling with and solve it. And I had some significant victories -- on the standardized tests of aptitude and accomplishment, in math and science I was one of the best students in the school, but mostly the contempt continued. Once for fun I attacked how to inscribe a square in a semi-circle. My approach seemed novel so I wanted to check. The teacher said "You can't do that.". Later I discovered that she was wrong, that I had reinvented similitude. Can't forget. I learned a lesson: In K-12 and college, some of the teachers are actually not very good with their subject. The social situation was a mystery to me: It was very competitive, with maybe even a pecking order. I had no idea what was going on; I was no good at the game if only because I had no idea there was a game. Some of the boys took athletics quite seriously, but I saw no reason to do that. Some of the pecking order depended on academic performance and, as I look back, maybe I was doing well at that (but didn't know it). Then for the girls, eventually it dawned on me that for the girls my age, I likely was not going to be very successful socially because I was fighting Mother Nature, Darwin, and likely the parents of the girls. Instead, once the girls started being interested in boys, they were more interested in boys 2-4 years older than they were. But there is a cliche: The boys are interested in things and the girls, in people. So, in the social pecking order game, the girls will dominate. I wish someone had explained to me that game and other issues and lessons of socialization. (3) Tests and Grades. My father was an expert in education, had his Master's in it, yes, had a teaching certificate for grade school, and had a career in high end education theory and practice for the US Navy. But, for my grades, he didn't care! So, at home I was getting no big push to make A's. Lesson: If he didn't care much about grades, maybe they were not very important. In the 4th grade, we had a spelling test, and I missed "pneumonia". When I saw how the correct spelling was so far from being either intuitive or phonetic, I still wanted to learn the important material but gave up on spelling and grades. So, I learned the arithmetic but didn't bother with the tedious, redundant exercises in a big workbook. The teacher sent a message home that I would complete the workbook or she would fail me. Dad gave me a little arithmetic test and concluded that, yes, I was plenty good at the arithmetic. Then he looked at the workbook, and together we used a calculator to fill in all the results. So, again I got contempt for grades. I never got over my contempt for grades. In particular, I never lost sleep, got an anxiety disorder, or had bad dreams about grades. My summary: Knowledge can be really important. Formal education can be one way to get some parts of the important knowledge. But courses, credits, and grades are usually a bit distant from being directly helpful later in school or in practice. In some situations, a perfect or nearly perfect grade point average can be helpful. In nearly all academic situations, getting such a grade point average is very stressful. There is considerable question if such grades are worth the stress. Short of perfect or near perfect grades, possibly surprisingly grades don't count for much, either for or against the student. In particular, possibly surprisingly, in the best US research universities, for a Ph.D., there is some contempt for the idea that a Ph.D. will be awarded for high grades in courses. There is something of a secret concern, cliche: Some student has been making grades of A from the first grade on, has done really well at doing what she (the main concern is for girls!) was told, but can't do original research. This concern is likely more from some profs being arrogant about their research than they are with actual experience with such students. Some universities make a point of stating that there is no coursework requirement for a Ph.D. Instead of grades, a usual hurdle is the qualifying exams. And important beyond all else is publishable original research. Or, in short, once submit a paper for publication, no one checks your grade point average. And once the paper is accepted, no one cares about your grade point average. In grad school, I got contempt from the faculty. Then I took an unsolved problem in an old subject and got a nice solution. The work was clearly publishable. The contempt went away. Then no one cared about my grades, when I made A's and when I didn't. In general there are ways other than course grades to show aptitude and accomplishment, and usually these other ways can make up for grades of B, C. K-12 can give, each year, for each subject, a standardized achievement test. A student who does really well on one those tests should have a reason to complain if they are also given a low grade in the subject. E.g., there are the SAT and GRE exams. And over a wide range of possibilities, at times actual practical achievement can count a lot more than grades. When I was a prof teaching an applied math course, I had a little approach: I would hand out some exercises, work them in class, state that the tests would be like the exercises, and advise the students "If you can do well on these exercises, then you should do well on the test." But exercises on the tests would be fairly easy -- making an A was not difficult. Then the rest of the class would be for more advanced material. Students could take it seriously or not as they wished. And some of the students did take the more advanced material seriously: It was good working with them, fun for me, productive for them, with no stress about grades.
• snickerbockers 4y ago
  I graduated from high school in 2008 and college in 2012, but I still have a recurring nightmare where I find out that there's a class I'm supposed to be in but somehow forgot about and now must somehow redeem my grade despite having not shown up for any lectures or done any homework.
• simion314 4y ago
  I am not convinced by this, at least for me. I think my dreams will place me in a random scene, it could be at school but could be at any of the schools during my lives with a mix of colleges and now my son will also be at the same school and weird situations come up where me and my son are in the same class. During the dream the mind starts to realize something is wsrong, like "it is Ssunday why am I at school" , but sometimes the thought is "I did not prepared in years for this subject, in fact I was sure I finished the university, but then if I am here it means I still need to pass one more exam because I did not finished, then you get stressed out that something went wrong with the birocracy or you forgot to do some exam or sign something and you don't have finished" My opinion is that there is no encoded way your subconscions is telling you are stressed about something, I remember in my high school years , my eye sight was getting worse slowly and I had many dreams where I am getting blind or my eyes are glued and can't opened them, pretty direct manifestation of the fears and anxiety without any metaphors with hidden meaning.
• Falkon1313 4y ago
  I think it's curious, especially so many people reporting the same thing. Is it just people who were pressured really hard in school? I wasn't pressured, and could usually ace a test (or at least pass it). Certainly didn't ever stress about homework, and often didn't do it. I don't think I've ever had a dream like that. I have dreamed I was back hanging out with my friends again, or exploring a weird sub-basement under the school, but nothing like what people are describing.
• pulketo 4y ago
  The real question is why animals dream...
• irrational 4y ago
  I am so thankful that I do not dream. I’d hate to have my sleep disturbed by memories of school!
• jimt1234 4y ago
  I cheated my way through high school. I had a scam for every class, every test, every homework assignment. So yeah, I had dreams about school, but mine were more about me feeling guilty. They typically went like this: Some bureaucrat did an audit of all the school work from my high school during the late-80s and somehow identified me as a cheater, so the school revoked my diploma. My college found out, so they revoked my degree. My employer found out, so they fired me. The dream usually ended with all the other kids from my school laughing at me because I got caught cheating, and my life was ruined. I eventually got over it. The dreams stopped. Once I got to a certain age, I just accepted I was a stupid-ass kid who made mistakes. Live and learn. BTW, if you're still in school, don't cheat. Take it from me. I spent more time and effort on cheating than I would have if I just did the work as assigned.
  • vasco 4y ago
    > I spent more time and effort on cheating than I would have if I just did the work as assigned You likely didn't. I've heard this many times from people who cheated or people who take steroids. It's just a rationalization about your shitty past actions.
  • 93po 4y ago
    I cheated throughout highschool (hacked school system for test answers) and college (old fashioned cheat sheets) and have zero regrets or shame over any of it. I resent the awful system our society has and I resent how awful it has treated me. I 100% encourage cheating for people like me and it was extremely low effort. It resulted in a pretty good start off to my career and I'm now quite successful on my own honest merits.
    • jeromegv 4y ago
      I never cheated through university but did a lot as well through high school and cegep (pre-college in quebec). Was more like cheat sheets but also just checking what people wrote next to me, or plainly just work with someone next to me where we would pass each other papers with answers. I have zero remorse. Having to do so much memorization is just not how my brain works. Now employed, I rarely memorize anything but you can bet I can find anything very fast. I stopped in university mostly because the stakes were higher (you can get expelled for real). I also had to work harder in university because engineering was just so much harder than anything I did before. Also, most classes in uni let you have a sheet of notes instead of wasting time memorizing all those concepts.
• samstave 4y ago
  I have literally never dreamed about school... and i have extremely lucid dreams and an incredible memory of my dreams, to the point where I have had a running theme of dreams that only occur once every ~5 years.. but i can be conscious of them recurring and recognize im dreaming it again and even the story lines... but i also have vivid memories of being only months old and laying in the crib... but I cant recall what I had for lunch yesterday - my dream trigger is if I attempt to use a phone in dream or read a pricetag, or attempt to clean up a mess...
• RadixDLT 4y ago
  school is the most fun you will have in life
• psuresh 4y ago
  Yes. This is everybody's dream. I see my academic life 'corrected' in dream! More meaningful relations with classmates etc.
• baron816 4y ago
  I ran track and cross country in college and graduated in 2010. I had been having the same dream for many years after: I hadn't trained at all during the summer and was completely out of shape by the time the cross country season was starting in the fall, and was going to have to confront my coach about it and get kicked off the team. I told my former teammates about this probably two years ago, and as it turned out, many of them have been having this exact same dream.
• arwhatever 4y ago
  I frequently still have dreams of it being discovered that I missed a portion of high school aha I am required to go back to finish. I also spent about a decade in the U.S. Air Force, and even though I’ve been out 15 years now I still dream that I’ve forgotten my uniform hat, and separately that I get called back in and am fearful because I still have only the previous generation of uniform style, which was phased out years ago.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hellotomyrars 4y ago
  I have had plenty of dreams where I’m at my high school and hanging out with friends who were there and even sometimes people I know now as an adult. But it is never anything stressful. Just like hanging out in school how life was then. Never anything like what I hear others say as far as tests and all that go. I guess since I never worried about any of that crap in school, I’m not haunted by it.
• Auracle 4y ago
  I’m 34. The only people I can visualize in my dreams are people I knew when I was a high schooler or maybe earlier. I’m married and we’ve been together for 10 years. I regularly have dreams featuring my wife’s sister as she was in my grade and I see her pretty often now. My wife’s name/persona will only very occasionally be in my dreams, but never her face. I didn’t know her back then. I also have a nearly one year old daughter and she’s been referenced in dreams but not seen. To be honest, it freaks me out a little. I had a ski accident when I was 12 where I had a concussion, so maybe that did something. Is anyone else out there like me?
  • mach1ne 4y ago
    The people in my dreams are also often not proportional to the amount I see them in real life. I've found that I at least remember mainly dreams which had a strong emotional footprint, and teenage years definitely have the largest one.
• viksit 4y ago
  has anyone done research on whether people in the 1600s or something had recorded dreams like these and what those were? i wonder if this is a consequence of the modern system or just inbuilt to us as a species.
• damethos 4y ago
  Every now and then I have a nightmare; that I am back in class, writing a final exam which I haven't studied for and worrying that I will lose a year because I have failed. And then I wake up in anxiety and wonder what the hell did school do to me?? I had plenty of friends at school, never bullied and it was pretty much smooth sailing, so If I am having those dreams, I can't imagine what other people that were teased/bullied/extremely introvent during school are dreaming as adults. I am glad I am not the only one thought.
• journey_16162 4y ago
  I'm in my late 20s, still dream about school. But it's not like in the article. I almost never stressed about exams much. I never have any nightmares about it. Just dream about being in class, hanging out with people. I attended 3 schools total (primary, mid, high) and all occur in the dreams. Sometimes the people get mixed up, i.e. the class consists of a mix of colleagues from mid and high, or more rarely, the primary pops up. That's kinda weird when I think about it.
• Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
  I clicked because it's a naturally interesting topic because I (like many others) have this dream, and I usually find The Atlantic to be good quality. But this doesn't give any meaningful answer to the question, just some speculation that anyone could make and which doesn't seem to be backed by any scientific evidence (of course, I'm aware there is probably no such evidence, but they could be more straightforward about the answer to the title question being "we have no idea").
• karencarits 4y ago
  > To put all the above in the language of latent dream thought, the dreamer's thought is not simply: "I'm guilty because I misbehaved and I fear punishment, just as I feared when in school I was confronted with an examination." Rather it is: "I'm guilty because I'm misbehaving [or wish to misbehave] now in the same manner as I misbehaved in connection with this particular examination. I wish I had not done undeservedly well in connection with this examination. I wish I did not behave thus. I am trying to overcome this old pattern. I am examing myself. But have I the strength to do so? Dare I share this knowledge with the therapist? https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1961.11023281 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1961.110...
• docflabby 4y ago
  Sounds like PTSD
• dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  I find The Atlantic unreadable unless I disable JavaScript.
• kwhitefoot 4y ago
  Is this a US only thing? It's certainly not something that has ever bothered me and none of the people I know who attended a university ever mentioned such a thing. So I think this dictum applies: When a title asks "Why" first ask "If".
  • dgan 4y ago
    Definitely not US only. I still dream about my math & German exams. I did well on both though
  • paganel 4y ago
    I'm from Romania, I still get those recurring nightmares related to uni and even to highschool (some of the HS professors were even more demanding than what I got at uni). I attended uni about 20 years ago.
  • karencarits 4y ago
    Even Freud wrote about this type of dream a century ago
  • mriet 4y ago
    It is culture-specific, but not US-only. BTW, given the current state of psychology, 50%+ of psychology is culture-specific. (See "How emotions are made")
• RalfWausE 4y ago
  I never dreamed about school (at least as much as i can remember), the military on the other hand... and no, not deployment is what i dream about, its basic training! Whatever THAT has to say about my psyche...
• scoutt 4y ago
  I rarely dream about school but sometimes when going to work I feel something is wrong because I can't feel the weight of my backpack - I must have left it somewhere...
• goldorak 4y ago
  Most countries decided to go for an education system that consistently causes PTSD in a large part of the population yet most ppl thinks there is nothing wrong with it. In the name of competitiveness the wheel needs to keep spinning and crush more and more souls.
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    While that's entirely true, is there an educational system right now that doesn't scar its students as severely? You say most countries, but if you forget homeschooling I'd say this is pretty much 100% of systemic education on the planet right now.
• melissa576093 4y ago
  I still sometimes have dreams I’m sitting in either middle school and/or high school math class working complex math problems. Usually these are algebra problems. Sometimes I do the problems by hand in my dream and sometimes I have a calculator. I’m not bad at algebra in real life. I can pass algebra. Calculus is a little more difficult. I’ve chalked these dreams up to having some types of problem(s) in my real life with only one logical solution. As it makes sense in algebra there is usually one numerical solution for an equation, unless you are working with inequalities or something.
• verisimi 4y ago
  If we want to be truly honest, childhood is when we are primed by our parents, school, culture, etc to become servants to the beast system. As children, we accept all that as normal - our world, our desires, expectations etc are formed then. By time we are adults, having accepted the provided framework, we no longer have the inclination to learn or adapt - we think we know how things are. We then dutifully feed our kids into the same system, and call it right, good. But some part of us, call it spirit if you like, still recognises and observes what is going on. Perhaps it tries to nudge us back towards authenticity and away from the entrained, domesticated behaviour, that will have us coding our own future dystopia.
• 9tacos 4y ago
  Wow, I thought I was alone.
• Heyso 4y ago
  I do dream about school sometimes too. But for me, it is speaking up to the teacher (telling him he is wrong), or confidently not caring about what the teacher is ordering the class to do. Or event confidently deciding not to go to school today. I can earn a living with my programming skills, I have 0 reasons to endure school bullshit anymore.
  • cphelps01 4y ago
    Sounds like you had a bad experience. Sorry to hear that!
• vertnerd 4y ago
  You will all be happy to know that teachers suffer from their own brand of school dreams where they are unprepared for class, can't find their lecture notes, and so on. I just left the profession, and now I will be plagued by both kinds of dreams for the rest of my life.
• jvanderbot 4y ago
  Years of dealing with anxiety painted a different picture of these events. When I get really anxious, I've learned to notice it not because of how I feel, but because of what I think about. My mind does two things. It will either distract me with soothing ideas (video games, side gigs) or (like TFA) it will go full anxiety and I'll hyper-focus on anything in the past that made me feel helpless, angry, or afraid. Anxiety manifests as exam dreams, resurfacing relationship issues suddenly, body image woes, or just constantly checking to see if I have my wallet. There's a much simpler explanation that works for me. Your mind is trying to explain the signals it's receiving, and it is grasping at straws by surfacing memories that triggered similar signals. It's a byproduct of a correlation engine and that's pretty much it. I understand the obsession with divining meaning in arbitrary shared experience, but if my 350,000 hrs of use has taught me anything, it's that the mind is an arbitrary, guideless storyteller. There's actually quite a bit of research supporting this, it turns out.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• acconrad 4y ago
  I got mono 2 months before college graduation. At the time I didn’t think “oh I won’t graduate” but in retrospect being out of school for 2 weeks without doing any work can really make things difficult, especially that close to the end of the semester. Now I have recurring dreams about having one class that I haven’t studied for at all and there are 6-8 weeks left in the semester. Long enough that I could study at the expense of literally all of my waking time, but short enough that there is real anxiety I might fail this class and not be able to graduate. At least now I know having these dreams now is evidence of waking anxiety that I have to manage.
• garfieldnate 4y ago
  I sometimes have a dream that I've gone through several months of high school without realizing that there was a class I signed up for but never went to. After finding out the horrible mistake, I'm guaranteed I won't be able to catch up, and my school career is over. Seems like an extremely unlikely scenario in real life, but I've had the dream more than once.