How to combat recurring anxiety dreams (either prevent them altogether or mitigate the effects of them upon waking up)? Lately I’ve been having one of any number of recurring anxiety dreams every night, even the packing one (which usually only happens before a trip except I don’t have any trips planned). I’ve also had the I’m in school again and forgot I enrolled in x class and the final is coming up and I can’t graduate, as well as the one about being in a theater/dance production as the lead and I don’t know any of my lines or choreography, and can’t find the script or anywhere to study. I am waking up every morning feeling so drained and stressed!

Question

Eda · Answer

Keep an emotional diary: Did you or are you going thru a life changing experience?

I used to have anxiety dreams a lot before my marriage. I was driving with no brakes and was totally losing control. That was my brain telling me something was wrong. Well, my marriage ended…

Try to interpret what your dreams’ general feeling into your life’s daily flow. Hope you get better soon 🩵

Kate Arends Peters · Answer

Keep a Dream Journal: Write them down when you wake up. Record the symbols, colors, language or words that jump out at you. Make note of the emotional tone, how it shifted or changed. Do it right away, even if it is the middle of the night.

Learn about symbolism and archetypes in the collective unconscious!  I really like the podcast This Jungarian Life for all things Carl Jung (godfather of individuation and alchemy!)

This helps connect the dreams to waking life. I have symbols that come up frequently (tornados, pigs, and octopus, arriving in various sizes and physical manifestations) in my most vivid dreams. I've gained so much insight from this practice!

Carl Jung also practiced Active Imagining, which is similar to lucid dreaming. Really powerful, especially for creative minds.

even*cleveland · Answer

Lucid dreaming: I once edited a piece Ellen/ @mildew wrote on lucid dreaming. She managed to train herself to do it, but only after the piece was filed, ha. Basically, you work to building awareness of when you are in a dream so that you can intervene/redirect the dream. She used Stephen LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming but also found Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey by Alice Robb helpful. Robb says that lucid dreaming “makes you doubt the foundations a little bit in a way that, if the foundations suck right now, can be nice and refreshing.”

Odilon Redon, "Violette Heymann, 1910."