Cheer me on!

[rachelmanija]

I managed to write three of my four papers due on Monday or Tuesday. I have to write the Trauma paper today. (And then bake a cake and go to dinner with classmates.) Cheer me on!

I had an amazing anxiety dream last night, combining a grand total of 10 separate anxiety-dream elements into a reasonably unified narrative. Well, maybe only 5 if you count all the purely toilet-related stuff as 1.



I was late for a morning class, the cafe gave me hot chocolate instead of coffee so I had no caffeine, I was going to be even later if I stopped to use the bathroom but I needed to use the bathroom, I found a bathroom but the first stall had no toilet, the second stall had no lock, I discovered that I had gotten my period, a woman barged in and demanded that her young daughter wait inside the stall with me, I got in a huge argument with and, in the course of explaining why it would be inappropriate for her daughter to watch me insert a tampon, made an obscene and violent gesture while saying, "You want her to watch me SHOVE it up," which made the daughter cry, felt guilty so gave her the bathroom, stomped out, and desperately searched for a bathroom some more, was turned away by a famous cafe in London with a decorative cow theme, then finally found and used a toilet. Relief! Until I flushed and my best jacket was caught by the sleeve and instantly sucked down the drain.

Brain! Knock it off!

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Go go go!

[kore]

You can do it!

.....wow, your brain is working OVERTIME there.

[daidoji_gisei]

Go, Rachel, go!

[lovepeaceohana]

...other people have dreams about needing to find toilets?

That's fascinating. I'd always thought I was just weird! Ahaha. And yeah, there's usually either not enough privacy, or the stalls are just laid out weird (i.e., you have to go through one stall and toilet to get to another), or it's a toilet that I don't necessarily know how to use (I had one where they folded out from the wall, somehow, but I was too short to sit on them).

Wow. Learn something new every day!

[lovepeaceohana]

Also, *cheerleading*! \o/ \o/ \o/

[rachelmanija]

Oh, yeah, toilet dreams are incredibly common. The brain apparently likes to weave actual needing a toilet signals into an elaborate and annoying narrative.

[lnhammer.livejournal.com]

Go you!

[chomiji]

You won't be shocked by any of Holloway's interp:

You Can't Find a Toilet

You need to use a restroom ... somehow you can't find one. After an absurd series of delays, you locate the restroom and rush in. Unfortunately, there is an unpleasant problem here as well. There are too many people and no stalls available for you. When you do finally reach a commode, it doesn't work properly ...

Although men have this dream, it is far more common in women ... the specific trials we suffer during these quests represent frustrations in waking life that inhibit the ability to care for ourselves in some personal way ... People with living situations that diminish their privacy sometimes dream ... [that] the only vailable toilet is out in plain view.

There are additional specific examples (too many people ahead in line, toilet overflowing) that you can probably interepret without help!

The jacket thing is interesting: "Clothes tend to represent either the persona we are presenting to others or the identity we're living in at the time." Are you worrying that if you attend to your own needs, others' view of you as the person you're trying to become will be "down the tubes"?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The thing with toilet dreams is that they seem to be the result of the mind putting a narrative on the sensation of needing to go to the bathroom, so I am a bit dubious about the "self-care" interpretation.

Have you read Robert Johnson's book Inner Work? He offers a method for working with dreams that doesn't rely on any set interpretations, but on uncovering personal associations.

[chomiji]

Nope, I have not read it, but I have now ordered the book!

Yes, it could well be the actual physical state you're in - she says that too. But you have really been awfully busy and sometimes frustrated lately, so I felt it was worth passing on the other interp.

[isabelknight.livejournal.com]

I was all set to enthusiastically type "GO RACHEL, GO!" and thus cheer you on for your final paper, but after reading your bathroom anxiety dream, I'm kind of afraid that might add a whole new level of weird to the next one. I do not actually yell at stressed people in bathrooms to hurry up and pee, I promise.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

You will write awesomely, I have no doubt.

Super annoying dream! I hate the ones where nothing like that would really happen so you have no idea how to say WHY some kid should not wait in your stall while you use the toilet and put in a tampon.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Good for you, and keep up the momentum!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

GO YOU!

Now I want to learn to lucid-dream, so I can make sure to always be carrying a chamber pot.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Go Rachel Go Rachel Go! You are made of win!

[gratiela.livejournal.com]

(http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s23/gratiela_/GIF/catclo.gif)



Please excuse my superficiality, I hope you are feeling a bit better! and that the paper is done!

[cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com]

Almost there!

(When I was at Uni, I usually had three or four assignments due on my birthday.)

[derien.livejournal.com]

I had those dreams about toilets nearly every night, and I would get up to pee like three times during the night, and I would hear people knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell (even when we didn't have one), and people walking around in the next room, until my doctor gave me anti-axiety meds. I didn't stay on those meds for long, but the toilet dreams are rare, now, and the knocking/ringing even rarer. (People walking around, though, is common, but I can ignore it because it's real - the upstairs neighbors wear WOODEN CLOGS, I swear!)

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I may have already posted about this but once I managed to have a dream with SO many different personal anxiety/resolution/safety symbols and all arranged around a particular friend (rescued me from a dog, was at my favorite part of my college campus with me, was in my childhood bedroom with me, some other stuff) that I woke up and was like OK OK I GET IT THIS PERSON IS SAFE TO TRUST.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. I have these so often, though usually not with so many compounded anxieties. One of my work friends had a dream I died of lung cancer and had hidden my disease from everyone. I told him if I had it it'd be a surprise to me too.